Lifeboat Foundation

by Emil Venere-Purdue — Futurity
Simulator sickness—which often induces vertigo and even nausea—often afflicts players of virtual reality games, but inserting a “virtual nose” into the picture may be a way to lessen the queasiness.

Various physiological systems govern the onset of simulator sickness: an overall sense of touch and position, or the somatosensory system; liquid-filled tubes in the ear called the vestibular system; and the oculumotor system, or muscles that control eye movements.

“Simulator sickness is very common,” says David Whittinghill, assistant professor in the computer graphics technology department at Purdue University. “The problem is your perceptual system does not like it when the motion of your body and your visual system are out of synch. Read more

Laura Bliss — City Lab

Immersive virtual reality and its ground-shaking potential was the belle of the ball at South by Southwest’s “Interactive” portion, which wrapped up Tuesday. Virtual reality (VR) headsets like the Oculus Rift fascinated and delighted festival-goers, with promises of changing the very landscapes of film, travel, journalism, and of course gaming—where VR’s journey into mainstream discourse began with the Oculus’ 2012 Kickstarter.

But there’s another area that the Oculus Rift—or whatever immersive VR headset gets commercialized first—is likely to enter: The courtroom. (And no, we don’t mean the current patent lawsuit against the Oculus Rift’s makers.) It might not sound sexy, but the implications could be pretty big.

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By Rachel Metz — MIT Technology Review
I’m sitting in a desk chair in an office in Mountain View, California. But with a virtual-reality headset strapped to my head and headphones over my ears, it looks and sounds like I’m standing in the belly of a blimp, flying high above silent city blocks dotted with billboards for a Despicable Me theme-park ride.

The blimp ride is part of a demo built by MediaSpike, a startup that’s making ads for virtual reality. Even the blimp itself is an ad: before boarding it, I can see its exterior is covered with a larger-than-life version of one of the film’s short, yellow characters.

For now, augmented reality and virtual reality are not widely used. But as new headsets hit the market, advertisers will surely try to stake out virtual ground.

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By NICK WINGFIELD — The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — Few technologies have generated more attention than virtual reality, which promises to immerse people in 3-D games and video.

Yet for the last couple of years, the companies building virtual reality headsets have begged for patience from content creators and the public. The companies’ biggest concern: that unpolished virtual reality products could make people physically sick.

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Quoted: “Once you really solve a problem like direct brain-computer interface … when brains and computers can interact directly, to take just one example, that’s it, that’s the end of history, that’s the end of biology as we know it. Nobody has a clue what will happen once you solve this. If life can basically break out of the organic realm into the vastness of the inorganic realm, you cannot even begin to imagine what the consequences will be, because your imagination at present is organic. So if there is a point of Singularity, as it’s often referred to, by definition, we have no way of even starting to imagine what’s happening beyond that.”

Read the article here > http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/silicon-valley-mordor/

Written By: Jason Dorrier — Singularity Hub

Jason Silva calls technologies of media “engines of empathy.” They allow us to look through someone else’s eyes, experience someone else’s story—and develop a sense of compassion and understanding for them, and perhaps for others more generally.

But he says, while today cinema is the “the cathedral of communication technology,” looking to the future, there is another great medium looming—virtual reality.

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Giancarlo Valdes — Venture Beat

We can finally talk about virtual reality games with a straight face.

At this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) video game trade show in Los Angeles, a small pool of VR games held their own against a big slate of indie titles and triple-A blockbusters. This is the first year that Oculus VR, the poster boy for VR’s resurgence with its popular Oculus Rift headset, had a presence on the expo floor, an elegant booth that wasn’t too far from Oculus’s biggest competitor, Sony’s Project Morpheus. Neither company has set a release date for their devices (Samsung, the third challenger for the VR crown, is trying to beat them both to market).

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Philip Rosedale — MIT Review

Recent weeks have been good ones for people interested in virtual reality. The Facebook acquisition of Oculus has galvanized the idea that “something wonderful” will happen if we put on these strange headsets and visually enter other worlds. Of course, most people assume this means gaming.

And it’s true that the upcoming Crystal Cove Oculus headset (which tracks the head’s position and rotation) will immerse its users in the most amazing computer gaming experiences they could have ever thought possible. But that’s not the big part of the story.

After we’ve had the Oculus strapped to our faces for a few months and the novelty has worn off, we might find ourselves asking some important questions: “Where are the other people?” And “Where can I start working and learning and building in here?”

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