[It’s all about social realism and the suspension of disbelief! From the Nerdist blog; watch the trailer here] HELL NO: The Sensible Horror Film by Kyle Anderson on October 17, 2013 It’s being hailed as “the most realistic horror movie ever.” Why? Because the characters in it aren’t stupid and don’t put themselves in dumb situations. This hilarious short/faux movie trailer from director Joe Nicolosi shows us every single scenario we’ve ever seen in scary movies, and then it shows the people involved actually doing the things we’ve been yelling at the screens since there have been movies that are…

[From Fast Company’s Co.CREATE blog, where the story includes more pictures] Your Halloween Is Sorted With These Gory, iPhone-Enabled Costumes From An Ex-NASA Engineer If you’ve got a smartphone and 30 bucks, you no longer have an excuse for not having a killer Halloween costume. By Dan Solomon October 9, 2013 Mark Rober was just your average mechanical engineer for NASA, working for seven years helping to build the Mars Rover, when he finally found his true passion: Halloween costumes. In 2011, Rober figured out that, with FaceTime, he could create one of the grislier costumes the human mind had…

[From NYU-Poly, where the press release includes a 0:52 minute video; the Kickstarter campaign details are here] Still Wearing a Real Mask This Halloween? NYU-Poly Team Suggests Latest in Augmented Reality Posted October 28th, 2013 Brooklyn, New York—Halloween costumes can be so…analog. Until this season. Artist and Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) augmented-reality researcher Mark Skwarek has teamed with one of his grad students to create 3D digital masks more appropriate to the year 2013. Skwarek, an NYU-Poly instructor of integrated digital media, and Animesh Anad, a computer science graduate student, developed the virtual masks to launch an…

[From Springer via ScienceDaily] Virtually Numbed: Immersive Video Gaming Alters Real-Life Experience Role-playing video games can alter our experience of reality and numb us to important real-life experiences, a new study finds. Oct. 28, 2013 — Spending time immersed as a virtual character or avatar in a role-playing video game can numb you to realizing important body signals in real life. This message comes from Ulrich Weger of the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany and Stephen Loughnan of Melbourne University in Australia, in an article in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, published by Springer.…

[From Tnooz, where the story includes a 2:01 minute video] Japan tourist attraction uses digital penguins to increase visits Karthick Prabu Oct 16.2013 Sunshine Aquarium, a 35-year old Japan tourist attraction, wanted people to easily locate it amongst other point of interests and activities in Tokyo. The aquarium is located in an extremely dense part of the city and is nearly a kilometer from the nearest station. So, what did officials do to put it on the map? The aquarium went down the augmented reality route.…

[From Australian Ageing Agenda, where the story includes two more images] Virtual dementia experience for aged care workers By Natasha Egan on October 24, 2013 Aged care workers can now experience what it feels like to live with dementia at an Australian-first dementia learning centre that uses light, sound, colour, visual content and serious gaming technology to create a virtual reality. The Perc Walkley Dementia Learning Centre is a key feature of Alzheimer’s Australia Vic’s new facility in Parkville, Melbourne, which was opened by Alzheimer’s Australia National President Ita Buttrose on Wednesday. The training centre features doughnut shaped mood lighting,…

[From Polygon, where the story includes more pictures and a 4:54 minute video] How the holographic gaming rig Valve didn’t want aims to conquer the virtual world By Colin Campbell on Oct 22, 2013 When Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson parted ways with Valve last February, they took away the thingamajig they’d spent the previous year developing. And now it’s got a Kickstarter. CastAR is a 3D holograph-style game display that runs through a pair of glasses. In the shorthand blurb of the gadget’s Kickstarter, it’s basically like that “let the Wookie win” scene in which R2-D2 and Chewbacca play…