The Future Markets Making up the Market of the Future

Exponential Finance, an intensive 2-day conference, hosted by Singularity University in partnership with CNBC, brought together top experts to inform financial services leaders how technologies—such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, quantum computing, crowdfunding, digital currencies and robotics—are impacting business.

Want to find out what Wall street got to hear? You are in luck because all talks have been made available online for free. There are quite a lot of them but you can check the short descriptions to figure out which ones might tickle your fancy.

Exponential Thinking (Peter Diamandis) - Exponential Finance 2014
Opening talk from Peter Diamandis, the Greek-American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being the founder and chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation. He's also the co-founder and chairman of Singularity University, CEO and co-founder of the Zero-Gravity Corporation, the co-founder of Planetary Resources, vice-chairman & co-founder of Human Longevity, Inc and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.


> Artificial Intelligence <
Understanding the AI Landscape (Neil Jacobstein) - Exponential Finance 2014
Neil Jacobstein will discuss how businesses, financial institutions and individuals are utilizing AI to address credit risk analysis, investment decisions, sentiment analysis, high frequency trading and avoiding corporate/market flash crashes. Neil will also provide an overview of AI—from 50 years of successful AI applications to augmenting humans with AI—and what this means for the world at large.

Will IBM's Watson and Other AI's Overtaketake Wall Street (Rhodin) - Exponential Finance 2014
Michael Rhodin of IBM will explain how Watson has moved beyond Jeopardy into finance, and what this and other AI solutions mean for Wall Street. Specifics include: The Watson Applications Ecosystem; Automating finance sector jobs; Role of AI on global financial centers; and the future of Watson.

Is AI Your Enemy or New Best Friend? (Daniel Nadler) - Exponential Finance 2014
Daniel Nadler describes the virtual artificially intelligent, financial industry-focused assistant that his company, Kensho, is creating. Why is this possible now for the first time, and what will this mean for the playing field in five years’ time? This high-level conversation will cover the implications of these Virtual AI Assistants—from the labor market to risk management to financial advisors.


> Data Science & Analytics <
The Data Science Revolution (Jeremy Howard) - Exponential Finance 2014
Data Science (Big Data, Data Analysis, Machine Learning) is said to represent a larger potential disruption than the industrial revolution. This session will address the impact on the financial world by data driven decision-making, predictive modeling, machine learning, intelligent computing and more.

Harvesting Gold from Your Data - Finally! (Collins, Caruso-Cabrera) - Exponential Finance 2014
Keith Collins, CIO of SAS, takes a look at the applications available now and those of tomorrow that will assist you in making the most of your data. How do you differentiate between relevant/representative data and “big” data?

Disruptive Tools In The Data Science Toolkit (Dr. Gurjeet Singh) - Exponential Finance 2014
Gurjeet Singh of Ayasdi, named Fast Company’s 2014 Most Innovative Company in Big Data, addresses the cutting edge of big data and how machine learning/big data is and will be used in business going forward.

Will The Robo-Advisors Take Your Job? (Diamandis, Edelman) - Exponential Finance 2014
A conversation between Peter Diamandis and acclaimed financial advisor Ric Edelman. The discussion will focus on the future of the financial advisory business and how Ric sees exponential technology changing his business and the overall landscape.


> Networks and Computing Systems <
The Global Evolution of Networks and Computing Systems (Brad Templeton) - Exponential Finance 2014
As processing power continues to grow exponentially, as trillions of devices and sensors come online, and as technology costs continue to decrease dramatically, we are entering an era of new possibilities. In this session, Board Member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), founder of the first internet-based business, Brad Templeton will dive into Moore’s Law, abundant bandwidth, the trillion-dollar impact of autonomous vehicles, the network of everything, and more.

Living In A Virtual World (Philip Rosedale) - Exponential Finance 2014
As we saw with the recent $2B acquisition of Oculus Rift, virtual reality (VR) is big business. In this session, Philip Rosedale, one of the pioneers of VR, as well as the creator of Second Life and CEO of his latest venture, High Fidelity, will take us through why VR has the potential to have such an outsized impact over the coming decade. Learn how virtual reality will change almost every aspect of our life, such as: how we interact with others, how we learn, how we conduct business, who we are friends with, and where we spend our free time.


> Quantum Computing <
Quantum Computing: A Threat to Leading Financial Players (Vern Brownell) - Exponential Finance 2014
As the former CTO of Goldman Sachs, Vern Brownell understands the technical challenges facing large financial institutions. He’ll share his unique perspective as the head of the leading quantum computer manufacturer, D-Wave, to provide an understanding of quantum computing and its radical impact on present and future computing.

