[This piece from Motherboard covers some fascinating presence work and history, and includes some key terminological distinctions; see the original story for many more pictures and a 4:52 minute video. –Matthew]

The Japanese Professor Who’s Spent Three Decades Perfecting a Human Avatar

Written by Emiko Jozuka
December 23, 2015

When Susumu Tachi made his first prototype telexistence machine in 1981, he was amazed at what he saw. As he peered through the contraption, he glimpsed another version of himself from behind, looking through the very same prototype device. The effect induced a curious out-of-body sensation. Excited, he called his lab mates, who experienced similar feelings of self-displacement when trying the tech.

“It was different to looking at yourself in a mirror, or looking at your image in a video recording. I saw my image moving as I was moving myself. At that moment, I wondered where I was,” said the virtual reality and robotics professor at the University of Tokyo with a boyish grin. “I really felt that this was telexistence.”

For the uninitiated, “telexistence” is the real-time feeling of being in another location (real or virtual) that is different to one’s current location. Telexistence is different to “teleoperation,” which sees the operator electronically control another machine using a remote control. With the latter, there is no sense of being in the place.

Tachi said he came up with the concept of “telexistence” in 1980 and corroborated his discovery with a publication in Japanese in 1982, and then in English in 1984. Over in the US, “telepresence,” which is similar to “telexistence,” was coined by Marvin Minsky, a cognitive scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. Tachi has written that while they are similar, telexistence has more focus on make a user feel like they actually inhabit the virtual space they’re working in. Read more on The Japanese professor who’s spent three decades perfecting a human avatar…

[The power, promise and peril of presence are all illustrated in this story from Inverse, which features two more images. –Matthew]

The VR Pornstar of the Future Will Play Therapist, for Better and Worse

Virtual reality intimacy is going to be a growth industry, but is emotionally empowering sex workers in transactional relationships really a good idea?

Yasmin Tayag
November 9, 2015

According to Ela Darling, porn’s potential as a tool for emotion growth and counseling is often overshadowed by a popularly imagined seediness or the immediacy of the thing. Darling, an adult performer who co-founded the virtual reality porn site VRTube.xxx, thinks the intimacy at the core of pornography, the germ of fantasy, is about to come into better focus. With the advent of VR porn and its emphasis on live, tailor experiences, Darling is predicting — and betting — that adult entertainment is about become both more human and more humane. This is, she says, what the massive viewing audience has always wanted and never really been offered. Read more on VR pornstar as therapist: Virtual intimacy and the promise/peril of presence…

[This story about a climbing simulation provides more insights regarding how to best evoke (spatial) presence, including the roles of narrative, photorealism and natural mapping; it’s from The Guardian, where it includes another image. –Matthew]

[Image: The Climb uses the Oculus Rift’s motion-controller technology to let the player control the hands of the protagonist. Photograph: Crytek]

The Climb – the most head-spinning virtual reality experience yet

Crytek’s new project for the Oculus Rift shows us exactly where VR gaming is going – towards heady and experiential gameplay

Keith Stuart
Thursday 24 December 2015

Above you, the craggy face of the cliff seems to stretch up endlessly toward the sky, offering perilously few footholds. In the far distance there’s a small village by a beach, bathed in orange sunshine – an exotic idyll. But below you there is … nothing. Nothing but a long deadly drop into the crashing sea far below. Your only option is to keep climbing.

Crytek has always been interested in pushing graphics technology. In the mid-2000s, the Frankfurt-based developer and publisher achieved wide acclaim for its visually spectacular first-person shooters Far Cry and Crysis; although several years old, both are still widely used as a benchmark for near photo-realism in games, especially in terms of environmental detail. With its steamy tropical rain forests, Far Cry presented a lush counterpoint to the genre’s obsession with steel grey interiors.

But the company’s latest project is perhaps its most ambitious attempt to bring immersive naturalism to game worlds. The Climb is a virtual reality climbing simulator, which gives the player the chance to attempt a series of tricky ascents on rock faces based around the world. “We started out by working on the mechanics of virtual reality,” says executive producer Elijah Freeman, who started as an artist at Crytek 15 years ago. “When we were prototyping, climbing just stood out for us – it was almost instantaneously fun.” Read more on The Climb: Head-spinning, experiential gameplay provides insights about presence…

[An inexpensive and increasingly common presence technology helps save a life; the story is from the Miami Herald, where it features a 4:02 video and several more images. –Matthew]

[Image: Dr. John F. Rhodes, left, looks towards Dr. Redmond P. Burke, center, as he holds the Google Cardboard virtual reality device and explains its use in the cutting-edge medical procedure with Dr. Juan Cuarlos Muniz, right. On Tuesday, December 22, 2015 doctors at Nicklaus Children Hospital and the Lexcen family held a press conference on life-saving heart surgery performed on Teegan Lexcen at Nicklaus using a new procedure, virtual reality imaging, pioneered at the Miami hospital. CARL JUSTE Miami Herald Staff]

A virtual miracle in Miami for Minnesota couple’s ‘inoperable’ infant

December 21, 2015
By Howard Cohen

Teegan Lexcen, deemed inoperable after her birth in Minnesota, sleeps in a small crib festooned with Christmas blankets in an ICU room at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital. Santa’s toy factory couldn’t be a happier place.

The 4-month-old is ready for her first Christmas with her family in Miami after a seven-hour open-heart operation at Nicklaus. She’s on the mend, doctors say, because of a small cardboard box and a smartphone.

Virtual reality imaging, using an iPhone tucked inside a Google Cardboard device, which looks like the box a Baby Boomer’s childhood View-Master came in, was used for the first time to plan Teegan’s complex pediatric procedure on Dec. 10. The Google Cardboard turns a smartphone into a low-cost stereoscopic virtual reality viewer that doctors can use to convert a two-dimensional CT scan into a three-dimensional model of a tiny heart. The image is uploaded and used in the operating room for the clearest view in which to make delicate repairs. Read more on Presence tech helps save couple’s ‘inoperable’ infant…