Apple’s vision of the metaverse is very centralized, using their vertically integrated hardware and software. ...
Unlike Meta, Apple seems to have a stronger grip on user privacy, but they’re still gathering our facial ID’s and fingerprints, and could soon have more exhaustive biometric prints for each individual.
Epic Games (Unreal)
... Fortnite is like a mini-metaverse, where players can create their own Avatars, and buy digital items using an in-game currency called V-bucks, watch movies, and enjoy concerts by famous musicians as their own Avatars. ...
Meta
The Meta metaverse vision literally brands the trend. ... Meta knows all about leveraging user information, no matter how comfortable you are with that notion, and we’ll be giving away a whole lot more in the metaverse. ...
Microsoft
Their metaverse is all about virtual collaborative and communication, connecting and leveraging their popular products with new mixed reality offerings. ...
NVIDIA
The GPU manufacturer’s vision is a platform they call the Omniverse, geared for collaboration on projects, to connect 3D worlds into a shared virtual universe. It can be used for creating ‘digital twins,’ simulations of real-world buildings and factories. ...
Roblox
Roblox is a popular gaming platform for kids, that allows players not only to play but to build games on their platform. Roblox also allows players to buy, sell, and create virtual items which can be used to decorate their virtual character that serves as their avatar on the platform. Avatars can be moved across the different apps seamlessly. ... As of August 2020, Roblox had over 164 million monthly active users, with it being played by over half of all children aged under 16 in the United States.[9][10] ... Roblox users can literally grow with the platform, and help create and drive adoption of an alternate metaverse platform to those used by an older demographic.
Snapchat and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) will launch a new augmented reality tool aimed at encouraging the platform’s largely Gen Z user base to act and protect the imperilled Aussie icon.
The tool uses a “Water Segmentation Lens”, which when aimed at a body of water, shows a virtual reconstruction of the reef and its ongoing decline under climate change. For those without access to water, the tool also works as an augmented reality display.
...“As a platform that reaches over 90 per cent of young Australians aged 13-24, we feel a deep responsibility to take action at the pace and scale that is needed to combat the worst impacts of climate change, both globally and here in Australia.”
Vivid Vision software is indicated for treating convergence insufficiency, stereo depth perception, amblyopia and strabismus either in the clinic or at home, according to a presentation here at the American Academy of Optometry meeting.
Chief science officer Benjamin Backus, PhD, said at an academy-sponsored press conference that the system uses a virtual reality (VR) headset that allows separate images to be presented to the patient’s left and right eyes.
This FDA-approved technology, which uses VR games, is designed for all ages, according to the Vivid Vision website. It supports Vive, Rift and DPVR P1 Pro platforms.
Robots were so prevalent in the imaginative and material culture of the Greek-speaking world that they were seen as emblematic of Hellenistic culture by others.
Buddhist legends focused on northeastern India from the fourth and third centuries BCE recount the army of automata that guarded Buddha’s relics.
Robots and AI have long been used both to foreground and to trouble the conceptual boundary between born and made, and the related boundary between life and not-life.
Swiss tech firm WayRay has unveiled its Holograktor concept, an all-electric ride hailing machine that features advanced augmented reality (AR) technology.
The 4.4-metre-long, three-seat EV can either be driven conventionally or be piloted remotely thanks to an on-board 5G internet connection and has been designed around its AR system providing users content they can consume, according to the firm.
...the car’s glazing incorporates AR tech, with the window glass showing the augmented reality overlay.
The hardware for the system is housed in a cowling on the car’s roof, called ‘The Shrimp’, containing the holographic system for the rear passenger. Projectors for the front occupants are housed in the dashboard.
The EU’s executive branch European Commission published a proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence. This aims to place mechanisms and restrictions on the use of AI, its violations, AI regulatory requirements, among others.
At the Tesla AI Day, Elon Musk announced that the company is working on a humanoid robot. He added that Tesla will build a robot in a human form that could perform repetitive tasks, and the prototype is likely to be ready by next year. The code name for the bot is ‘Optimus’. Tesla’s director Ganesh Venkataramanan showed the computer chip that Tesla uses to run its supercomputer, Dojo. It contains 7nm technology and is packed with 362 teraflops of processing power.
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August
Tesla AI Day
At the Tesla AI Day, Elon Musk announced that the company is working on a humanoid robot. He added that Tesla will build a robot in a human form that could perform repetitive tasks, and the prototype is likely to be ready by next year. The code name for the bot is ‘Optimus’. Tesla’s director Ganesh Venkataramanan showed the computer chip that Tesla uses to run its supercomputer, Dojo. It contains 7nm technology and is packed with 362 teraflops of processing power.
Loud voices from the religious right and the anti-porn left are already being raised against sex robots. They haven’t yet awakened to the more extensive possibilities when virtual reality and AI go to town on users’ erotic desires. But when they do, I have little doubt they’ll be outraged.
What’s more, there may be a measure of disapproval on the part of the public more generally — the predictable “uncanny valley” queasiness heightened by our typical censoriousness about sex. And concerns about whether treating objects like humans might lead to treating some humans like objects.
On balance, though, I side with the machines and against the puritans. I think artificial intimacy could deliver a more relaxed, inclusive, and humane sexuality, but only if societies have enough maturity to give it a chance.
Rob Brooks is the Scientia professor of evolution at University of New South Wales,Sydney and the author of “Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers, and Algorithmic Matchmakers.”
As for hot technologies, Shapiro said lots of automakers returning with electronics-ladened cars. The metaverse will be a draw, as will nonfungible tokens, digital health, food tech, automotive tech, NFTs, gaming, and smart homes.