Insights from the World's First Quantum Computer Software Company (Dr. Phil Goddard)
By harnessing the power of quantum mechanics, quantum computers offer the potential to solve extremely large- scale optimization problems faster than traditional computers. Dr. Goddard will provide us with insight into some of these problems that are now becoming addressable with a particular emphasis on the financial world.


> 3D Printing <
The Imminent Disruption of the $10T Manufacturing Industry (Reichental) - Exponential Finance 2014
With applications ranging from cars, décor and consumer products to custom implants, jet engines and hearing aids—3D printing is revolutionizing product design and supply chain management, and opening a world of possibilities for creatives. This talk will also touch on the potential unintended consequences of 3D manufacturing technology, such as fraud and 3D printed weapons.


> Synthetic Biology and Digital Medicine <
Digital/Synthetic Biology (Raymond McCauley) - Exponential Finance 2014
The digitization of biology is driving massive disruption in the life sciences field. Human genome sequencing is the single best example of faster, better, cheaper. Previously confined to research tools, these new solutions are now entering the clinical and consumer markets. This session will shine light on the drivers in this field, new business models, where technology costs are trending, and innovative startups that have the potential to be significant disruptors.

The Technological Disruption of Healthcare (Dr. Daniel Kraft) - Exponential Finance 2014
Convergence of fast-moving technology is rapidly changing the face of health and medicine. From mobile health and wearable sensors to artificial intelligence and personal ‘omics, this talk will explore implications for personal health, workforce health and the corresponding areas of emerging investment opportunity.


> Capital Formation <
Innovations in Capital Formation (David Rose) - Exponential Finance 2014
David Rose, a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor in New York, as well as the founder and CEO of Gust, will share his insights on the rapidly evolving world of capital formation—from crowdfunding to peer-to-peer lending to the growth and rebirth of equity capital markets. David will illustrate how it’s never been easier to raise capital and why these new innovations create significant threats, as well as opportunities, for incumbents and startups alike.

Crowdfunding (Koplovitz, Barnett, Cox, Fitzgerald, Millman) - Exponential Finance 2014
Kay Koplovitz leads a panel discussion addressing how crowdsourcing models are impacting and disintermediating traditional capital sources. Participants include industry experts Chance Barnett of Crowdfunder, Luan Cox of Crowdnetic, Katie Fitzgerald of CircleUp. and Michael Millman of JP Morgan.

Innovative Regulations: Not an Oxymoron (David Weild) - Exponential Finance 2014
The “Father of the JOBS Act,” David Weild will offer insights into what Congress, the SEC and other regulatory groups are doing to keep America competitive and foster innovation.


> Robotics <
Robots: Changing Everything (Rob Nail) - Exponential Finance 2014
Rob Nail will provide an overview of robotics technology, the far-reaching impact this technology is having throughout the world, and how what is coming will change business globally. As robotics use accelerates, many branches of the financial world will change. In this session we’ll address: Why companies like Google are making massive bets on Robotics; Massive labor force implications; Machine to machine payments; and Insurance and liability issues.

Robots: Changing Everything (Scott Hassan) - Exponential Finance 2014
In this talk, Scott Hassan, CEO of Suitable Technologies, will “beam” around the world in 80 seconds, hopping between continents and traveling across time zones—instantly. Scott will demonstrate how to fulfill the need for shared awareness with other people, places and things.


> Digital Currencies & Smart Contracts <
The Transformative World of Digital Commerce and Finance (Staci Warden) - Exponential Finance 2014
Executive director of the Center for Financial Markets at the Milken Institute, Staci Warden provides an overview of digital commerce and how this emerging area has the potential to radically change how we bank, how payments are made, what a trusted transaction means, and more.

The Evolving Digital Commerce Ecosystem (Warden, Barhydt, Hill, Silbert) - Exponential Finance 2014
As Bitcoin and other alternative currencies capture our imaginations, new possibilities for digital commerce and financial services are emerging. This panel provides a glimpse into how new opportunities including digital derivatives, smart contracts, wire based settlement, cross border payments and peer to peer banking are being enabled by new technologies and gives us a glimpse of what’s next in the world of digital commerce and finance.


