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Virtual Reality Still Just Around the Corner as Developers Try to Eliminate the Final Kinks

For years now virtual reality headsets for gaming and movie-watching have been just around the corner.

For years now….

Tech lovers have long been strapping clunky early models of virtual reality sets to their faces and forgetting in the midst of their excitement that their neck is screaming in agony and that a red rectangular mark was stuck on their face by the time they removed the headset.

This all goes without mentioning the fact that for many consumers, the headset was ripped off in a mad dash to the bathroom to vomit after motion sickness settled in.

Game enthusiasts never needed a special headset to spot the empty promises that were constantly fueling their hopes that virtual reality would finally actually come around the world’s largest corner.

The dominating presence of virtual reality developments at the Game Developers Conferences in San Francisco, however, sparked a new wave of hope that the wait for virtual reality sets would soon be over.

This was mainly because it seemed like every major tech giant in the virtual reality race had stunning new developments to demo for the anxious public.

Oculus, Sony, and Valve all had virtual reality sets on display at the conferences, and the industry’s power players were happy to discuss the new technologies on the way.

“There is a legitimate opportunity,” said Oculus CTO John Carmack. “Make something great, and there will be opportunities there to move a number of units, to be the breakout ‘thing.’ To look back and say, ‘Well, clearly that was the obvious thing to do’ when it wasn’t the obvious thing to do.”

With a new wave of buzz around virtual reality, it’s no surprise that developers are already working on some of the first games that consumers will get to play with the headsets.

Serious Parody CEO Daniel Hinkle has been eagerly working on games for the Oculus Rift, but other developers were hesitant to hop on board.

While the tech giants did unveil impressive advances at the conferences, there are still serious concerns about the actual functionality surrounding the devices.

For one, the devices are still making some people sick.

In the midst of assuring tech lovers that virtual reality was on the way and praising the daring pioneers of the technology, Carmack also pointed to the current downfalls and obstacles that are plaguing the devices.

Carmack laid out his “nightmare scenario.”

“People like the demo, they take it home, and they start throwing up,” Carmack said.

It’s a very real reality.

For those who managed to get their hands on Ocular prototypes in the past, the motion sickness struggle was proven to be very real.

“The fear is if a really bad V.R. product comes out, it could send the industry back to the ’90s,” he said.

Carmack wasn’t the only one to discuss this fear.

Gabe Newell, the president and co-founder of Valve, described the VR demonstrations as “the world’s best motion sickness inducers,” the NY Times reported.

In addition to motion sickness, some users are still unhappy with the size and weight of many VR headsets, which ultimately prohibits them from being focused on the exciting digital realm before them for too long.

This comes along with serious concerns about the price point.

Khaled Helioui, CEO of European game studio Bigpoint, was unhappy with the fact that the headsets will cost $200 or more.

Samsung’s Gear VR is currently priced at $200.

Other tech giants haven’t announced their prices, but it isn’t likely that the $200 price tag will get slashed by competitors.

“The message that sends is, ‘Hey, you need to be wealthy to play our games,’ and I have a big problem with that,” Helioui told Mashable.

For that reason, consumers shouldn’t expect to see any Bigpoint games coming out for the VR sets just yet.

Helioui hinted that he won’t allow it until the price points come down.

Consumers, on the other hand, don’t see the big deal.

“I wouldn’t mind spending up to $300 for a VR headset,” one reader commented.

The Mashable reader also suggested he wouldn’t be willing to go much higher than that but as the tech world has already shown in the past —if the device catches on, people will be willing to dish out an extra hundred bucks or so to make sure they don’t miss the initial wave of a gaming revolution.

 

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Researchers Could Revolutionize Infrastructure Maintenance by Getting Walls to Talk

Proper maintenance of infrastructure like busy bridges or towering office buildings is key for any community and especially important for major metro areas.

Unfortunately, keeping up with such infrastructure is a daunting task that could allow many structural issues that need to be addressed to fall through the cracks.

This could ultimately lead to expensive repairs or catastrophic foundation failures that could have been prevented had the integrity of key infrastructure been maintained properly.

There is no arguing that it would all be much easier if walls could talk.

That’s exactly what the team of researchers behind the GENESI project is trying to accomplish.

Walls still wouldn’t be able to share the latest gossip or give you a conversational companion, but they would be able to give accurate reports about their status.

GENESI, which stands for Green Sensor Networks for Structural Monitoring, is a project funded by the European Union that aims to put these new sensors on various structures in order to keep better track of a city’s infrastructure.

“Vibrating strain gauges, displacement meters, pressure sensors, temperature sensors, [and] soil moisture sensors” would be some of the devices used to give buildings, bridges and tunnels a voice.

GENESI has already rolled out two pilot projects to test just how functional the new sensors would be.

So far, the sensors are giving impressive results, but the maintenance has shifted from the buildings to the sensors themselves.

The devices require batteries that still have to be replaced more often than researchers would like.

Popular Science pointed out that even the most energy-efficient sensors could still pose a serious problem when it comes time to monitor and replace the batteries.

While some sensors feature small wind turbines that help garner energy for the device, others rely on manual labor.

“For all other sensors, whether tucked away in tunnel walls or nestled in dark unlit crevices under bridges, replacing batteries isn’t always the easiest task for humans,” Popular Science contributor Kelsey D. Atherton explained. “So that might be a future job for drones.”

While sensor upkeep could be a bit of an annoyance, it’s still a far better option than playing guessing games with major infrastructure.

For that reason, researchers are hoping to perfect the technology and see the sensors popping up in cities all across the globe.

