Lifeboat Foundation

Florida-headquartered Magic Leap has set up a company in Helsinki to gain access to Finland’s vast, Nokia- and gaming-driven reservoir of VR and AR talent.

In July, Magic Leap registered a company in Helsinki with CFO Scott Henry as the chairman of the board. The company did not return my request for a comment.

The Finnish VR and AR companies I spoke with would not confirm or deny working with the company dubbed one of the most secretive startups in the world. But considering the country’s strong know-how in technologies (especially in optics, hardware, and software) that are all highly relevant in the quest for VR/AR domination, it’s no surprise that multinational giants and hot startups are courting the country’s talent pool.

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Virtual Reality started its fascinating take-over of healthcare for the greatest pleasure of patients and doctors alike. Here are five great examples of medical VR transforming patient lives and how doctors work.

Check out the world from a drone’s perspective.

The NBA, the first major sports league to really embrace virtual reality, is getting even more serious about the technology for the upcoming 2016–2017 season. Today NBA Digital and its partner NextVR announced that they’ll broadcast at least one game every week during the season in VR, complete with dedicated announcers, multiple camera angles, and VR-optimized graphics.

Fans will need to have a full-season NBA League Pass subscription — either purchased directly or through a cable provider — to watch games in virtual reality. VR games can be viewed using Samsung’s Gear VR and the NextVR app. The NBA says that other VR headsets will be supported later in the season. During game breaks, fans will be able to see in-venue entertainment and behind-the-scenes arena footage.

“This programming marks the first regular schedule of live games delivered in VR by a professional sports league,” the NBA said in today’s press release. And yeah, that’s a fairly big deal. We’re beginning to see regular, consistent VR content (like professional basketball) that millions of people actually care about. And the NBA deserves credit for being bold in helping to form that path.

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“Let’s start from the ground up. Forget the room scale debate: the VR setup of the future moves with you.”

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NASA-funded project sends holographic recordings of real humans in Virtual Reality to crew members of 12-month Simulated Mars Isolation Study

October 13 2016 — As NASA prepares for its Journey to Mars in mid 2030’s, an experiment recently concluded in a remote University of Hawaii Mars simulation site to study the effects of long term isolation on an international team of six scientists, and the potential for virtual reality as an asynchronous communication tool. In a first of its kind pilot, the subjects at the facility called HI-SEAS have received holographic recordings of astronaut Buzz Aldrin and vocal artist/comedian Reggie Watts, which when viewed in virtual reality, simulate true presence and could help mitigate the feeling of isolation.

The research, led by R&D consulting company SIFT (Smart Information Flow Technologies), is enabled by holographic software company 8i, which developed proprietary technology to bring photorealistic holograms of humans into virtual and augmented reality experiences.

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