Архив рубрики: Virtual Reality

Camera maker Canon leans into software at CES

Depending on whether you spend most of your time in hospitals, offices or in the great outdoors, when you hear “Canon,” your mind will likely go to medical scanning equipment, high-end printers or cameras. At CES this year, the 85-year-old company is leaning in a new direction, with an interesting focus on software applications.
At the show, the imaging giant showed off a direction it has been hinting at before, but this time relying far less on its own hardware, and more on the software the company has developed, in part as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic casting a shadow over people’s ability to connect. To the chorus of “meaningful communication” and “powerful collaboration,” the Japanese imaging giant appears to be plotting out a new course for what’s next.

I guess you can (officially) use your fancy Canon camera as a webcam studio now

“Canon is creating ground-breaking solutions that help people connect in more ways than we ever could have imagined, redefining how they work and live at a time when many of them are embracing a hybrid lifestyle,» said Kazuto Ogawa, president and CEO, Canon U.S.A., Inc, in a press briefing at CES 2023. “Canon’s ultimate role is to bring people closer together by revealing endless opportunities for creators. Under our theme of ‘Limitless Is More,’ we will show CES 2023 attendees what we are creating as a company focused on innovation and a world without limits.”
Among other things, Canon showed off a somewhat gimmicky immersive experience tied in with M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming thriller movie, “Knock at the Cabin.” The very Shyamalanesque movie trailer will give you a taster of the vibe. At the heart of things, however, Canon is tapping into a base desire in humanity; to feel connected to one another. The company is desperate to show off how its solutions can “remove the limits humanity faces to create more meaningful communication,” through four technologies it is showing off at the trade show this year.
Canon U.S.A. CEO Kevin Ogawa on stage at CES 2023 along with M. Night Shyamalan. Image Credits: Haje Kamps/TechCrunch
3D calling: Kokomo
The flagship solution Canon is showing off is Kokomo, which the company describes as a first-of-its-kind immersive VR software package. It is designed to combine VR with an immersive calling experience. The solution is pretty elegant: Using a VR headset and a smartphone, the Kokomo software enables users to see and hear one another in real time with their live appearance and expression in a photo-real environment.
The Kokomo solution brings 3D video calling to a home near you. Image Credits: Canon
In effect, the software package scans your face to learn what you look like, then turns you into a photo-realistic avatar. The person you are in a call with can see you — sans VR headset — showing your physical appearance and facial expressions. The effect is to experience a 3D video call. At the show, Canon is demoing the tech by letting visitors step into a 1×1 conversation with the “Knock at the Cabin” characters.
We spoke with the team behind Kokomo to figure out how the project came about, why Canon is dipping its toe in standalone software, what the future of this technology is, and how it is going to make money.

With Kokomo VR meeting software, Canon takes a step away from its hardware roots

Realtime 3D video: Free Viewpoint
Aimed at the sports market, Free Viewpoint is a solution that combines more than 100 high-end cameras with a cloud-based solution that makes it possible to move a virtual camera to any location. The software takes all the video feeds, creating a point-cloud-based 3D model that enables a virtual camera operator to create a number of angles that would otherwise have been impossible: Drone-like replay footage, swooping into the action, for example, or detailed in-the-thick-of-things-type footage, enabling viewers to see plays from the virtual perspective of one of the players.
In the U.S., the system has already been installed at two NBA arenas (including at the home of the Cavaliers and the Nets). The video can be broadcast live or compiled into replay clips. Canon also points out that the system enables “virtual advertising and other opportunities for monetization,” so I suppose we have that to look forward to as well.

