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Category: entertainment – Page 118

In June, a team of programmers will release a ground-breaking new video game called No Man’s Sky, which uses artificial intelligence and procedural generation to self-create an entire cosmos full of planets. Running off 600,000 lines of code, the game creates an artificial galaxy populated by 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique planets that you can travel to and explore.

Though this artificial universe is realistic down to the dimensions of a blade of grass, faster than light-speed travel is available in order for players to bridge the unfathomable distances between stars.

Chief architect Sean Murray says No Man’s Sky is different than most games because the landscapes and distances aren’t faked. While most space-based games utilize a skybox that simply rotates between different modalities, No Man’s Sky is virtually limitless and employs real physics.

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It’s looking like 2016 will be the year virtual reality hits the mainstream now that Oculus Rift is on the brink of shipping and Google Cardboard is into the millions of units sold. Now, we finally know when Sony is releasing its new VR headset too. GameStop CEO Paul Raines revealed the PlayStation VR will launch in the third quarter of this year during a live television interview.

“We will launch the Sony product this fall,” said Raines, “and we’re in discussions with the other two players.” Shortly after blurting out the PlayStation VR release date, Raines redirected the conversation to GameStop’s dominance in gaming hardware sales. To watch the flub, jump to the 2:40 mark in the clip below:

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Smartphone meet the Smartcouch.

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwgeeks/article/Is-Your-COUCH-…-20160220#

I’m reporting this news now from my couch and I must admit that after months of immersion in the Smart Home world, I’ve never once considered if my sofa was on the list of home products needing to be upgraded. Until, I suppose…today. Welcome to the Immersit, the new device which might have you never looking at your La-Z-Boy the same way again. Or, if you’re like me … wondering if the product will work, destroy your sofa, or frighten the heck out of your pet.

Let’s go to the Kickstarter which is fully funded with more than $100,000 dollars pledged and still weeks to go. Here’s how they describe themselves: “Immersit, a plug & play device installed under your couch, can generate a very high amount of movement patterns and vibrations ranging from explosive to subtle: pitches, rolls & heaves, moving users back & forth, from side to side and up & down. All these, combined with intelligent vibrations and an adjustable intensity, result in the ultimate movie and gaming experience in which each explosion, wave & sharp turn is felt directly by the user from his own furniture.”

The genesis.

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In this intriguing short film, Goldilocks, Earth has been devastated by solar storms, prompting a search for another home planet for humanity. In orbit, a scientist named Kharon is working hard to adapt plants to a new world, fulfilling a promise to his long-dead wife.

There’s some hints of 2001: A Space Odyssey here, and this is an interesting short film with some striking visuals. There’s some stretches of the imagination here, starting with the very notion of a space station being a bit more secure for research in orbit than on Earth (you know, with a magnetic field to protect you), but we’ll let it slide.

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Using gaming chips to read people’s images, etc. definitely makes sense especially as we move more and more in the AI connected experience.

Facebook, Google and Microsoft are tapping the power of a vintage computer gaming chip to raise your smartphone’s IQ with artificially intelligent programs that recognize faces and voices, translate conversations on the fly and make searches faster and more accurate.

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Google’s forthcoming wireless virtual reality headset is purportedly in the works. With this new VR headset, users will no longer need a smartphone, PC or gaming console for it to provide a VR experience. (Photo : Justin Sullivan | Getty Images)

Google is reportedly developing a wireless virtual reality headset. The more advanced form of the company’s cardboard viewer will soon not rely on a smartphone, PC or gaming console to make it work – this makes it the first of its kind in the VR field.

The Wall Street Journal, citing its unnamed sources familiar with this matter, says that the company is currently working on an all-in-one VR headset which could likely come out before the year ends.

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Could VR give Hollywood a new boost? Looks like it. Imagine you can be part of the Bond or MI experience instead of sitting an watching it.

On Latest Stop in Global Campaign to Be Elected The World’s First “President of VR” Debuts “I AM MY AVATAR” Campaign Music Video

Honoring Late ‘Motorhead’ Founder Lemmy Kilmister on the Heels of Emotional Grammy© Awards Tribute

LOS ANGELES and BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Visionary entrepreneur Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs has been selected to represent the rapidly expanding Virtual Reality (VR) industry as the voice of ‘all things’ VR, as a speaker on the highly anticipated ‘Entertainment Showcase’ conference panel of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the leading industry conference for mobile technology and related industries. The conference panel takes place on the GSMA Mobile World Showcase stage, on Tuesday, February 23, from 1 PM – 2 PM (CET)/12 PM – 1 PM (GMT), in Barcelona, Spain. A cyber-celebrity and global VR visionary, NEVERDIE Jacobs’ participation on the panel will accompany a headlining appearance at the MWC’s companion Gamelab Mobile confab where he will lead the industry-leading group’s discussion on ‘games skills as currency’ in the emerging VR world. The panel joins a slate of appearances with top technology executives which is the most recent stop on a global press tour to promote his campaign to become the first-ever ‘President of Virtual Reality.” (#voteNEVERDIE)

Continue reading “Virtual Reality Visionary Jon NEVERDIE Jacobs Selected To Join Mobile World Congress ‘Entertainment Showcase’” | >

Actors and Actresses will never have to worry about reading through pages of scripts to decide whether or not the role is worth their time; AI will do the work for you.

A version of this story first appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

During his 12 years in UTA’s story department, Scott Foster estimates he read about 5,500 screenplays. “Even if it was the worst script ever, I had to read it cover to cover,” he says. So when Foster left the agency in 2013, he teamed with Portland, Ore.-based techie Brian Austin to create ScriptHop, an artificial intelligence system that manages the volume of screenplays that every agency and studio houses. “When I took over [at UTA], we were managing hundreds of thousands of scripts on a Word document,” says Foster, who also worked at Endeavor and Handprint before UTA. “The program began to eat itself and become corrupt because there was too much information to handle.” ScriptHop can read a script and do a complete character breakdown in four seconds, versus the roughly four man hours required of a reader. The tool, which launches Feb. 16 is free, and is a sample of the overall platform coming later in 2016 that will recommend screenplays as well as store and manage a company’s library for a subscription fee of $29.99 a month per user.

As for how exactly it works, Austin is staying mum. “There’s a lot of sauce in the secret sauce,” he says. Foster and Austin aren’t the first to create AI to analyze scripts. ScriptBook launched in 2015 as an algorithmic assessment to determine a script’s box-office potential. By contrast, ScriptHop is more akin to a Dewey Decimal System for film and TV. Say a manager needs to find a project for a 29-year-old male client who is 5 feet tall, ScriptHop will spit out the options quickly. “If you’re an agent looking for roles for minority clients, it’s hugely helpful,” says Foster. There’s also an emotional response dynamic (i.e., Oscar bait) that charts a character’s cathartic peaks and valleys as well as screen time and shooting days. So Meryl Streep instantly can find the best way to spend a one month window between studio gigs. Either way, it appears that A.I. script reading is the future. The only question is what would ScriptHop make of Ex Machina’s Ava? “That would be an interesting character breakdown,” jokes Foster.

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