[This story from Carnegie Mellon University describes the origins and development of a novel project designed to evoke spatial, and especially social, presence in the form of a mixed reality pet. The original version of the story features nine different images and a 2:57 minute video about the CMU Entertainment Technology Center that highlights the project (at 0:51; the video is also available on YouTube). For more details, see coverage from TribLive that includes a 1:30 minute project demonstration video (which is also available on YouTube). –Matthew] [Image: Joy Lim holding the prototype she created by testing different types of…

[A new wearable haptic system developed at the University of Southern California (USC) provides both a sense of physical presence for multiple virtual reality users as they each interact with objects and social presence as they interact with each other, whether the users are in the same physical location or thousands of miles away from each other. Some of the details are in this news release from USC, where the original version includes two more images. For more information, follow the links to the researchers’ new publication (in the second paragraph) and video. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Premankur Banerjee] New USC…

[A former CNN journalist has interviewed an AI-powered avatar created by the parents of one of the teenagers killed in a school shooting, attempting to evoke a sense of their son’s presence after death. The details are presented in the story from Variety below, followed by some reactions (which may or may not be representative) in excerpts of coverage from Futurism. You can watch for yourself via the Variety story or on YouTube. –Matthew] Jim Acosta Interviews AI Version of Teenager Killed in Parkland Shooting: ‘It’s Just a Beautiful Thing’ By Ethan ShanfeldAugust 5, 2025 Jim Acosta, the former CNN…

[Here’s a first-person report from one of a group of reporters from Billy Penn at WHYY on the group’s visit to Philadelphia’s new Sandbox VR amusement center location. The author describes their generally positive experience playing “Squid Games,” and describes related available and soon-to-be-available presence experiences (many of which will make good venues for class field trips). See the original version of the story for four more images and two videos (also available on YouTube here and here). –Matthew] [Image: Billy Penn staff try out the Squid Games virtual reality experience at Sandbox in Center City, Philadelphia. Credit: Kimberly Paynter/WHYY]…

[A Stanford University professor of electrical engineering and his colleagues are using 3D holograms and artificial intelligence to create mixed reality displays that are lighter to wear, produce more realistic images, and are more immersive. As the lead author of the group’s new publication notes in the story below, the goal is to pass a “visual Turing Test [in which the user] cannot distinguish between a physical, real thing as seen through the glasses and a digitally created image being projected on the display surface.” –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Nathan Matsuda] A leap toward lighter, sleeker mixed reality displays Using 3D…

[Reflecting the evolutionarily based nature of presence perceptions and responses to media, this story from Euronews describes new research that demonstrates that our immune systems respond to the potential health threat of visibly sick people even when those people are merely avatars in virtual reality. Beyond the interesting demonstration, these responses have the potential to complement vaccines by helping to activate our immune systems to better prepare them to act. See the researchers’ article in Nature Neuroscience for more details. –Matthew] [Image: A woman wears a virtual reality headset. Copyright:  Canva] Virtual reality could train our bodies to fight off…