[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…