Whether we’re talking about John King’s beloved touchscreen maps or will.i.am appearing in studio via hologram during the 2008 election, CNN likes to incorporate space-age technology into its political coverage. That trend will most certainly continue at this year’s inaugural Democratic Presidential debate, when CNN rolls out (drum roll please …): virtual reality.
The news outlet is set to pair with VR live streaming company NextVR for the Oct. 13 debate, marking the first-ever live stream of a news event in virtual reality. The idea is to provide the closest possible facsimile of a front-row seat as the candidates duke it out for the 2016 Democratic nomination.
The network is describing the experience as “full 3D immersive virtual reality,” and to take part, you’ll need a Samsung GearVR headset. With that equipped, you can tune in at the NextVR portal in the Oculus Store. Once downloaded, the debate will be streamable from the perspective of an audience member at the Wynn Las Vegas resort.
While the perspective might be the same, however, users won’t be locked in and will be able to choose which candidate they’d like to focus on. Though there will be fewer options than there were at the Republican debate (zing!), viewers will have quite a bit of freedom in exploring the virtual space.
CNN’s virtual reality broadcast was originally rolled out for the CNN’s Republican presidential debate, but the event was not streamed live. That being said, it provided a stepping stone that allowed the network to move forward.
And so — for no discernable reason other than “because it’s awesome” — you can now feel the Bern, or get up close and personal with a Clinton from the comfort of your own home. God bless America, folks!
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?