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Category: Virtual reality

Exploring virtual reality

We’ve talked a lot in recent weeks about new technologies we are evaluating for the XPRTs. You may remember that back in June, we also wrote about sponsoring a second senior project with North Carolina State University. Last week, the project ended with the traditional Posters and Pies event. The team gave a very well thought‑out presentation.

NCSU VR blog pic 1

As you can tell from the photo below, the team designed and implemented a nifty virtual reality app. It’s a room escape puzzle, and it looks great!

NCSU VR blog pic 2

The app is a playable game with the ability to record the gameplay for doing repeatable tests. It also includes a recording that allows you to test a device without playing the game. Finally, the app lets you launch directly into the prerecorded game without using a viewer, which will be handy for testing multiple devices.

The team built the app using the Google Cardboard API and the Unity game engine, which allowed them to create Android and iOS versions. We’re looking forward to seeing what that may tell us!

After Posters and Pies, the team came to PT to present their work and answer questions. We were all very impressed with their knowledge and with how well thought out the application was.

NCSU VR blog pic 3

Many thanks to team members Christian McCurdy, Gregory Manning, Grayson Jones, and Shon Ferguson (not shown).

NCSU VR blog pic 4

Thanks also to Dr. Lina Battestilli, the team’s technical advisor, and Margaret Heil, Director of the Senior Design Center.

We are currently evaluating the app, and expect to make it available to the community in early 2017!

Eric

 

The things we do now

We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the Microsoft Store added an option to indicate holographic support, which we selected for TouchXPRT. So, it was no surprise to see Microsoft announce that next year, they will release an update to Windows 10 that enables mainstream PCs to run the Windows Holographic shell. They also announced that they‘re working with Intel to develop a reference architecture for mixed-reality-ready PCs. Mixed-reality applications, which combine the real world with a virtual reality, demand sophisticated computer vision, and applications that can learn about the world around them.

As we’ve said before, we are constantly watching how people use their devices. One of the most basic principles of the XPRT benchmarks is to test devices using the same kinds of work that people do in the real world. As people find new ways to use their devices, the workloads in the benchmarks should evolve as well. Virtual reality, computer vision, and machine learning are among the technologies we are looking at.

What sorts of things are you doing today that you weren’t a year ago? (Other than Pokémon GO – we know about that one.) Would you like to see those sorts of workloads in the XPRTs? Let us know!

Eric

Seeing the future

Back in April we wrote about how Bill’s trip to IDF16 in Shenzhen got us thinking about future benchmarks. Technologies like virtual reality, the Internet of things, and computer vision are going to open up lots of new applications.

Yesterday I saw an amazing article that talked about an automatic computer vision system that is able to detect early-stage esophageal cancer from endoscopy images. These lesions can be difficult for physicians to detect, and the system did very well when compared to four experts who participated in the test. The article contains a link to the original study, for those of you who want more detail.

To me, this is the stuff of science fiction. It’s a very impressive accomplishment. Clearly, new technologies are going to lead to many new and exciting applications.

While this type of application is more specialized than the typical XPRT, things like this get us really excited about the possibilities for the future.  Have you seen an application that impressed you recently? Let us know!

Eric

Looking ahead

It’s only been a couple of weeks since we announced a cross-platform XPRT. It’s still early days, but we’ve already started getting ideas from vendors and media—from both people within the community and those who have not yet joined. We’re incorporating these ideas into our investigations, and plan to be sending a design document for the community to critique in a few weeks.

However, we are always looking ahead and Bill’s trip to IDF16 got us thinking about future benchmarks. Virtual reality is obviously going to be big. Bill said that he thinks he saw more things using the Oculus Rift than there are Oculus Rifts in the world! The Internet of Things has been ramping up for a while now, and shows no sign of slowing down. Computer vision is another emerging area, one with many possible applications. There are a lot of exciting possibilities!

As always, we want to know what you think. What upcoming technologies are you excited about? What would like to see in these benchmarks? Please let us know!

Eric

IDF16 Shenzhen

I just spent the last couple of days at IDF16 Shenzhen. It was a great opportunity to talk to folks about the XPRTs, see some future technology demos, and think about the future of the XPRTs.

The technology and product demos included lots of interesting technology. I saw everything from the latest computers to games to VR to body monitoring.

IDF16-1

Of particular interest to me were the future-looking technologies beyond the usual array of notebooks, tablets, and servers. I was able to see drones that could video a person by following them, while avoiding obstacles such as trees. I saw a number of demos using the Oculus Rift. I got to see some robot demos that were impressive in their use of the fairly off-the-shelf technology driving them. I would have had myself scanned and then had a small 3D model of myself printed, but I was pressed for time and the line was too long.

I was particularly interested in a mirror that could scan a person and tell things about their health. I also found somewhat amusing a technology demo that was able to “beautify” a person in real time for use with teleconferencing such as Skype. While I might quibble about the definition of beautify, the idea of real-time video enhancement is intriguing. (Given the raw material I gave it to work with, it was no easy task to accomplish!) Maybe I won’t need to shave before my next WebEx meeting…

IDF16-2

All of these technologies give some hints as to areas the XPRTs may go in the future. While I don’t think we are quite ready for BeautificationXPRT, there may well be some workloads we should consider such as path finding, real-time video enhancement, health monitoring, virtual reality, and gaming. Please let us know your thoughts about what near-term technologies we should be considering in future workloads.

We definitely have exciting times still ahead of us in technology and the XPRTs!

Bill

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