Canon takes tentative step towards eliminating photographers with robotic PICK camera

Returning to the “Knock at the Cabin” theme, at CES, Canon showed off a virtual action scene captured with the Free Viewpoint video system, captured at Canon’s Volumetric Video Studio in Kawasaki, Japan. The effect of watching an action scene “through the eyes” of various characters was a wonderfully immersive experience.
Augmented reality tech: MREAL
Canon also showed off some earlier-stage tech that isn’t quite ready for prime-time viewing yet, including MREAL. This is tech that helps integrated simulation-like immersive worlds, merging the real and the virtual worlds. Use cases might include pre-visualization for movies, training scenarios and interactive mixed-reality entertainment. The company tells TechCrunch that the technology is in the market research phase.
The company is trying to figure out what to develop further and how to market the product. In other words: Who would use this, what would they use it for and what would they be willing to pay for it.

Augmented reality’s half-decade of stagnation

Remote presence: AMLOS
Activate My Line of Sight (AMLOS) is what Canon is calling its solution for hybrid meeting environments, where some participants are in person, while others are off-site. If you’ve ever been in a meeting in that configuration, you’ll often find that attending remotely is a deeply frustrating experience, as the in-person meeting participants are engaging with each other while the remote attendees are off on a screen somewhere.
Canon hopes that AMLOS can help solve that; it’s a software-and-camera set of products aiming to improve the level of engagement. It adds panning, tilting and zooming capabilities to remote camera systems, giving remote users the ability to customize their viewing and participation experience. So far, the solution is not quite intuitive enough to overcome the barrier of not being in the room, but it’s certainly better than being a disembodied wall of heads on a screen.

Camera maker Canon leans into software at CES by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch
Camera maker Canon leans into software at CES

Tinder to kill virtual currency, metaverse plans amid Match Group earnings loss; Tinder loses its CEO

Dating giant Match Group announced a series of changes to Tinder’s management team alongside the announcement of disappointing second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Notably, Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg will be departing the company after less than a year in the top job. Match Group is also killing Tinder’s plans to adopt new technology, like virtual currencies and metaverse-based dating.
In a shareholder letter, Match Group CEO Bernard Kim expressed frustration with Tinder’s current performance, noting the popular dating app has not been able to realize its typical monetization success over the past few quarters and is failing to meet the company’s original expectations for revenue growth for the latter half of 2022.
Kim chalked up Tinder’s troubles to “disappointing execution on several optimizations and new product initiatives,” but added that Tinder’s product execution and velocity could still be improved.
Alongside the departure of Nyborg, Tinder will have a reorganized management team that also includes:
Faye Iosotaluno, formerly Match Group’s chief strategy officer, as Tinder’s COO
Mark van Ryswyk, as Tinder’s chief product officer. Ryswyk is an experienced gaming executive who joined the company in June.
Melissa Hobley, formerly OkCupid’s CMO, as Tinder’s chief marketing officer
Tom Jacques, as Tinder’s chief technology officer. An 11-year Match Group veteran, he has been Tinder’s CTO for the last five years.
Advisor Amarnath Thombre. The current CEO of Match Group Americas and 15-year Match Group veteran will advise the Tinder management team on product roadmap and growth.
Kim said he will oversee the team while Tinder searches for a permanent CEO.
Reading between the lines, there was also a hint that the younger generation of users may have lost its appetite for dating apps like Tinder — a culture shift which can’t just be chalked up to lingering pandemic impacts. The letter notes that people have moved past COVID lockdowns and re-entered “a more normal way of life,” but their willingness to try online dating apps for the first time hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Instead, Match Group reports that its highest engagement is now coming from existing users.
As part of Tinder’s revamp, its “dating metaverse” ambitions have been dramatically scaled back. The company had been planning to leverage its Hyperconnect acquisition to create a new form of online dating in a virtual environment, but those ideas are on pause as Match Group now has to address broader issues.
“…Given uncertainty about the ultimate contours of the metaverse and what will or won’t work, as well as the more challenging operating environment, I’ve instructed the Hyperconnect team to iterate but not invest heavily in metaverse at this time,” wrote Kim. “We’ll continue to evaluate this space carefully, and we will consider moving forward at the appropriate time when we have more clarity on the overall opportunity and feel we have a service that is well-positioned to succeed.”
Also on the chopping block was virtual currency, which Match Group was experimenting with as Tinder Coins. (While Match Group hadn’t gotten so far as to announce blockchain integrations for the coins, the virtual currency’s role in its broader metaverse plans suggested crypto could be part of its long-term roadmap.)
“After seeing mixed results from testing Tinder Coins, we’ve decided to take a step back and re-examine that initiative so that it can more effectively contribute to Tinder’s revenue,” said Kim. “We also intend to do more thinking about virtual goods to ensure that they can be a real driver for Tinder’s next leg of growth and help us unlock the untapped power users on the platform,” he added.
The company says it’s still planning to develop features to make Tinder more appealing to women, including a subscription-based package that will provide “curated recommendations” as well as features designed to get friends involved in introductions. Across other products, it will also look to new features, like livestreaming video, to drive adoption.
Overall, Match posted Q2 2022 revenue of $795 million, up 12% year-over-year, but below average Wall Street estimates of $804.22 million. It also posted a loss of $31.86 million, or 11 cents per share, versus 46 cents in the year-ago quarter. Analysts were expecting earnings of 57 cents per share. Match said its operating loss was $10 million, impacted by a $217 million write-down of intangibles related to lower financial outlooks for its Azar and Hakuna apps from Hyperconnect.
Match Group paying users were up 10% year-over-year to 16.4 million. Tinder direct revenue grew 13% from the prior quarters, driven by 14% growth to 10.9 million paying users.
Image Credits: Match Group
Estimates for the quarter ahead weren’t good either, with Match Group forecasting flat Q3 growth to $790 million to $800 million in revenue, below estimates of $883 million. Tinder revenue growth is expected to be in the “mid single digits.”
Shares dropped more than 20% in after-hours trading on the news.
Updated 8/2/22, 6:00 pm ET to clarify Tinder had not formally announced blockchain integrations for Tinder’s virtual currency. 
Tinder to kill virtual currency, metaverse plans amid Match Group earnings loss; Tinder loses its CEO