> Financial Futures <
Bankers Beware (Caruso-Cabrera, Lyons, Milne, Sidhu, Weissbluth) - Exponential Finance 2014
Exponential technologies are presenting a 360 degree assault on every part of the banking business. It couldn’t come at a worse time, as the industry tries to respond to regulatory pressures and rebuild trust in the wake of the financial crisis and great recession. Hear from emerging leaders— Elliot Weissbluth, CEO of Hightower; Jay Sidhu, CEO of Customers Bancorp; Ben Milne, CEO of Dwolla; and Karen Pascoe, Senior Vice President at MasterCard – Emerging Payments Group — who are all bent on transforming the banking experience by embracing accelerating technologies and new business models.

Ray Kurzweil - Exponential Finance 2014
Ray Kurzweil has been called “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine. In his role as a Director of Engineering at Google, Kurzweil heads up a team developing machine intelligence and natural language understanding. During this session, renowned CNBC reporter Bob Pisani will chat with Ray about accelerating technology with a particular focus around artificial intelligence and machine understanding.

Dan Hesse (Diamandis, Caruso-Cabrera, Hesse) - Exponential Finance 2014
Large incumbents are increasingly threatened by new innovations and the quickening pace of change. Many ventures that used to require a large multinational company can now be successfully pulled off by a few individuals. In this fireside Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and Peter Diamandis will chat with Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, on how he is building a winning organization in an era of rapid technological change.

The Long and Short of Trading the Future (Pisani, Maguire, Ruegsegger) - Exponential Finance 2014
CNBC’s Bob Pisani talks with Ed Maguire, Senior Technology Analyst at CLSA, and Ben Ruegsegger, Senior Thematic Analyst for AllianceBernstein’s Global and Thematic Portfolios, on how investors get exposure to technology trends early in the cycle, but also the tricky business of investing in “valley stocks” – publicly traded stocks with large maturing businesses as well as small, growth businesses not yet large enough to have major impact. Key topics include how to judge the maturity of an industry, how to determine the future value of a new technology, what opportunities exist for investing now in “maturing” disruptive technologies like genomics, big data, and the internet of things, the critical importance of early legwork, and how to anticipate and judge investment “bubbles”.

Future Proof (Caruso-Cabrera, Concannon, Frank) - Exponential Finance 2014
When technological innovation moves faster than regulation infrastructure can be put in place, are some innovators at risk of missing their opportunity? This panel looks at balancing the regulatory environment as technology reinvents our financial markets. We’ll hear from Barney Frank, one of the architects of the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and Chris Concannon, President and COO of Virtu Financial, the trading firm COO whose IPO was scrapped in the wake of the negative national attention on high-frequency trading.


> Exponential Organizations <
Exponential Organizations: The New Breed of Business (Salim Ismail) - Exponential Finance 2014
Salim Ismail takes you through a new breed of organizational structure that has started to emerge over the last few years. “Exponential Organizations” leverage externalities like big data, community, crowd, user engagement, gamification and other techniques to achieve 10x performance benchmarks relative to their competitors.

Jay Rogers - Exponential Finance 2014
Crowdsourced car designs, micro factories, small batch production: Local Motors has definitely gone a very different route for a vehicle manufacturing company. In this keynote speech by Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers, we’ll hear about his journey to create this different kind of company—an exponential one. Understand how he has created this highly successful organization and utilized some of the principles that Salim Ismail touched on in the previous session.

Facebook's Oculus Acquisition

The Future of VR & the Coming Creative Explosion that Will Birth Our Magnificent Metaverse

Not long ago I wrote about about current VR experiences, about "presence" and about what VR will be like less than 2 years from now. In many ways not much has changed since that post although if you've been following the news, you might just be thinking that the VR dream has been killed in its cradle or even that the earth itself has been torn asunder. I've read a ton of complaints concerning Facebook's gobbling up of Oculus and while some of them have merit, most of them do not. Allow me to explain why I think this storm in a teacup is not likely to take the wind out of Oculus' sails and why the deal with Facebook might actually increase their seaworthiness in such a way that it'll ensure much smoother sailing from here on out.

First and foremost, people who feel betrayed because they had other things in mind for Oculus' future when they helped kickstart it should get off their high horse and stop thinking that just because they contributed Oculus should now follow their lead and long term vision. Contributing to a kickstarter is a donation, not an investment. It does not turn you into a member of their board. Not all projects offer rewards for donating but Oculus did. It was clear from the get-go that the kickstarter was set up to fund devkit 1 and backers got those a long time ago. If we for a second entertain the thought that the funds we managed to gather do count as an investment it still wouldn't count for much. Even before Facebook's 2 billion dollar capital infusion they had already scored 300 million in first and second round VC funding. The 2,4 million kickstarter was always going to be peanuts compared to the budget they were going to have to amass in order to make it to market. We can always be proud of how we helped Oculus make a name for itself, how we helped get the project off the ground, indeed how we helped to kickstart it.

