Volume is a $1,000 holographic display for your home

Just when we were running out of things to throw our money at, along comes a new product nobody actually asked for. Startup Looking Glass made a “personal volumetric display” called Volume that it says will let you see VR (or really, 3D content) without a headset, so you can share such content with people around you. The display is also interactive so you can move things around either by swiping on the touch-sensitive screen, waving your hands in front of it or pairing up a gaming controller. It’s the world’s first affordable personal volumetric display, said the company. Such an outlandish device has an equally far-out price, should you want to buy it: Volume is now available for preorder for $999.

To be fair, this is a first-generation device that’s intended for early adopters or developers who wish to create content for such a canvas. And based on my brief experience with a preview unit earlier this year, Volume certainly doesn’t seem ready for the general public. Although it definitely delivered on its promise of providing holograph-esque 3D images that everyone in front of it could see, the graphics seemed faint, especially when not in low light.

Despite its resolution of more than two million 3D pixels, the projected pictures also seemed somewhat blurry. Don’t get me wrong — I thoroughly enjoyed myself playing a game where I had to move my hand in front of the Volume in tandem to the rhythm it played. But I still had a hard time seeing at least this iteration of the display taking off.

The company used a technology that it developed, called lightfolding, that projects millions of points of colored lights into a glass cube that measures 21.2 x 10.6 x 7.6 inches. The screen’s dimensions are 10.1 x 7.6 x 5.9 inches and it acts as a canvas for the light show. The projector is housed at the bottom of the unit. With an optional Leap Motion add on, you can wave your hands in front of the screen to move objects around, or use the included touch sensitive panel.

Volume is integrated with Unity3D, so developers can more easily display their projects on the device. The company says it’s looking to release a range of plugins to support 2D creation tools as well. An app library will also be available with several free titles including 3D Etch-a-Sketch, Adobe Animate, Volume Paint, Volume Sculpt as well as Volumetric arcade games. It will also offer Holovid, an iPad app that lets you record and playback volumetric videos.

Looking Glass emphasizes Volume’s ability to let groups of people “experience 3D content simultaneously without any additional accessories,” such as headsets. But glasses-free 3D TVs and projectors have already done that, and deliver superior image quality as well. The HoloFlex, a smartphone cover that’s a bit more similar to Volume, also suffers the same issue with resolution, although it uses different technology. These examples lack Volume’s capacity for touch interactivity at the moment, though, and also aren’t available for consumer purchase just yet.

I won’t deny that the idea of a personal holographic display is pretty cool and could be a really great tool for collaborative work. But the idea that a $999 device is “affordable” is harder to justify. Looking Glass said its lightfolding technology reduces the cost of traditional volumetric displays nearly 100-fold, which is impressive. But until the experience gets better in later-generation models, it’s difficult to see the typical consumer shelling out for Volume.

Photo editor uses neural networks to airbrush like a pro

Most people think Photoshop is a magical tool that can change reality, but it does require a skilled artist for decent results. Using neural networks, however, University of Edinburgh researcher Andrew Brock has built an uncanny image editing app that can transform someone’s entire hairstyle with just the stroke of a brush.

To use the Neural Photo Editor, you select the “contextual paintbrush,” choose a color and start mousing the part you want to change. The system can recognize if you’re on the model’s hair, for instance, and intelligently fill in the area, changing the color to match your brush. In another example, the user paints over the subject’s mouth with a white brush to make their smile bigger.

Brock says that basic system works well if you use system-generated images, but falls apart with existing photos. However, by adding a type of deep learning called an “adversarial network,” the algorithm can compare the differences between the original and modified photo and apply changes naturally. That means that an artist can completely modify someone’s looks in a random photo with just a few brush strokes.

If you’re code savvy, you can download the Neural Photo Editor from Github and try it for yourself. Just be aware that it’s still in the early stages, and only works on very low-resolution images. As shown in the video above, it doesn’t work at all sometimes and generates “bizarro” results, as Brock puts it. Still, it’s a pretty good preview of future image editing software and shows how even Photoshop artists must fear the robot revolution.

