An Open Valve: How a Modding Community Shaped the Future of Virtual Reality Read articles from the magazine right here on Make:. Don’t have a subscription yet? Get one today. In a private room, deep within the walls of one of the most respected game studios in the world, I stand before a veritable smorgasbord of electronics prototypes. “This is the zombie machine, we put it on people’s heads to turn them into zombies we can remotely control.” I’m tempted to laugh. Valve, a game company famous for titles like Half Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Dota (and possibly more famous for the sequels of each of those) has a very tight relationship with makers. I was visiting the Bellevue, Washington headquarters to see how this traditional gaming software company ended up as the creator of arguably the most cutting-edge VR hardware on the market, the HTC Vive. I pick up a device that looks like some kind of optician’s torture tool, a set of lenses lined up to the bright and shiny end of a dismantled pico laser projector. In the Beginning, There Was Nausea The Big Launch
AR Flashcards 2.0 IS Here And It's FREE! | AR Flashcards Welcome to a new world of Flashcards. AR Flashcards make learning fun with the technology of Augmented Reality! “It’s definitely unique and a very clever way to get children involved in learning the alphabet and animal names.” – TheiPhoneMom.com “Through the use of augmented reality (AR) and flashcards – this app allows your children to learn in a new and exciting way! A new approach to flashcards!” – Digital Mom Blog “My daughter was repeating the letters and animal names and I could tell that she was learning a lot from this app, which of course is what is most important to me as a parent.” – MidwesternMoms.com “Children will love playing around with the cards and animals while learning the letters of the alphabet.” – Appysmarts.com “I absolutely love this unique twist on flashcards. AR Flashcards are a new way to interact and make Flashcards more entertaining for toddlers and preschoolers. Features: - 26 beautifully rendered Animals to help your toddler or preschooler learn the alphabet!
Getting Started with Virtual Reality: Building for Google Cardboard | Make This is part 2 of our series introducing Makers to Virtual reality. If you haven’t already seen it, you should go check out: An Introduction To Unity. The Google Cardboard headset is the perfect and inexpensive way to get started with virtual reality for anyone who owns a smartphone. Mainstream companies are already helping get headsets into the hands of the public like wildfire. The New York Times recently sent out more than a million Google Cardboard headsets to its subscribers, bringing VR to a whole new audience. I’m looking to share the basics of how people who are used to building physical things can get involved in helping build these VR experiences in Unity. In this article, we will look at how you can bring the Google Cardboard camera into a Unity project so we can view a scene in virtual reality. Importing the Google Cardboard SDK To bring in the capabilities of a Google Cardboard headset into Unity, you’ll need to download the Cardboard SDK for Unity. Adjusting The VR Camera
Augmented Reality: The Future of EdTech By: Drew Minock Augmented reality is defined as “a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, or GPS data.” (Wikipedia) We have discovered that augmented reality is much more than the definition describes – it is the future of educational technology. It all started on March 21st at the MACUL Conference in Detroit when the great Leslie Fisher showed the $20 bill trick using an app called Aurasma. Augmented reality allows us to put objects in the hands of our students that would have previously been impossible. There are several augmented reality applications available to download onto your mobile device, but few give you power to create your own experience like Aurasma. “She loves the Aurasma application, she loves that she can hear YOUR explanations at any time“– it’s so much better than doing homework with me or her father. character or person.
Exploring Augmented Reality with Vuforia and Unity It has always been a dream of mine to play with the holograms from Star Wars. While that dream may still be a long ways down the line, there is some supplemental hope for my space fantasy. A company called Qualcomm has released a technology called Vuforia, which among many other applications, can help you play with a concept called augmented reality. Augmented reality is different from entirely virtual reality, which is another type of digital experience that is often lumped together with augmented reality. The primary difference is that virtual reality, or VR, is immersive and places you inside an entirely new world trying its very best to remove you from the physical world. Augmented reality, or AR, does not do this. Vuforia enables AR through the use of some specific technology built for mobile phones, and a video game engine called Unity.
Teachers' Guide to Augmented reality Augmented Reality is a concept that has been around for sometime now but with the latest innovations in the digital world, augmented reality has been foregrounded posing serious questions as to its relevancy in education and learning. What is Augmented Reality ? Augmented Reality is exactly what the name implies: an augmented version of realty created by mixing technology with the known world. Augmented reality has its origins as early as the 1950s and has progressed with virtual reality since then, but its most significant advance have been since the mid 1990s when researcher Tom Caudell coined the term "augmented reality," What is the difference between virtual reality and augmented reality? Some people still confuse virtual reality with augmented reality when in fact there is a clear dividing line between the two concepts. Augmented Learning ? With the embrace of Augmented Reality there appeared a new concept of learning called "augmented learning". How does augmented reality works ?