To the people up in arms about how they sold out, I don't think you realize just how much money it takes to get a product from being a prototype into consumers' hands. They had been talking from the start about how their biggest problem was not going to be technology but scaling problems. They know they have a huge market on their hands but You don't get to 500 Million Rifts Without making a few $billion. Billions Oculus did not have. To give you an idea, MS dropped 1 billion on marketing alone for the launch of the Xbox One and hardware costs are even higher. With Facebook stepping in as their sugar daddy, its moneybags have just steamrolled their biggest barrier to market.

Before we tackle the big question; "Why facebook?", we should first take a look at "Why not someone else?". Let's be honest here, someone else would have been either; Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon or maybe but less likely IBM, Samsung & Sony. These usual suspects are the only players because only these tech giants are the ones with enough money, infrastructure, mainstream consumer reach and leverage over hardware manufacturers to actually be able to push VR into the market in a big way. These things are always hush, hush but Oculus has hinted that multiple players were angling for them yet they explicitly chose for Facebook. To understand that you have to look at the big picture and at the strings that would have come attached to any deals they would have struck with the others.

All of them, except Google are less open than facebook. They own their own software ecosystems and stores and would have required Oculus to be locked to the platform they provide. There's no way Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or Sony would have allowed Steam or others to play a big part. Google on the other hand is, like MS, Apple and Sony, likely already working on its own VR hardware in their secretive labs.

"Why would we want to sell to someone like MS or Apple? So they can tear the company apart and use the pieces to build out their own vision of virtual reality, one that fits whatever current strategy they have?" -Palmer Luckey (Oculus Founder)

"We have even more freedom than we had under our investment partners because Facebook is making a long term play on the success of VR, not short-term returns."
"We promise we won't change. If anything, our hardware and software will get even more open, and Facebook is onboard with that."
"Facebook is going to be putting a lot of resources into Oculus going forward, this was not a one-time thing."
"This deal specifically lets us greatly lower the price of the Rift."

"We have not gotten into all the details yet, but a lot of the news is coming. The key points:
1) We can make custom hardware, not rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry. That is insanely expensive, think hundreds of millions of dollars. More news soon.
2) We can afford to hire everyone we need, the best people that fit into our culture of excellence in all aspects.
3) We can make huge investments in content. More news soon."

"My primary goal is the long term success of VR, not short term warm and fuzzy feelings."-Palmer Luckey (Oculus Founder)


No, to truly understand why Facebook has an interest in the future of VR you have to see the big picture and think a decade ahead. I've seen many gamers complain that because of Facebook, Oculus will no longer be that good for gaming. Someone on reddit; "I don't really care about whatever second life BS Facebook plans to do with VR, I just want the device as new gaming technology." This is, imo, incredibly shortsighted. We hear the same sentiment with every technological convergence. When smartphones were released many were annoyed with the addition of "gimmicks" such as a camera and music player because they took away from what a phone was all about, making calls. When the Xbox-One was released MS took a lot of heat for talking about its mediacenter functionalities. It was supposed to be a gaming device and it playing music and video was going to ruin it. I'll once again quote Luckey to take away some of the fears surrounding the Rift's future as a gaming interface; "Almost everyone at Oculus is a gamer, and virtual reality will certainly be led by the games industry, largely because it is the only industry that already has the talent and tools required to build awesome interactive 3D environments. In the long run, though, there are going to be a lot of other industries that use VR in huge ways." It's wrong to think of VR as just a gaming interface.

Another quote from reddit; "The set of people who buy VR headgear and the set of people who like logging into things via Facebook do not intersect." While this is true today, the same would have at some point been true for every emerging market. If you go back far enough the set of people who bought modems didn't intersect with your average Joe either. Facebook is hoping to create an entirely new market and wants to get in on the ground floor by betting on the future of VR as the next paradigm in interfaces. So why facebook? Social is going to be one of VR's killer apps. Connecting with people and services from all over the world in crazy virtual spaces is what VR is all about. As the hardware shrinks and eyetrackers can be incorporated they'll be able to digitally filter the glasses from our view so that at some point we'll be able to meet face to face in Moe's Tavern, Quark's, Cheers, The Green Dragon Inn, Monk's, Central Perk or any other famous hangout.

