[From VentureBeat]

Zugara’s virtual dressing rooms take the X factor out of online shopping

September 25, 2012
Rebecca Grant

No matter how good a piece of clothing looks online, the reality often falls short. The joy of ripping open a package is destroyed when you discover that a particular shade of teal makes you look seasick or that leopard print jeans are a far better idea in theory.

Sometimes, you need to try things on to know if they are right, and this is a frustration shared by web retailers and customers alike.

Zugara was granted a patent today for its augmented reality technology that creates virtual dressing rooms for online consumers. The Webcam Social Shopper seeks to alleviate the element of the unknown from online shopping by enabling consumers to virtually try on clothes.

The platform generates a simulated view of what a wearable item will actually look like on your body using information from a web cam.… read more. “Zugara’s virtual dressing rooms take the X factor out of online shopping”

[From The Sydney Morning Herald]

Google’s 360-degree tour of endangered reefs

September 26, 2012
James Manning, Technology reporter

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been opened to an audience of more than one billion people worldwide as Google launches a virtual tour of one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

Users can log on to Street View on Google Maps and Google Earth and explore high-resolution, 360-degree images of the reef that are being gathered as part of the Catlin Seaview Survey, which documents the health of coral reefs around the world.

“The project is as much about the engagement as it is about the science,” project director Richard Vevers told Fairfax from Monterey, California, where he officially launched the survey at the Blue Ocean Film Festival in front of an audience of scientists and filmmakers that included James Cameron.… read more. “Google’s 360-degree tour of endangered reefs”

[From News-Medical.net]

[Image: Rendering of physical environment represented in the AbES software; in gamer mode, the player (yellow icon) navigates through the virtual environment using auditory cues to locate hidden jewels (blue squares) and avoid being caught by chasing monsters (red icons).]

‘Video game’ teaches blind people to navigate buildings

Published on September 25, 2012
By Liam Davenport, medwireNews Reporter

Blind people can learn the spatial layout of an unfamiliar building using a novel “video game” virtual reality environment that employs only audio-based cues, thus enabling them to learn skills that may improve functional independence, say US and Chilean scientists.

“The accuracy of this mental map was confirmed by the fact that participants were able to transfer acquired spatial information into successful navigation performance carried out in the physical building modeled in a corresponding virtual environment,” notes Lofti Merabet, from Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and colleagues.… read more. “Video game’s audio environment teaches blind people to navigate buildings”