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5 Millenial Behaviors That Should be Driving Tech Innovation

millennialsBIG

User Experiences

For any tech business to prosper, its products and services have to appeal to millennials. By 2017, the millennial generation will be the largest online audience and will have more buying power than any other generation that has come before it, including the baby boomers. Straightforward user experiences will dictate the success of websites, e-commerce stores and mobile app developers.

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IKEA Helps Consumers Cut the Cord With New Line of Wireless-Charging Furniture

wireless charging tables

More tech consumers have been adamantly looking for wireless alternatives to charging their mobile devices, and IKEA is now presenting them with a new option that is both stylish and functional.

IKEA made the announcement Sunday that its new Home Smart collection will be able to wirelessly charge consumers’ cellphones, tablets and other mobile devices through simple contact.

These days, cellphones take on an incredible amount of responsibility throughout the daily lives of their owners.

Today’s smartphones will typically have to operate GPS functions, stream live music or videos, run several active windows on the Internet, keep up with running apps, serve as a digital wallet and credit card, snap pictures, record videos, give consumers access to their favorite games, update calendars and decode the many random questions that consumers are often too lazy to type into the Google search bar all in one day. All of these responsibilities, of course, come along with the need to receive and send calls and text messages.

With mobile devices taking on so many functions, the batteries take a toll and it isn’t long before tech lovers hear the dreaded beeping noise of a battery that has officially slid under the 10 percent mark.

Rather than struggle to remember where the charger is when time is of the essence, people can now simply put their phones down and have confidence that their low battery nightmare will be over soon.

That’s the power of IKEA’s new line of furniture.

The Home Smart brand is launching with a collection of lamps, bedside tables and a coffee table, but there is already speculation that the furniture giant will be expanding the designs in the future.

Wireless charging furniture

All Home Smart pieces will be able to charge users’ cellphones as soon as they put the device down.

The furniture will use the wireless-charging standard Qi and is scheduled to be available throughout North America and the U.K. by April.

A discreet plus sign will be featured on the Home Smart pieces, letting buyers know where to place their devices when it comes time to give them a little charge.

The new line is a smart move on IKEA’s behalf as the tech trend of “cutting the cord” has been growing at an exponential rate.

As tech giants are working to figure out how to create devices with longer battery life, buyers are also looking for ways to charge their devices without scrambling for the cord and scurrying to the nearest outlet.

It’s important to note that the furniture will only be compatible with certain mobile devices, but the collection will also include charging pads that will be able to work with more Samsung and Apple models.

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SOLO Phone Could Eventually Dominate Nigeria’s Mobile Phone Market by Shifting Focus From Hardware to Experience

SOLO phone launch

A 30-year-old tech entrepreneur is hoping to dominate Nigeria’s mobile phone market by growing a company that places more focus on user experience rather than the actual hardware that many other tech giants compete over.

The Nigerian entrepreneur, Michael Akindele, is the director and co-founder of SOLO Phone, “an experience-driven digital content and smartphone company focused on delivering the best content and services on the mobile platform to African consumers,” Forbes reported.

While most mobile companies are already engaged in a grueling war over who has the best hardware specifications, the SOLO executives made a wise decision — find a different way to approach the market.

While Apple is the biggest tech giant in the mobile phone space that has also been focusing on user experience, the phone is often too expensive for Nigeria’s market.

That left an opportunity for SOLO to fill that void.

“SOLO is an emerging markets play,” Akindele told Forbes. “SOLO is an experience-driven device manufacturer with a vision to provide the best content and services to the African and emerging markets consumer at an affordable price that not only delivers tremendous value for money but also enriches their lives. The foundation of SOLO is built on delivering key value added services in critical enterprise verticals such as education, health care and commerce, to mention a few.”

With this type of business model, many would argue that SOLO’s partnerships are much more valuable to the brand than its hardware specs, although those are still important pieces of the package.

The difference, however, is the shift in focus. So while an emerging mobile phone company may find it hard to go head-to-head with Apple when it comes to screen resolution, camera quality or battery life, it may be more possible that an emerging company can hold its own when it comes to the type of apps and digital content that is already available on the devices.

“Today, SOLO offers affordable smartphones bundled with free music — up to 20 million songs licensed from Sony, Universal and Warner,” Akindele continued. “This innovation was possible because of partners that believe in the SOLO vision. We also recently launched a Video-On-Demand app available to all Android devices in Nigeria offering the latest Nollywood and Hollywood movies from global movie studies such as Disney, Universal Studios and Sony Pictures.”

Akindele said SOLO’s market approach has paid off so far with consumers receiving the “offerings relatively well.”

“In our first year, we established strong distribution network across Nigeria by partnering with key smartphone retailers,” he said. “Furthermore, we’ve also partnered with primary ecommerce platforms to drive adoption and sales of our device and services.”

The company is currently working on dominating Nigeria’s mobile market but has future plans of expanding all throughout the African continent.

With an affordable product and a new perspective on how to attract consumers to its mobile devices, SOLO’s dreams of an African takeover could very well become a reality as the continent’s tech market continues to develop.

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The BMW i8 Is the Future of Cars, and It’s Very Bright

The i8 is BMW’s latest supercar, able to go 0 to 60 in about 4.4 seconds with its hybrid electric/gas powertrain. The i8 looks like a Hot Wheels car, handles like a supercar and is as expensive as a high-end Porsche. With a starting price of $135,000, this isn’t the car for everyone. It’s actually a gateway into BMW’s other hybrid, the cute and cheap BMW i3, a shorter, sporty runaround that BMW is touting as their answer to crunchy hybrids from Honda, Nissan and Chevy. TechCrunch senior editor Matt Burns reviews the 2015 BMW i8.

Source: Tech Crunch