It might be hard to envision but in the not so distant future we could be walking down one of Titan's beaches or exploring Jurassic Park with family and friends from all over the world. School children will walk around inside the human body and manipulate the contents of cells in their biology class. Instead of dragging yourself through a crowded store after a long day of work you could make it fun - shop from the privacy of your home with friends in a virtual replica of a store around the corner which you can destroy! Japan has already shown us that teledildonics is likely to revolutionize long distance relationships. One day we might be embodying robots working on asteroids in orbit or performing other dangerous jobs on earth! We won't be just traversing space, 360 degree documentaries and home videos will take us back to moments in time. You could even visit ancient Greece if you are willing to settle for a simulation. Tourism, Healthcare, Transport, Defense, Education, Entertainment, ... There is not a single industry that doesn't have the potential to be touched by this technology.

Both the Oculus founders as well as the Zuck himself have read Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Ready Player One, ... That is the end game, that is what they are going for. The first iterations of the rift will be gaming peripherals but Luckey talks about VR as a platform. A platform that will enable all sorts of experiences that will go way beyond gaming. If you've read those books you know that the end game plays out in the metaverse. They do not hide this, this is what they ultimately hope to create. What is the metaverse? "A collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet." Imagine worlds beyond worlds, new worlds, old worlds, worlds with and without rules, worlds grounded in reality or fiction, shopping worlds, business worlds, entertainment worlds, private worlds, personal worlds, ... Think of an advanced version of minecraft on a scale beyond what you can really fathom. One day virtual reality will harbor more worlds than there are grains of sand on all our beaches.

Those many earths as well as those many other planets that might not even obey the laws of physics will require stable servers for their continued existence. A globe spanning metaverse can only run on truly massive infrastructure. There are only a few players that might one day be capable of providing that. Facebook has already done some amazing work in infrastructure R&D and with initiatives like its OpenCompute project, has an excellent reputation when it comes to open source development. They actually have a real shot at making this happen. Rome wasn't built in a day. As long as humanity remains creative, the metaverse will keep on expanding. A hundred years from now historians will look back upon this moment in time and describe it in terms almost similar to how we describe the Big Bang. Worlds will explode into being, birthed by code and artistry, never ending creation will radiate outwards across multiple dimensions in digital space.

So far I've only talked about the complaints that don't have merit but I've also said that there are some worries that do. Those are, of course, privacy and ads. Now personally I am not really worried about ads. VR is all about immersion, they are not going to break that spell by interrupting a user's VR experience with pop-up ads. Facebook is smart enough not to shoot itself in the foot like that. That being said, they have no real control over content but just like gamemakers today can get money for incorporating ads into their games, so too will gamemakers of the future and if those games that do this run on servers hosted by facebook, they could take a percentage on the revenue they generate. This is no different from today, we will have to punish game creators that take this too far. If facebook does end up injecting ads it will likely be into a dashboard launcher similar to the Xbox. Sure it sucks but it's no dealbreaker. Considering the Rift has sworn allegiance to the open source community and has more in common with a pc than a console, it's likely that both alternative launchers as well as adblockers will be available even before launch.

Now what I am most worried about is privacy. I can imagine that all sorts of for profit entities are getting excited just thinking about persistent virtual spaces and perhaps even more so when thinking about eyetrackers, a technology with huge benefits for VR & AR experiences. It's easy to imagine a dystopian future where ads are forced upon you because they pause when you are not looking but that's nothing compared to what kind of information you could datamine from such devices. You would no longer have to press the like button, they would know by tracking what gets your attention and for how long. Such technology is not inherently bad, it could be used for good if it assists the user, but we all know that today this is not the case as it just gets sold to companies who hope to financially exploit it by knowing who to target when and with which ads to bombard them. Not to mention that even today non commercial entities like the NSA have access to this data as well and god know's what they are doing with it or will do with it in the future.

I am most definitely worried about that, and definitely don't think these worries should be swept under the rug but I do believe it's somewhat premature to be screaming that the sky is caving in on us just yet. The first few iterations of the Rift consumer version are pretty much guaranteed to be completely Facebook free so it's really only something we'll have to worry about further down the road. If Facebook does ever become invasive, we should drop it right there and then. By then others will have noticed just how big this market is so by that time we might have alternatives to choose from. I am willing to cut Facebook some slack here because there is no reason why Facebook, like Google, can't pivot and morph into something much bigger than social and ads.