Via: PetaPixel

Source: Neural Photo Editor

Narrative shuts down its lifelogging camera business

Remember the Narrative Clip, that wearable camera that let you document your day with a steady stream of photos or video? It was a novel idea, but it doesn’t look like many people embraced the concept. Narrative is telling customers that it’s filing for “voluntary dissolution” following financial trouble that came to a head this summer, when it restructured in a bid to stay afloat. That will put an end to Clip sales and support (a Facebook group will offer help), but the company is promising a solution that prevents your lifelogging camera from becoming a paperweight.

The company says it’s releasing a tool that will both let you download shots from Narrative’s servers and, more importantly, grab new content from your Clip. It’s not clear how this will work or when this will be available (we’ve reached out to Narrative for details), but that should make the device useful after Narrative calls it quits. You’ll just have to manage and upload images yourself.

It’s a quiet, sad end to one of crowdfunding’s more successful darlings (it got off the ground back in 2012), but not entirely unexpected. The notion of snapping a photo every 30 seconds with a collar-mounted camera is only going to appeal to so many people. Chances are that you’ll be happy with capturing the occasional interesting moment on your phone, especially in an era when you can livestream your adventures. And while the price did come down over time, $199 for the Clip 2 meant that you had to think carefully about your purchase. Narrative had an interesting product — it just wasn’t going to be a runaway hit.

Sad that Narrative Clip maker has gone out of business. I loved “lifelogger” category but it became clear through use it was not viable. pic.twitter.com/E6EWLbc1Rn

— Ben Wood (@benwood) September 28, 2016

Via: SlashGear

Source: Ben Wood (Twitter)

iPhone 7 Camera Test Touts Excellent Exposure, Lower Noise, and Richer Colors

DxO Labs has published an in-depth iPhone 7 camera review, calling it “a very solid evolution over the iPhone 6s” after extensive testing. The single-lens smartphone achieved an overall DxOMark Mobile Score of 86, topping the iPhone 6s by two points but trailing the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and five other devices.

iPhone 7 has a wider DCI-P3 color gamut that allows for more vibrant colors compared to the traditional sRGB standard. The photo on the right, for example, rendered using the DCI-P3 color space, has richer reds displayed compared to the photo on the left rendered using the traditional sRGB color space.

One of the interesting innovations in the iPhone 7 is its use of a wider-gamut color space, allowing it to store and display deeper-and-richer colors in its JPEG photos. To take full advantage of this new capability you’ll want to view your images on a color-rich display like that of the iPhone 7 and other Apple devices that support the new DCI-P3 color gamut used by the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, or on a premium, color-managed monitor or an Ultra HD TV. Conversely, iPhone 7 photos may look slightly washed-out when viewed on devices that do not support the appropriate color management (DCI-P3), as they would wrongly interpret iPhone7 JPEGs as being encoded in sRGB.

DxO said the iPhone 7 offers great exposures with wide dynamic range, accurate white balance and color rendering, and good detail preservation when shooting outdoors in bright daylight. The test noted some exposure failures, such as overexposed highlights, but said the instances of these were minimal.

Shooting in bright light, the iPhone 7 captures very good exposures with wide dynamic range, making it an excellent choice for landscape, streets scenes, and architecture, as well as for general outdoor (daylight) photography. Colors are both vivid and pleasant, especially in sunny conditions, and generally the white balance is stable. We observed some light green casts in some very specific conditions, but they were fairly minimal.

The review also awarded high marks for the iPhone 7 camera’s excellent corner-to-corner sharpness, reduced noise, and accurate color representation. DxO shared the photo below as an example of what it called excellent White Balance. The review said, in some cases, a barely noticeable green cast can appear.

Accurate color representation is only possible when the camera correctly estimates the color of light falling on the scene – typically called the White Balance. Part of the job of the camera’s image processing chip is to analyze the scene as it is captured and select a White Balance, ranging from warm to cool, that recreates the scene the way the human eye sees it. The new image signal processor in the iPhone delivers on this test, with images typically showing excellent White Balance.

Additional photos and test results can be found in the DxOMark review. DxO has analyzed the image and video quality of over 9,000 cameras, lenses, and mobile phones, and its tests are generally respected within the industry. The company also sells some consumer-facing products like the DxO ONE camera.

DxO said its iPhone 7 Plus camera review is coming very soon.