Getting Started with Virtual Reality: An Introduction to Unity The Maker community is an extraordinary bunch filled with wild ideas and potential, limited only by the capabilities of the components they can get their hands on — but what if I told you there were worlds you could have complete control over? They’re out there, and over the next few years we’ll see their populations and influences explode. And I’m not talking about Mars. You’ll soon be able to roam these virtual worlds in an incredibly immersive way thanks to advancements in virtual reality. So we’re launching a new series here at Make: all about DIY virtual reality. What is Unity? Unity is a game development platform that can create both 2D and 3D games. Downloading Unity Unity comes with two versions, the Personal Edition and the Professional Edition. To download either edition, head over to the Get Unity page. Building a Unity Project When you start a Unity project, it creates the folder and files automatically. Assets — All of the resources for your Unity project will be in here.
Augmented Reality Brings New Dimensions to Learning Editor's Note: Drew Minock, who co-wrote this piece, is an elementary teacher, co-founder of the popular education blog Two Guys and Some IPads, and is one of the voices on "The Two Guys Show" podcast. Imagine living in the magical world of Harry Potter, where the school hallways are lined with paintings that are alive and interactive. Now imagine creating an atmosphere like that for your students. Augmented Reality (AR) allows educators and students to do just that: unlock or create layers of digital information on top of the physical world that can be viewed through an Android or iOS device. Most people who interact with AR for the first time have a mind-blowing experience but fail to consider classroom applications. Educators know that learning deepens, not just through reading and listening, but also through creating and interacting. Classroom Applications Another app, Aurasma, allows users to engage in and create Augmented Reality experiences of their own. Not Just Another Fad
Sculpting 3D Printable Items in Virtual Reality with Oculus Medium When we were writing the Virtual Reality issue of Make Magazine, we kept asking ourselves how virtual reality relates to makers. We covered topics like home built headsets, prototypes, custom control systems, and similar electronics projects. However, we didn’t really talk about what people would be using virtual reality for, in terms of making other non-vr related things. This was mainly because there just wasn’t much available in terms of tools. I got a chance to demo a program called Oculus Medium, which is like sculpting with a magical clay dispenser. You may be thinking to yourself, “this doesn’t seem very practical”. I typically make an octopus when I play with any new material or medium. Oculus Medium isn’t the only software going in this direction. The future of modeling in virtual reality is very unknown right now. Frankly, I can’t think of what advantages VR would have for CAD modeling off the top of my head.
20 Ways to Use Augmented Reality in Education Second Life proved an incredibly valuable tool for educators hoping to reach a broad audience — or offering even more ways to learn for their own bands of students. Augmented Reality Development Lab: Affiliated with Google, Microsoft, and Logitech, the Augmented Reality Development Lab run by Digital Tech Frontier seeks to draw up projects that entertain as well as educate. The very core goal of the ARDL involves creating interactive, three-dimensional objects for studying purposes. Reliving the Revolution: Karen Schrier harnessed GPS and Pocket PCs to bring the Battle of Lexington to her students through the Reliving the Revolution game, an AR experiment exploring some of the mysteries still shrouding the event — like who shot first! Players assume different historical roles and walk through everything on a real-life map of the Massachusetts city. FETCH! Driver’s ed: Toyota teamed up with Saatchi & Saatchi to deliver the world’s cleanest and safest test-drive via augmented reality.
Spacecraft 3D Augmented Reality in Education String Augmented reality is a 3D learning environment which connects real and virtual world. It provides interactive tools for learning, and fosters informal learning. Besides, augmented reality increases motivation and engages learners. Above all, augmented reality is good for kinesthetic learners; it enables learners participate interactively with computer generated simulations. My Top 3 Augmented Reality Apps: Quick Writer: is a text editor which enable you to watch things while you are typing. Digital Storytelling with Augmented Reality: Zooburst: is a digital storytelling app that lets you create your own 3D pop-up book. How to Create Augmented Reality: You can create augmented reality with Metaio! Some Articles on Augmented Reality:
amazon Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: 8 Excellent Augmented Reality Apps for iPad In this post Educational Technology and Mobile Learning is providing you with a list of some awesome augmented reality apps for your iPad but before that let us first see what the concept of augmented reality is all about . Augmented reality is a relatively new digital phenomenon that is brought about by the recent development in the field of technology and particularly mobile technology. In augmented reality the line between the virtual world and the real one is blurred. Engineers use some sophisticated technologies to pull out graphics from television screen and computer display and integrate them into real world environments. Augmented reality spices up the natural world with computer enhanced sounds, graphics, and feedback.If we are to put augmented reality in a continuum that has in one end computer generated environments and in the other end real world environments then augmented reality would be closer to the latter. Check out the augmented reality apps below