[Apparently the little-known company Uncorporeal has figured out how to jump across the ‘uncanny valley’ in VR to produce more effective presence experiences. This story is from Wired, where it includes another image and two videos. There’s not much there at this writing, but the company’s website is uncorporeal.com –Matthew]

[Image: The geometric data gathered by Uncorporeal’s cameras and processing hardware results in a data mesh that can be placed in any game environment built in Unity 3D.]

These FX Wizards May Have Solved VR Films’ Biggest Problem

Peter Rubin
October 7, 2015

Sebastian Marino already has an Academy Award for his special-effects work on James Cameron’s Avatar, but the other evening he became a director, and staged a tiny shoot in his apartment. He and a small crew set up an array of cameras and filmed two actresses in front of a green screen.… read more. “Beyond motion capture: FX wizards may have solved VR films’ biggest problem”

[The ‘magic’ of Disney technology; this story is from Business Standard; a 1:59 minute video is available on YouTube, the original press release is available via EurekAlert!, and the conference paper is available from Disney Research. –Matthew]

New Disney app turns coloured drawings into 3D characters

Press Trust of India | Washington
October 4, 2015

A colouring book app devised by researchers at Disney can cause characters from drawings to leap from the page in 3-D with the help of augmented reality.

A child colours a character, such as an elephant, on the book page normally, while a tablet or smartphone running the new app monitors the drawing.

Based on the child’s colouring, the app fills in colours in real-time on an animated 3-D version of the elephant that is visible on the device’s screen and integrated into the video.… read more. “Disney Research uses augmented reality to turn coloring books into 3-D experience”

[Fascinating debates are ahead as technologies increasingly mimic human social actors; this is from Phys.org. –Matthew]

[Image: Pepper is described as an “engaging, friendly companion that can communicate with people through the most intuitive interface we know: voice, touch and emotions.” Credit: Aldebaran, SoftBank, Corp.]

Incident of drunk man kicking humanoid robot raises legal questions

October 2, 2015 by Lisa Zyga

A few weeks ago, a drunk man in Japan was arrested for kicking a humanoid robot that was stationed as a greeter at a SoftBank, Corp., store, which develops the robots. According to the police report, the man said he was angry at the attitude of one of the store clerks. The “Pepper robot” now moves more slowly, and its internal computer system may have been damaged.

Under current Japanese law, the man can be charged with damage to property, but not injury, since injury is a charge reserved for humans.… read more. “Incident of drunk man kicking humanoid robot raises legal questions”

[This is a sweet story from Ars Technica about a marriage proposal in virtual reality; as the technologies evolve, this could not only become more common but the proposer might be able to ‘take’ their partner to all kinds of elaborate, vivid virtual places to ‘pop the question.’ –Matthew]

Valve employee uses virtual reality to propose real-life marriage

Bride-to-be wore HTC Vive headset; world’s first “room-scale” VR proposal.

by Sam Machkovech – Oct 3, 2015

The HTC Vive virtual reality headset hasn’t yet reached store shelves, meaning only a select few developers have gotten their hands on pre-release kits and explored the possibilities of “room-scale” VR. For one staffer at Valve Software, the Vive’s official SteamVR partner, that meant an opportunity to claim first dibs on doing something nobody else has ever done with a Vive headset: propose marriage.… read more. “Valve employee uses virtual reality to propose real-life marriage”

[Even though they’re created with technologies, we’re used to perceiving buildings as ‘real’ physical objects; the example of glitch architecture in this story from The Creators Project (which includes a 0:43 minute video) makes observers question that perception, creating a type of inverse presence illusion that blurs real and virtual. For an interview with the architects see Hopes and Fears; for more on the “radical capacity of glitch art” see Redefine Magazine; and for the related short film “Algorithmic Architecture,” see more coverage by The Creators Project. –Matthew]

Glitch Architecture Shows How Beautiful Broken Can Be

By DJ Pangburn — Sep 27 2015

Few works in the last few years, apart from perhaps Trevor Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum’s Autonomy Cube, so perfectly blend the physical world with the deep web as !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s Random Darknet Shopper.… read more. “Glitch Architecture creates inverse presence illusion”