Fani Kiran Vulapalli

Interacting with and controlling elements in virtual reality (VR) or mixed reality (MR) still feels like an imperfect science, and many companies, from HTC, to Oculus and now Microsoft offer their own solutions for an ideal VR experience. They all share a few common similarities and work in similar ways, but the implementation of the technology each time has been different, and the jury is still out on which is the best control method yet. The video below has various graphs and illustrations to help understand how the MR motion controller and HMD track one another in a 3D space, so it’s well worth watching to understand the new technology. If you haven’t seen much of the new Windows Mixed Reality motion controllers, then you’re in luck, because Microsoft HoloLens’ YouTube channel has released a new video which explains in detail how the motion controller tracking works, including what happens to the controller when the device is unable to locate its exact location. What Micr...

What these people are seeing isn’t real – but they might think it is. As Facebook users around the world are coming to understand, some of their favorite technologies can be used against them. It’s not just the scandal over psychological profiling firm Cambridge Analytica getting access to data from tens of millions of Facebook profiles. People’s filter bubbles are filled with carefully tailored information – and misinformation – altering their behavior and thinking, and even their votes. People, both individually and as a society at large, are wrestling to understand how their newsfeeds turned against them. They are coming to realize exactly how carefully controlled Facebook feeds are, with highly tailored ads. That set of problems, though, pales in comparison to those posed by the next technological revolution, which is already underway: virtual reality. On one hand, virtual worlds hold almost limitless potential. VR games can treat drug addiction and maybe help solve the opioid ...

 7 Great TED Talks on The Educational Potential of Augmented Reality Augmented Reality is radically transforming our life by making the border between the physical and digital reality thinner than ever before.  We have already touched upon the huge potential of augmented reality in education and have featured a wide variety of tools and mobile apps teachers and educators can use to effectively integrate this technology into their teaching. This excellent collection of TED talks tackling the topic of augmented reality from different perspectives.  These include the use of AR to revolutionize the teaching of science in schools, how AR is changing the future of journalism, the use of AR in the study of biology, how AR is revolutionizing the world of music and art and many more. Enjoy 1- This virtual lab will revolutionize science class by Michael Bodekaer 2- The future of news? Virtual reality by Nonny de la Peña 3- Animate characters by evolving them by T...

For some people drawing comes naturally. But for others this would surely be a relief. Enter Sketch AR: the AI-powered app that aims to make you a better artist regardless of your current skill. The idea is pretty simple: you draw a few circles on a piece of paper, wall, or sleeping friend’s face and then point your smartphone’s camera at it. From there you can cycle through point-by-point lessons that help you learn to associate free space with the next layer of a drawing. It’s quite intuitive and the overlay makes it feel like drawing on tracing paper, but with augmented reality instead. To accomplish this, the developers had to figure out how to overcome various problems. For example, when a person is drawing, often their hand gets in the way of the camera. Furthermore, not every surface or “canvas” is the same. According to a blog post from the developers: An algorithm teaches the camera to distinguish between everything it sees. For instance, the background is sepa...