Although Facebook's current business model is based on ads and selling user information, it doesn't have to be that way for VR and the Oculus Rift. Now it's only normal that when thinking of VR's future in Facebook's hands, people simply extend its current monetization schemes but for FB, taking that route would be a pretty stupid move. VR is something completely new and should be approached with an open mind if anyone wants to see where new revenue streams are going to be found. Attracting business or partnering with event organizers could earn them a hell of a lot more than ads. Imagine facebook running virtual replicas of stores on their servers and taking a percentage of every good sold through them. Imagine them emulating steam, allowing users to sell their content to each other and skimming a percentage off of those transactions. Think about how much money they would make teaming up with the IOC and selling front row seats for the Olympic games. They could put you on the stage next to your favorite artist or give you a ride on a rocket to orbit.

We should at least wait to boo it off the stage until we really know what we are booing at and not kill it before it's even left the starting gate.

As Zuckerberg said in their investors call; "Gaming is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court-side seatat a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world, consulting with a doctor face to face, or going shopping in a virtualstore where you can touch and explore the products you're interested in."
"We still have a lot of work to do on mobile, but at this point we feel strong enough in our position that strategically we also want to start focusingon building the next major computing platform that will come after mobile."
"Today's acquisition is a long-term bet on the future of computing."
"This is really a new social platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imaginesharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures. These are just some of the potential use cases."
"If you think about the social applications alone, this can change the way we communicate with our friends, families and colleagues. Little detailslike being able to make eye contact with someone with zero latency makes you feel like you're really present together."

The team over at Oculus had this to share; "Mark and his team share our vision for virtual reality’s potential to transform the way we learn, share, play, and communicate."
"This partnership is one of the most important moments for virtual reality: it gives us the best shot at truly changing the world."

Facebook has more than 1 billion active users. For Oculus, in many ways this was not a sell out but a market buy-in.

Oculus has assembled a dream team of code wizards and hardware visionaries. They already had John Carmack on board, one of the founders of Id and the creator of games like Doom and Quake, a true industry legend and now, just days after the facebook acquisition, they've scored another legendary heavyweight coder with Michael Abrash. Because of all the groundbreaking stuff these guys have developed in the past, they are pretty much swimming in it. In their spare time they launch rockets for their privately funded Armadillo Aerospace company and not long ago they won the Level One Lunar Lander X-Prize Challenge. These guys are no longer working for the money, they follow their heart. They've been talking about VR for decades and really do want to see it succeed. To finish off this post, I'll let Abrash do the talking.

The Path to the Metaverse
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/introducing-michael-abrash-oculus-chief-scientist/

"Sometime in 1993 or 1994, I read Snow Crash, and for the first time thought something like the Metaverse might be possible in my lifetime."
"We're on the cusp of what I think is not The Next Big Platform, but rather simply The Final Platform – the platform to end all platforms."
"The final piece of the puzzle fell into place on Tuesday. A lot of what it will take to make VR great is well understood at this point, so it's engineering, not research; hard engineering, to be sure, but clearly within reach. However, it's expensive engineering. And, of course, there's also a huge amount of research to do once we reach the limits of current technology, and that's not only expensive, it also requires time and patience – fully tapping the potential of VR will take decades. That's why I've written before that VR wouldn't become truly great until some company stepped up and invested the considerable capital to build the right hardware – and that it wouldn't be clear that it made sense to spend that capital until VR was truly great. I was afraid that that Catch-22 would cause VR to fail to achieve liftoff.

That worry is now gone. Facebook's acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory. The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR – and some of them are hard indeed. I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can.

It's great to be working with John (Carmack) again after all these years, and with that comes a sense of deja vu. It feels like it did when I went to Id, but on steroids – this time we're working on technology that will change not just computer gaming, but potentially how all of us interact with computers, information, and each other every day. I think it's going to be the biggest game-changer I've ever seen – and I've seen quite a lot over the last 57 years.

I can't wait to see how far we can take it."

Warner Bros. bought the film rights for Ready Player One. “They’ll need to hurry up and make it while it’s still science fiction,” -its author, Ernest Cline, after having experienced the latest Rift prototype. - http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/03/28/ready-player-one-author-ernest-cline-believes-in-facebooks-oculus/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years

If you got an Oculus Rift you can already try out some great VR experiences. Parking a massive truck with it feels natural as you can just stick your head out of the window and look backwards. If driving a truck is a bit too mundane for you, locking the guns of your spacecruiser on a target has become much easier because now you can kill with your looks. Ever felt like going to the movies with friends on the other side of the world? Try out a virtual theater! On the other hand, if you are afraid of heights and spiders crawling all over your face you might want to skip on The Pit and Don't Let Go. The worlds of games like Half-Life, Skyrim and many others are waiting for you to immerse yourself in them... and if you are feeling really adventurous you can even play sexy gender swap games with your partner! http://vimeo.com/84150219 (NSFW)

Although all these experiences are completely bonkers in a good way, they are only scratching the surface and according to Valve they are missing something crucial that will take the experience from totally bonkers to dangerously addictive.

