[This news release from Queen’s University describes what could be an important advance in evoking social presence. Follow the links near the end for more information, images and a video. –Matthew] News Release – Move over Tupac! Life-size holograms set to revolutionize videoconferencing Professor Roel Vertegaal’s new light field displays effectively simulate teleportation Monday, April 23, 2018 KINGSTON – A Queen’s University researcher will soon unveil TeleHuman 2 – the world’s first truly holographic videoconferencing system. TeleHuman2 allows people in different locations to appear before one another in life-size 3D – as if they were in the same room. “People…

[Oh the places “you” will go… This story from Cointelegraph describes a new business that allows users to pay strangers to serve as their avatar anywhere in the world; it’s reminiscent of the “human Uber” idea featured in a February 2018 post in ISPR Presence News). –Matthew] Blockchain Project to Give Users ‘Telepresence’ Anywhere Via Live Streams They Can Control April 24, 2018 By Connor Blenkinsop A Blockchain-driven company plans to “give people the power to be instantly everywhere” by creating a marketplace where users can hire someone’s physical presence in order to see and hear the world as they…

[Another very practical application of presence is described in this story from WTTV CBS4. For more information see the FLAIM Trainer website. –Matthew] Virtual reality training on display at downtown firefighters convention April 25, 2018 By Zach Myers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Firefighters attending this year’s Fire Department Instructor’s Conference in downtown Indianapolis are getting their first look at a new, virtual reality training system. The technology, designed by “Flame Systems,” is engineered to give a realistic simulation of various fire emergencies in a virtual environment. “We’ve just launched here at the show today, and this is the first time the…

[I’ve always been intrigued by fictional portrayals of presence and what they can tell us about ourselves and the possible roles and effects of technologies (see the Telepresence in Media Environments website); this opinion column from The New York Times uses “Westworld” and its portrayal of medium-as-social-actor presence to raise important philosophical questions. See also the current series “Humans,” and for a classic portrayal see the climactic courtroom scene (via YouTube) of the 1989 “Measure of a Man” episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” –Matthew] [Image: “Westworld” opened its second season Sunday night.…

[This story from Breaking Defense outlines the U.S. Army’s current efforts to create effective presence illusions to train soldiers. Note especially the “Four Parts” section. –Matthew] [Image: Army aviators train in a CH-47 Chinook simulator.] War Games: Army Deletes Bureaucracy To Get Sims Fast There is real uncertainty whether such things as robotic tanks and high-speed scout helicopters are possible on the Army’s timeline. But if there’s one area where a high-speed approach can work, it’s training simulations, where the Army can piggyback on the rapid development in commercial gaming. By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. April 20, 2018 FORT BELVOIR:…

[This first-person report on research conducted by Microsoft and the California Institute of Technology on haptic illusions and how to use them to create presence illusions is from Scientific American’s Observations blog, where it includes more images, a 1:14 minute video, and author bios. –Matthew] If (Virtual) Reality Feels Almost Right, It’s Exactly Wrong How adding touch to VR can lead to an “uncanny valley” of sensations—and what we can do about it By Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christopher C Berger and Ken Hinckley April 19, 2018 We can all remember the crisply beveled edges of our cheery-yellow No. 2 pencil, the…