...The gallery features spatial designs created by ZHA that focus on user experience, social interaction, and "dramaturgical" compositions, combined with MMO (massively multiplayer online game) and interaction technological services. ...
The project focuses on cyberspaces that enable human-to-human communication via computer networks. MMO videogame technologies, along with high-speed networks and clouds have allowed cyberspaces to be immersive, interactive, and socially engaging 3-dimensional universes that can be accessible via multiple and diverse devices. ...
Communication professor Jeremy Bailenson has formatted his class COMM 166/266: “Virtual People” to take place in virtual reality (VR) after 20 years of teaching the subject and seeing the technology develop. It is the first class set entirely in VR in Stanford’s history.
“We live in a time where virtual reality is rapidly expanding its roles in how we work, play and communicate,” said music professor Ge Wang when he introduced Bailenson and first-year communication Ph.D. student Cyan DeVeaux as this month’s presenters at the Art and Tech Salon, a speaker series devoted to bringing together students and professors from across campus disciplines.
When planning the class, Bailenson took a gamble on whether VR software and technology would be advanced enough in time for him to teach it as a summer course. The software the class ended up using, ENGAGE, became ready in late May, just in time to run the course in the Summer. ENGAGE is a virtual meeting platform that provides tools for students and teachers to build and interact in virtual environments.
... VR allows people to imagine the impossible, adding that the teaching team tried to incorporate that tenet into the curriculum. ...
... Class sessions were also limited to 30 minutes to avoid simulator sickness, a subset of motion sickness that can be caused by VR devices. ...
To assess when VR is the appropriate medium to use as a teaching tool, ... “Dangerous, Impossible, Counterproductive and Expensive” (D.I.C.E.).
Zoe's easy-to-use, cross-platform no-code 3D world creator toolset allows anyone, from novice to expert, to create and share interactive immersive experiences -- a skill previously reserved for those with extensive knowledge of game engines or visual effects programs. Dreamscape will leverage the Zoe technology to build cutting-edge collaborative VR experiences, such as virtual classrooms, immersive training exercises, and remote conferencing capabilities. Now, everyone -- including educators, students, and executives -- will be able to create multi-user interactive experiences, built on Dreamscape's revolutionary VR platform. By merging motion capture with body mapping and advanced kinematics, Dreamscape experiences allow large groups to interact with each other with a level of immersion never before achieved in the industry.
Niantic has acquired another company to help build out its augmented reality platforms. The company has announced that it’s acquiring the team behind Lowkey, an app you can use to easily capture and share gameplay moments. While you can use any screen capture application — or even your phone’s built-in feature — to record your games, Lowkey was designed with casual gamers or those who don’t want to spend time editing their videos in mind.
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.
