[As this story from The Ghost Howls blog explains, CrowsNest XR’s Anna is a multi-lingual, always-available digital concierge for hotels in China. While ‘she’ currently has to be triggered by a QR code and answers predetermined questions from a screen menu, the company and partner Amazon China have big plans to expand the service to evoke greater presence – she already can appear in augmented reality and will be able to interact conversationally and in other ways become more of a human companion for tourists and other guests. See the original story for three more images and three videos. –Matthew]

CrowsNest’s Anna is the future of hospitality

By Tony Skarredghost
December 22, 2020

Some days ago I had a chat with my friend Eloi Gerard, the CEO of CrowsNest XR, about Anna, the virtual concierge assistant he is launching.… read more. “CrowsNest XR’s virtual concierge Anna is the future of hospitality”

[While technology-based presence experiences are usually designed to simulate ‘normal’ non-mediated human experiences of the world, they can become even more intuitive and direct, as with brain control interfaces. This story from Engadget explains the potential in reviewing a new developer kit for the NextMind BCI. For a similarly positive assessment see coverage in TechCrunch, which includes this:]

“NextMind’s system is elegantly simple in conception, which is probably why it feels so powerful and rich in use. After the calibration process, I immediately jumped into the demos and was performing a range of actions effectively with my brain. First was media playback and window management on a desktop, and from there I moved on to composing music, entering a pin on a number pad and playing multiple games, including a platform where my mind control was supplementing my physical input on a USB gamepad to create a whole new level of fun and complex gameplay that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.… read more. “Next level presence: NextMind’s brain-computer interface”

[In this engaging first person story from Newsweek, the CEO of the Utherverse 3D virtual reality social network provides insights into the platform’s origins, evolution, and design philosophy and the experiences of users that mimic those in the physical world. See the original story for three more images and a 15 minute video. –Matthew]

‘I Run a Virtual Reality Dating Network Where You Can Have Sex and Marry’

Brian Shuster, CEO of Utherverse
December 13, 2020

Before I was creating avatar real world representations, I was a key innovator for the very early internet in the 90s. Around that time, as a hobby I picked up one of the first three massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, Asheron’s Call—it was a hugely entertaining Dungeons and Dragons type game. I would usually adventure solo, but every now and again I would get into a group and we would go on some kind of quest.… read more. “‘I run a virtual reality dating network where you can have sex and marry’”

[The prospect of extremely realistic, presence-evoking masks that can make one person appear to be another is entertaining in the Mission: Impossible franchise (see a Variety story and CinemaBlend video compilation), but it raises all kinds of practical and ethical issues. The story below from Vice features an interview with the head of a Japanese company “buying faces” of members of the public to reproduce them in mask form in what it calls the “That Face” project. The original story features seven different pictures and a 28 second video also available via YouTube (for some reason the story introduction overlooks the concept of twins, triplets, etc.). A 1:46 minute video report about “That Face” from the South China Morning Post is available on YouTube. CNET’s coverage adds these details:

“’We will buy and sell your faces. A science fiction story has now become reality,’ Kamenya Omoto said in a statement.… read more. “This man is ‘buying’ faces to make creepily realistic masks, and people want in”

[The company Zylia has developed a new set of immersive audio technologies that expand the potential for evoking spatial presence. The original version of this VRScout story, which was “created in partnership” with Zylia, includes four different images and a third video (“Navigable 360 music streaming experience with the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra”; also available via YouTube). An August 2020 story from Audio Media International adds this detail:

“’Applications of 6DoF audio and our technology are wide. Cinematic trailers for VR projects, naturally sounded audio for games, live performances recording, artistic audio content for domes with multi-loudspeakers installations, or virtual presentation of unique places are just a few examples,’ says Tomasz Żernicki, CEO of Zylia. ‘As a listener you can freely move throughout the recorded scene going closer, further, up, or down from the sound source. Moreover, spatial resolution is so high that you have a feeling of being there.’”… read more. “Zylia’s 6DoF navigable live or recorded immersive audio tech brings new potential for spatial presence”