Valve, the renowned software developer, has teamed up with Oculus, the developers of the rift Virtual Reality headset, and together they recently unleashed the Crystal Cove Prototype onto the world. Almost anyone who tried it on described it as "the future of entertainment". Is the age of VR finally upon us? Almost, but not quite yet says Valve. They see the CC prototype they developed with Oculus as a massive step in the right direction but they believe that we still have to wait a little bit longer for VR to truly go mainstream. At least one more year to be exact.

The last couple of years they've been developing their own state of the art and extremely costly VRD prototype and at the SteamDevDays they've finally shown it off. Keep in mind that they have no intention to bring this particular headset to market but will instead help Oculus to create something similarly specced at a more realistic price point that consumers can actually afford. They only built this costly one to showcase what is to come and to get both industry and consumers ready for the revolution they think is almost at hand. Hyperbole on their part? I don't think so. It really seems to be blowing people's minds.

David Hensley of Tripwire was particularly hyperbolic, and said that going back to his Oculus Rift would be like switching from an Xbox to an 8-bit Nintendo. "Valve’s VR demo at SteamDevDays felt like being in a lucid dream state and very much like a holo deck."

Johnathan Blow (developer of Braid & The Witness) explains that he was skeptical of VR technology based on what he'd seen so far but that Valve turned him around; "It's so much better than anything else I had used that I was instantly very excited by it." "Right away I could see games you might design for this system that had been impossible before."

One of Valve's brainiacs, Michael Abrash, regularly spreads words of wisdom from his blog; http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/ and he did the same at the SteamDevDays event where he delivered a very interesting talk on the future of VR in which he outlined the somewhat magical experience of presence in VR and pointed to 2015 as the year that it's likely to be achieved on consumer devices.
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%20Days%202014.pdf

"Once hardware that supports presence ships, we think it has the potential to cause a sea change in the entertainment industry. Not only could VR rapidly evolve into a major platform, but it could actually tip the balance of the entire industry from traditional media toward computer entertainment."

If you think that sounds like he's overselling it, you might want to think again because already the film industry is beginning to pay attention. The Oculus booth at the Sundance Film festival pulled in a huge crowd and Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men & Gravity even stopped by Oculus' headquarters for an extensive try out... One can only imagine the kind of adrenaline rush you'd get from experiencing Gravity through a VRD.

Valve's research into Virtual Reality has allowed them to really explore the space and they've found that the key ingredient we need for VR to go mainstream is something they call "presence".

"Presence is hard to quantify, but our demos have shown that it is a very real and compelling phenomenon, one that hooks far deeper into the perceptual system than anything that’s come before, and it’s why we’re so excited about the future of VR. It’s our belief that great VR will be built on presence, because it engages you at a deeper, more visceral level than any other form of entertainment, and can only be experienced in VR. "

"Presence requires a wide field of view, adequate resolution, low pixel persistence, a high enough refresh rate, global display, specialized optics, rock solid tracking, low latency and fine tuned calibration. I want to emphasize that presence is not a property of any one of these elements; it’s a property that emerges when all of the elements are good enough. If the optics aren’t calibrated perfectly, then the scene will warp as you turn your head no matter how good everything else is. Likewise, no amount of fidelity will convince your visual system that a virtual scene is real if latency is too high. Presence can’t be induced if even one of the key elements is subpar. It's worth noting that inducing presence reduces motion sickness because what your eyes see will more closely respond with what your vestibular system reports.

According to Abrash presence requires the following minimum specs;
• 20 ms motion-to-last-photon latency
• 3 ms pixel persistence
• 95 Hz refresh
• 110-degree FOV
• 1k x 1k resolution per eye
• High quality, well calibrated optics
• Tracking
- millimeter accurate resolution translation
- quarter degree accurate rotation
- volume of 2 meters cubed

"This head-mounted display would support a powerful sense of presence and would have an excellent shot at widespread adoption. VR can certainly get much better yet down the road, but that’ll require time and major hardware R&D. In contrast, we believe everything on this slide is doable with relatively minor tweaks of existing technology; no breakthroughs or miracles are needed, just solid engineering."