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tags: cameras, DxOMark
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Apple Planning New UK Headquarters in London’s Historic Battersea Power Station

Apple is working on building an all-new campus location in London’s Battersea Power Station, where 1,400 employees will be moved from eight locations around London to occupy the company’s new UK offices (via Evening Standard). Battersea is currently under a “painstaking” restoration process after 33 years of being abandoned, with a predicted opening date for Apple’s offices expected sometime in 2021.

For the site, Apple is leasing 500,000 square feet in total, making it one of Apple’s largest offices outside of its monolithic campuses in the United States. The company’s official European headquarters is said to remain in Cork, Ireland, where 4,000 of its employees work.

Rendering of redeveloped Battersea campus with historic brick power station in center

In a statement to the Standard, Apple said it was looking forward to the 2021 opening of “our new London campus” as staff relocate to “this magnificent new development at one of the city’s best-known landmarks”. It added: “This is a great opportunity to have our entire team working and collaborating in one location while supporting the renovation of a neighbourhood rich with history.”

Apple’s “central function” employees are believed to be relocated to Battersea, including individuals in finance and human resources. The 42-acre location isn’t dedicated solely to Apple, with various other residential, office, and retail shops planned for the area. The Cupertino-based company is predicted to occupy about 40 percent of the total office space at Battersea once everything is finished, with enough room for 3,000 employees.

Apple will occupy the top six floors inside the former boiler house around a huge central atrium. There will also be three floors of shops, 253 apartments around a “garden square in the sky”, a 2,000-seater auditorium and cinemas in a scheme designed by London architects Wilkinson Eyre.

The first tenants will move into the Battersea complex’s apartments as early as December, with shops and restaurants coming in the spring of 2017. Apple will keep working in various other London offices — including locations in Hanover Street and James Street — until the completion of its section of Battersea in 2021.

In California, construction on Apple Campus 2 is continuing to inch closer to the site’s expected completion by the end of the year. The newest drone video shows the 2.8 million square foot campus with a nearly-complete main building as workers begin to focus on landscape additions and finishing up the glass facade of the circular building.

Tags: United Kingdom, Apple Battersea
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BlackBerry confirms decision to ditch hardware division, all phones to be made by third-parties in future

It might not come as a surprise considering recent BlackBerry handsets have been OEM models made by third-parties, but the company has confirmed that it will no longer make hardware of any kind in-house going forward.

As part of its second quarter financial results, BlackBerry announced that it plans to scrap handset development in favour of a software and services-only strategy going forward.

“We are focusing on software development, including security and applications. The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners,” said John Chen, the company’s executive chairman and CEO.

• BlackBerry DTEK60: What’s the story so far?
• Farewell BlackBerry OS: Here are the 23 best BlackBerry phones that changed the world

That means there will still be BlackBerry handsets – using Android as the operating system – but they will not be made by BlackBerry itself.

Instead, they will be like the rumoured handset codenamed “Argon”, the DTEK60, which will be made Alcatel. It will follow the DTEK50 released earlier this year, which was also made by Chinese firm TCL Corporation, which owns the Alcatel brand.

That particular handset was very similar to the Alcatel Idol 4 and the DTEK60 is thought to be a rebranded Idol 4S in all but name.

Traditional BlackBerry fans will be saddened by the news, but the company has been in trouble for some time and the writing has long been on the wall for its own handsets.

Its move to concentrate solely on security software and services was expected by most.

Tinder Boost puts you top of the pile for 30 minutes

Tinder’s next stab at monetization is, effectively, a queue jump system. Activating a new “Tinder Boost” will turn your account into a “top profile,” helping you to “skip the line” for 30 minutes. The idea is pretty simple — Boost and you’ll head to the front of everyone’s queue, increasing your visibility and the likelihood of a match. If you have a Tinder Plus subscription ($9.99 or $19.99 per month, depending on your age) you’ll get one “free” Boost every week. Any user can also buy Boosts individually.

Tinder is testing the feature in Australia, and hopes to roll it out worldwide “soon.” The option could be divisive given it provides an advantage to people with deep pockets, rather than those who might be a better match for people in their local area. Premium, or promoted profiles are a common feature on dating sites, however, so this isn’t really a new idea — just one that’s been re-engineered for Tinder’s swipe-based matching system.

Via: VentureBeat

Source: Tinder