[From Mashable, where the story includes two more images; be sure to see the last paragraph] 5 Roadblocks to Virtual Reality Becoming Mainstream Chelsea Stark September 30, 2014 For more than 25 years, one iteration or the next of virtual reality has been touted as a life-altering technological breakthrough. At the first Oculus Rift developers conference, attendees saw how far its creators have come in pursuit of an outstanding virtual reality platform. But virtual reality still has a long way to go before it’s ready for consumers, and its biggest proponents know it, too. During Oculus Connect, the company’s top…

[From Digital Trends, where the story includes more images and a 0:31 minute video] Sony’s creating ‘Inception Glasses’ that will bend city streets and buildings around you By Jeremy Kaplan – September 24, 2014 Here’s one way to make the mountain come to Mohammed. In the 2010 Christopher Nolan film Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page create impossible dream environments by folding whole city blocks in upon themselves. It’s remarkable to see – so remarkable that Sony Computer Science Lab researcher Yuichiro Takeuchi decided to make the science fiction conceit into a reality. On Monday he unveiled the technology, running…

[An account of an inverse presence experience from The Verge] I tricked my brain into thinking real life was VR Welcome to the desert of the unreal By Adi Robertson on September 22, 2014 If you talk to anybody who’s into virtual reality for more than ten minutes, you will probably end up speculating about when we might achieve total immersion: the point at which a simulated experience becomes functionally indistinguishable from real life. Most people will submit that we’re not near that point yet, barring a nightmare scenario that Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey posited at the company’s conference this…

[From Geektime; see the Kickstarter site for much more information including videos] Yourbot lets you talk to your future generations Yourbot is your digital replica in the cloud and a foundation to preserve it for years to come. Your lineage will be able to chat with you in the year 2114 and beyond Amit Peri | On September 17, 2014 Imagine you could have a chat with your grandest of great great grandchildren today, what would you wish to tell them? Yourbot is an Android device with speech-to-text conversation engines which allows our future generations the ability to interact with…

[From Businessweek, where the story includes more images] [Image: As you walk around the farm, floating graphics add context. Courtesy Gannett Digital] A Newspaper’s First Trip Into Virtual Reality Goes to a Desolate Farm By Joshua Brustein September 22, 2014 Against the odds, the Des Moines Register has just become one of the first newspapers to move into virtual reality. Gannett (GCI), publisher of USA Today and dozens of regional publications, has released its debut report made specifically for the Oculus VR headset: an interactive view of a farm in Iowa designed to accompany a series of newspaper articles being…

[From Wired, where the story includes more pictures] Airbus Patents a VR Helmet That’ll Make You Forget You’re on a Plane By Alex Davies 09.16.14 In a world where economy-class seats are getting thinner and lavatories are shrinking, any flight longer than an hour can feel like a traveling prison. Aircraft manufacturer Airbus is abetting the shift, but a recent patent filing shows it hasn’t forgotten about you, the passenger who actually has to sit in these miserable flying cells. It’s considering helmets that will let you forget you’re in an airplane at all.…