[From The Plano Star-Courier, where the story includes more images]

Bridging the gap between reality and the virtual world

By Bill Conrad
Published: Thursday, June 21, 2012

VIRTSIM, the next innovation in tactical police and military training, was unveiled Friday morning in an east Plano warehouse owned by Raytheon. To date, the technology has been sold to the FBI, and has also been used by U.S. armed forces, U.S. Marshals and police departments in cities such as Plano and Frisco.

Eight members of the McKinney Police Department’s S.W.A.T. team donned special goggles, firearms and motion-capture equipment prior to beginning their training exercise on VIRTSIM. The program, developed by Georgia-based Motion Reality, allows officers and soldiers to experience realistic training scenarios in a safe, easily-controllable environment.

Officers trained inside a basketball-court size rectangle, which was monitored by cameras that tracked the movement of all participants.… read more. “VIRTSIM, the next innovation in tactical police and military training”

[From Psychology Today’s The Storytelling Animal blog]

The Power of Fake Gay (and Black) Friends

How fiction changes the world.

by Jonathan Gottschall, Ph.D.
Published on June 20, 2012 by Jonathan Gottschall, Ph.D. in The Storytelling Animal

The “evolution” of President Obama’s views on same-sex marriage match the rapidly liberalizing attitudes of the country as a whole.  The swift pace of change has flummoxed social scientists, who expect much slower erosion of entrenched cultural biases. On the May 6th episode of Meet the Press, Joe Biden surprised viewers not only by endorsing gay marriage himself, but by attributing historic changes in American views of homosexuality to the sit-com Will and Grace.

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report had a field day, with John Stewart breaking into a show tune about “fictitious gays” and with Colbert working the statement into a montage of Biden gaffes—alongside the vice-president’s claims that ‘jobs’ is a three letter world and that only people with  Indian accents can shop at 7-11. … read more. “How fiction changes the world: The power of fictional gay (and black) friends”

[From 3D Focus; James Iliff’s web site features an extensive two part post titled The Conquest of Presence in First-Person Shooters]

The rise of consumer-facing smartphone 3D virtual reality

US based virtual reality expert James Iliff reports on the rise of smartphone virtual reality applications and why VR will be the next frontier in gaming.

Jun 18, 2012

Beyond 3D camera rigs, blockbuster movies, and anaglyph glasses, the 3D scene in Los Angeles has a bustling underground, and a revolution is on the horizon.  The small but tight-knit virtual reality hardware community is striking out against corporate monoliths like Sony and Vuzix in order to make cutting-edge VR goggles for incredibly cheap prices – and often at much higher quality than their corporate counterparts.

Using Side-by-Side stereoscopic methods and simple optics, these pioneers are bringing VR back into the limelight, ushering forth a new era in the way consumers experience videogames. … read more. “The rise of consumer-facing smartphone 3D virtual reality”

[From Scotsman.com; details regarding the WA|HH Quantum Sensations ‘drunk’ spray are available at Gizmodo; see LBBOnline for more on the Mariah Carey holographic appearances]

Chitra Ramaswamy: Virtual reality, but not quite

Published on Sunday 24 June 2012

Life, eh? Just when you think things can’t get any sillier than a £16 spray that simulates the feeling of being drunk when sprayed down one’s gullible gullet (note: this is not a joke), you discover that being dead is no longer an obstacle to, well, living.

Or at least making money. I’m talking about holograms, people. Not the kind you find on a credit card, in Star Wars or in one of those creepy pictures that make the Queen’s eyes open and close. No, those are the mere Kardashians of holography compared to the souped-up, sexy, swaggering, superstar holograms that I’m talking about.… read more. “The perils of smoke-and-mirrors illusion in the 21st century”

[From Phys.org, where the story includes more images and two videos]

Canon’s Mixed Reality System may speed design cycles

June 23, 2012 by Nancy Owano

(Phys.org) — Canon this week announced a new augmented reality system—headset and software. The new system is to allow virtual prototypes to replace physical ones. Three-dimensional computer generated images can instantly change based on the user’s movements. The Mixed Reality (MR) System is being initially promoted as an industrial design tool where, for example, the head-set-wearing user gets to see a computer-generated image of a car on a set of real tires, all in realtime. Two video cameras inside the head-mounted display (HMD), each in front of right and left eyes, capture the real-world video which is sent to a connected computer, processing the merge between real and virtual.… read more. “Canon’s Mixed Reality System allows virtual prototypes to replace physical ones”