Consumer Tech

5G Will Turbo-Charge Streaming, VR, AR,
Video Games, Interactive Movies and VFX

 

By CHRIS McGOWAN

 Minecraft: The Multiplayer Giant Will Get a Boost

With its blazing speed, 5G – the next generation of wireless technology – is expected to spark plentiful innovations and burgeoning growth in entertainment and the arts, especially for streaming media, video games, virtual reality and augmented reality, all of which will create new opportunities for content creators and visual effects artists. “All of a sudden, people will have more access to high-quality data streams, very fast, with low latency,” according to David Bloom, a Santa Monica-based writer and consultant who tracks the collision of technology and entertainment. For television, there will be options galore as 5G will bolster IP services that stream “all your different video content.” That different content may include new forms of interactive TV, music and advertising. Read more in VFX Voice.

 Black Mirror's interactive episode "Bandersnatch"

Read more in VFX Voice

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VFX and Animation Schools: Keeping Up With the Essentials

by Chris McGowan

(VFX Voice) 

Leading VFX and animation schools these days must ensure that students graduate “studio-ready,” says co-owner and director Ria Bénard of Lost Boys Studios in Canada. “With more and more demand for complicated visual effects shots, studios have much less time to train new artists, so they need the graduate to hit the ground running, transition into studio work faster and more efficiently.” Ron Honn, Florida State University Visual Effects Filmmaker in Residence adds, “The biggest, and I find most rewarding, challenge for preparing students for work in the industry is preparing a curriculum that is software agnostic – to find the essential technologies that all VFX artists need to know.” Read more.

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