Still, it's important to note these are the minimum specs to achieve presence. When these arrive in 2015 they will enable us to step into other worlds but there will still be A LOT of room for further improvement. "For one thing, presence would benefit from every one of the key elements getting better than what’s in our prototypes. We could literally use up to 100 times as many pixels, and a wider field of view, lower latency, and all the rest would also improve the experience; the optics in particular are far from optimal. Also getting per user lens positioning right is a challenge. As I mentioned, we think we’re close on head tracking, but we don’t have a shippable solution yet, and then there’s eye tracking, which could greatly enhance presence but is nowhere near solved. Going to a wireless connection and eliminating the tether would
be a big plus."

Full presentation;
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%20Days%202014.pdf

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2014/01/oculus-movies/

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/09/the-oculus-rift-crystal-cove-prototype-is-2014s-best-of-c/

Virtual travel, think of the possibilities!
Athens Tech Demo Siggraph 2013

Virtual Reality pain relief
http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrpain/

AR-Rift: Stereo camera rig and augmented reality showcase

3D webcam mechanics with oculus

HydraDeck Humans (NSFW)

http://vimeo.com/79173606 (NSFW)

Omni in Skyrim - with Kinect 2 (head sensitivity adjusted)

Substituted Reality - https://plus.google.com/108487783243149848473/posts/NPJQvoRT5FS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality

Welcome to a new reality

HTC has just announced the Vive, a virtual reality headset developed in collaboration with Valve. It will be available to consumers later this year, with a developer edition coming out this spring. The company has promised to have a significant presence at the Game Developers Conference next week, where devs will have a chance to play with Valve's VR technology.

The Vive Developer Edition uses two 1200 x 1080 displays that refresh at 90 frames per second, "eliminating jitter" and achieving "photorealistic imagery," according to HTC. The displays are said to envelope your entire field of vision with 360-degree views. The company says in a press release that it's the first device to offer a "full room-scale" experience, "letting you get up, walk around and explore your virtual space, inspect objects from every angle and truly interact with your surroundings."

The device uses a gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor to track your head's movements as precisely as one-tenth of a degree. Most surprisingly, there will be something called the Steam VR base station, which will let you walk around the virtual space instead of using a controller. A pair of the base stations can "track your physical location ... in spaces up to 15 feet by 15 feet."

http://www.htcvr.com/

Of course we don't yet know the precise specs that Oculus' consumer headset will launch with. The specs of this headset are leaps beyond those of their current crescent bay prototype. Considering we still don't have a firm idea of when the rift will launch, it's beginning to look like Oculus might have spent just a bit too much time perfecting their HMD. Unless they've got something in the works that blows this out of the water, their drive for perfection might just have lose them the race to market. Either way, Google, Sony, LG, Apple, ... are all working on VR headsets as well so this space was bound to get increasingly hot... We as consumers will no doubt benefit from this heated competition.

Finding touch with reality

Apologies for the bait and switch tactic. I am just using the below video of the built for VR FPX game Adr1ft to reel you in. What I am actually trying to sell are the technologies being developed by Nimble and 13th Lab, the 2 companies Oculus just bought. Trust me when I say that the fruits of their labors are worth checking out!

► Nimble VR was founded in 2012 and since then they’ve been developing machine learning and computer vision capabilities to enable high-quality, low-latency skeletal hand tracking.

Nimble VR Kickstarter

► The 13th Lab has been focused on developing an efficient and accurate real-time 3D reconstruction framework. The ability to acquire accurate 3D models of the real-world can enable all sorts of new applications and experiences, like visiting a one-to-one 3D model of the pyramids in Egypt or the Roman Colosseum in VR.

Rescape - Reality Gaming Platform
13th Lab - Visual SLAM
Visual SLAM Car Navigation

It's been a while since I've raved about the coming virtual reality revolution but these clips really speak for themselves. The potential here is simply staggering. I have my doubts that the first consumer version of the rift will come equipped with features like these but we can all look forward to the kind of experiences they will enable in a very near future that is hurtling towards us at breakneck speeds.

What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years

What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years - http://goo.gl/v67LnS

Facebook's Oculus Acquisition, the Future of VR & the Coming Creative Explosion that Will Birth Our Magnificent Metaverse

More information on Adr1ft
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/28/7303899/how-first-person-shooter-fatigue-led-to-the-serene-beauty-of-adrift.