The Norwegian army has put virtual-reality Oculus Rift headset to a novel use – helping soldiers to drive tanks.
By mounting cameras on the outside of the tank, Norwegian soldiers were able to create a 360-degree feed to the Oculus headset, worn by the driver.
The device – still just a prototype – is much cheaper than conventional military camera systems.
By mounting cameras on the outside of the tank, Norwegian soldiers were able to create a 360-degree feed to the Oculus headset, worn by the driver
But the picture quality is not yet good enough for operational use.
The army began testing the headset in 2013 and in April of this year tried out the latest iteration of the hardware.
The virtual-reality headset hit the headlines when Facebook bought the company behind it – Oculus VR – for $2 billion in March.
To date neither has said much about what they plan to do together, but this week Oculus VR chief executive Brendan Iribe talked about hopes “to build a one billion player MMO”.
Massively multi-player online games (MMO) using virtual reality (VR) would be the “holy grail” for the technology, he told delegates at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.
Facebook’s large audience would help make such a platform possible although such an enormous player base would require a much larger network than existed currently, he said.
And while Oculus is starting off with a big focus in gaming he said that a lot of where VR would go in the next decade would be about “face-to-face communication and social”.
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Internet & Mobile World 2013 (IMWorld 2013), the second edition, is an event dedicated to digital business solutions. The exhibition and conferences will take place in Bucharest, on October 9th and 10th.
Visitors of the exhibition will have the opportunity to test first hand the intelligent Google Glasses, the latest gadget from Google, that can be activated by voice, acts like a mini-computer and helps the wearer to recognize the people he meets on the street or conferences and make business easier, and to connect to the Internet and social networks. These glasses can take pictures, shoot videos, have an option for videochat, can show GPS guides (Mercedes is testing Door-to-Door Navigation), and can translate in real time any written text that you see or words that you hear.
Google Glasses
“The 2nd edition of IMWorld brings together internationally renowned speakers and exhibitors as our intention is to facilitate the contact between the most important providers of digital solutions and the ones interested in using them for their projects and businesses. That is why we invited Nick Sohnenmann, founder and managing partner Future Candy, to the event; he and the analist Jan-Keno Janssen will present the Google Glasses”, said Cristian Hossu, Managing Partner Universum Events (IMWorld organizer)
Google Glasses’ presentation is scheduled to take place on the 1st day of the event, starting 10 a.m., and, afterwards, the glasses are available for testing in exhibition’s “Future Corner”.
Oculus Rift Glasses
“Other glasses based on a revolutionary technology and that will be also presented at IMWorld are Oculus Rift. Scheduled for launching in the beginning of 2014, the glasses have a 3D stethoscope viewfinder and 9DOF sensors and allow their users to experience video games from a new perspective and to better identify with the game characters”, said Cristian Hossu
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Leap Motion is another piece of technology that will be unveiled to the Romanian public and allows controlling the computer simply by making different gestures. The device creates a work area of half meter around the computer and the actions in this area (hands, fingers or other objects movements) are sent directly, without needing a touchpad, a mouse or other instruments.
All the gadgets to be presented at IMWorld, along with other tech novelties, will be available for testing in IMWorld’s “Future Corner”.
Access to IMWorld is available by pre-registering and the “Very Early Bird” tickets – available on www.imworld.ro for a 50% discount until September 13th.
IMWorld’s second edition is scheduled for October 9-10, at Romexpo Bucharest; the event is structured on 3 business areas: Marketing Technologies, Mobile and Apps and Business Software, each with dedicated conference scene and exhibition area.
The event is supported by Romtelecom and Cosmote as main partners and Nokia, S&T Romania, Qualysoft, Telcor Communications, Entersoft, Microsoft, Fujitsu, Zitec, MailAgent, Agilio, Safetech, Agile Media, MODE360, Transart, Dynamic Web, Voxility, Mediapost Hit Mail, Mobixera and SEO monitor, Star Storage, Cisco, Bittnet, Pay Pro, as project’s sponsors. The creative partner of the event is Saatchi&Saatchi. The media partners are: Radio Guerrilla, The Money Channel, Getica OOH, Wall-Street.ro, HotNews.ro, AdHugger, Agora, B2B Advertising, Business Review, Business24.ro, Cariere, Comunicatedepresa.ro, Connect, DailyBusiness.ro, Digital Trends, Forbes, Incont.ro, IT Channel, IT TRENDS, Market Watch, Today Software Magazine, Ziare.com and Zona IT.
IMWorld 2013 expects 5,000 visitors and has already 25 confirmed international speakers and 130 digital and software companies. The event is organized by Universum Events, that also organizes “Innovation Summit”.
