As our VLE replacement project comes to a conclusion, this session was designed to create some clean air between two very close suppliers by focusing on mobile usage and applications. We asked for live demonstrations of a number of scenarios such as instructors updating module content on tablets, and students reading and accessing content on their phones. Both suppliers gave strong demonstrations, but for everyone in the room who was scoring them there was a clear favourite. Which, of course, I’m not at liberty to divulge!
Leave a CommentMonth: January 2017
Caught up with the recording of Medial’s preview of version 5 of their product from November on YouTube. It will bring improvements to the quality of video playback, which now defaults to the highest your internet connection and device can handle, and the player has switched to HTML5 by default, though Flash remains available to support the live streaming function and for users stuck on older devices.
A new feature is the ability to watch videos at 2x speed, a feature Rob was skeptical about but which people do want and will find useful. Teachers and admins now get more detailed stats on what people have been watching, the ability to set chapters to private or public, improvements to the live streaming and screen recording functions, and integration with Canvas. Live streaming is also now available to all users, not just system admins anymore, and can be done via an app for iOS and Android.
Leave a CommentSketchfab today released the results of a survey giving an indication of the virtual reality market. It was no surprise to me to see the HTC Vive leading the way across the board, it is the standout device of the current generation.
Some caveats of course. The headline says the data is from their user base of 700,000, but read the text next to the little asterisk and you’ll see it’s actually a survey of only 1,000. Still not a bad sample size, but the users of Sketchfab are creative types using Macs and PCs which skews the results. The PlayStation VR, for example, makes an appearance on a few charts with some low level usage, but I would expect that there are a lot of console gamers not using Sketchfab which means that a portion of the VR market is missing from their report.
I had the chance to use a friend’s Oculus Rift CV1 over the Christmas break, the successor to the DK2 and the final retail version of the Rift. I had high hopes but was sorely disappointed! The quality of the HMD is an improvement, much more refined, but it also felt so much heavier, the whole time I was wearing it I felt like my head was being pulled down. It wasn’t pleasant and I couldn’t wear it for long. I tried three different games with very mixed results, Eve Valkyrie working best, and Project Cars the worst. No amount of jiggling and fiddling with the headset or settings was able to make the game anything other than an unplayable blur for me. A sharp contrast to Driveclub on the PlayStation VR.
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