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Merging SEGA technology and BBC Earth content, the new attraction takes visitors on a multi-sensory journey to explore animals and nature through sight, smell, touch and sound.

The venue includes one of Japan’s largest screens (131 ft W x 26 ft H) with remarkable visual and sonic resolution and 12 separate walk-through entertainment zones

evolve into large-scale public attractions becoming urban theme parks, where cinema is only part of the experience

The financial magazine has published its first ever list of top earners on the video platform, with the irrepressible Felix Kjellberg (better known as PewDiePie) heading the charts with pretax earnings of $12 million,

most of these individuals’ income comes from advertising such as sponsored videos and previews, although four of those on the list also have book deals, while a few even offer their own product lines.

Amazon-owned Audible announced a new service called Channels today, one that differs from its typical audiobook business in offering more bite-size content from original content producers, as well as recordings of news stores from NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post and others. The original programming will be rolling out over time, covering comedy, investigatory journalism (think Serial) and talk shows – which is really Amazon applying the Netflix/Prime Originals model to audio content.

The potential Amazon and Audible sees in Channels is the same potential that many others have been picking up on in podcasts. Podcasts present a way to provide multi-genre, opt-in entertainment to consumers with relatively low cost of entry, and unlike most other types of media, it can be consumed concurrent with other activities.

Unlike films made for the silver screen, an internet film doesn’t need to contain something for everyone

But the internet is different. As viewers are watching alone, films can be made exclusively for certain fanbases and still be confident of finding an audience.

in the eyes of a conservative family, the company should stand for wholesome entertainment, but to a 20-year-old city-dwelling college graduate, it should be more edgy. It’s unlikely these two demographics would go to the cinema together, while they almost certainly won’t be streaming the same content.

The technology has changed but the basics of the job haven’t. It is still about storytelling, about juxtaposing images, about creating a feeling with images and music. Only the technical details have changed

I think there will be movie thea­ters in 1,000 years. People want the group experience, the sense of going out and participating in a film together

I think it will be standard in 4 years, not 40. We will have a glasses-free technology in five years at home and three years for laptops. The limiting factor is going to be content. You can’t rely on a few films a year for this. It is going to have to be 3-D broadcast sports, scripted television, non-scripted television and reality television

that allows people to play games with each other in real time using their hands, even if they aren't in the same room.

and down to simulate completely different worlds — outer space, under water and so on."

a new generation of even more ambitious theaters — possibly even including cinema's first holodeck — is waiting in the wings.

The first Escape theaters — which will include the Cinemark 18 & XD at the Promenade at the Howard Hughes Center in Los Angeles — will open Sept. 19, showing a special edition of Fox's new young adult thriller The Maze Runner

Escape theaters showing The Maze Runner will project the live-action movie on to the center screen, and the side screens will feature additional visual effects

the average desktop computer now has the raw processing power equivalent to all of the human brains on Earth combined

There is no longer a clear distinction between human and machine intelligence

Full immersion VR is now a mainstream phenomenon

Today, YouTube is unveiling 360-degree virtual reality videos and a virtual movie theater for all YouTube videos, available to anyone with a Google Cardboard headset. The goal is to “democratize virtual reality” and “bring VR to everybody

social network is now seeing 8 billion daily video views. Facebook itself recently debuted 360 video. And the social networking giant owns Oculus,

But Facebook, its biggest competitor, is rapidly encroaching on YouTube’s turf.

Its newest toy is called Barco Escape and right now it’s essentially three theater screens in one space — the main screen and then additional screens on the left and right walls. The effect is a 270-degree image that makes viewers feel like they are in the middle of the action.

It’s the kind of premium experience that most people would expect to pay extra for but Schilowitz says part of the point of Escape is to give viewers a more theme-park like experience without charging any more for a ticket.

Schilowitz hopes to engage brands to make 270-degree short films to show before the actual movie. Think Red Bull's Red Bull's many extreme sports videos. Now picture them in an immersive experience.  The money coming from brands could help offset the costs of the Escape screen.

many developers are concerned about the dangers (physical, mental, or cultural) of asking their audiences to strap on a vision-obscuring headset for hours at a time. 

Long-time game designer and current Google game design chief Noah Falstein's personal favorite is "transmogrified reality" --  an approach to game design that relies on new 3D-sensing phones and tablets, combined with inexpensive head mounts, to seamlessly integrate the virtual with the real.

“Wait,” I asked, “so it’s supposed to delete my personal files from my internal hard drive without asking my permission?” “Yes,” she replied.

through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users’ computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted.

What Apple considers a “match” often isn’t. That rare, early version of Fountains of Wayne’s “I’ll Do The Driving,” labeled as such? Still had its same label, but was instead replaced by the later-released, more widely available version of the song. The piano demo of “Sister Jack” that I downloaded directly from Spoon’s website ten years ago? Replaced with the alternate, more common demo version of the song. What this means, then, is that Apple is engineering a future in which rare, or varying, mixes and versions of songs won’t exist unless Apple decides they do.

Imagine a world where the narrative, background music, colour grading and general feel of a drama is shaped in real time to suit your personality.

Visual Perceptive Media is a film which changes based on the person who is watching the video. Rather than drawing on sensor data to profile the environment, it focuses on the user themselves. It uses profiled data from a phone application to build a profile of the user and their preferences via their music collection and some personality questions.

If you create something with the Rift, the Terms of Service say that you surrender all rights to that work and that Oculus can use it whenever it wants

Oculus can collect data from you while you’re using the device

Furthermore, the information that they collect can be used to directly market products to you

As America switches from an industrial economy to a digital one, its bluest collar workers are facing the toughest challenge of their lives. Can miners really learn how to code?

Say what you will about the long-term environmental effects (Justice, for one, is very pro-coal) but the impact on the area’s one-source economy has been brutal.

The Rusty Justice seminar concludes for today. The coders swivel back to their computers, and Michael announces weekend plans to no one in particular: “Looks like I better learn C#.”

Accessible drone technology is creating a bizarre future in the world of movie making

A Croatian website, MosCroatia first reported the drone detail in a larger update about Episode VIII will be doing some location filming in Dubrovnik, a popular tourist destination in the southern part of the country. Aside from reportedly having six hundred guards being deployed on location to try and prevent the public from snapping any sneaky pictures, the skies above filming will be protected by a team of remote-controlled drones that will target anyone attempting to fly a drone of their own over the set.