HTC looks to the metaverse for answers

LG officially pulled the plug on its smartphone division in April of last year. It was another signpost in a dramatically changing mobile market that had left the electronics giant behind. HTC tends to be lumped into that conversation, though the Taiwanese manufacture has — in spite of everything — continued to press on, even after Google acquired around half of the company’s phone talent and IP in 2017.
HTC’s mobile division has spent the last several years searching for the right angle to recapture some of that magic. In 2018, it was the HTC Exodus, which was undoubtedly ahead of the curve as a blockchain/crypto-focused handset. That device, predictably, failed to make a dent. Now the company’s back with another trend-surfing handset, the HTC Desire 22 Pro, a “metaverse” focused device it’s been teasing for a few weeks now.
This time, at least, the company’s got a leg up in that department, as one of the primary manufacturers of VR headsets through its Vive line. HTC is positing the Desire 22 Pro as “the phone to carry you into the future” and “the perfect companion with Vive Flow VR glasses.” On the face of it, however, it’s a fairly middling mid-range device with limited claims to actual metaversiness.
The product sports a 6.6-inch 1,080 x 2,412 display with a 120 Hz refresh rate. Inside you’ve got Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 695 5G, coupled with 8GB or RAM and 128GB of storage. Any actual metaverse functionality appears to be little more than marketing from a company struggling to rediscover its footing in the cruel and unforgiving world of mobile phones.
Image Credits: HTC
It does, however, apparently sport a digital wallet and an NFT, as evidenced by the above images of cats posing as classical artwork. Though, as noted, such functionality appears to be limited to select markets.
If all of that sounds good for some reason, the handset is up for preorder now and set to start shipping August 1.
HTC looks to the metaverse for answers

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Like by smiling? Facebook acquires emotion detection startup FacioMetrics

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