[A vivid example of presence after death is described in this story from BBC News. Additional details from the Daily Mail follow below; the original version of that story also contains more images. A 1:33 minute video is available in DesignTAXI’s coverage (and available on YouTube), and you can interact with the StoryFile version of the late Marina Smith on her foundation’s website. For more on StoryFile and related projects, see the May 2021 ISPR Presence News post “Modern Spiritualism: How holograms, deepfakes, and AR are raising the dead.” –Matthew] Holocaust activist seems to talk to guests at her funeral…

[Here’s a succinct summary of the features needed for a ‘perfect’ VR headset. See the original version of the MIXED story for an image or video about each feature, as well as a video of the 2 hour 40 minute Siggraph presentation (also available via YouTube). For a related story see the June 2022 ISPR Presence News post “Meta reveals VR prototypes on path to improve presence and pass the ‘Visual Turing test.’” –Matthew] Meta’s display chief names 10 features for a perfect VR headset There are still many hurdles to overcome before virtual reality reaches its technical potential. The…

[Amid vivid news coverage of modern inhumanity around the world, this touching and inspiring NPR story describes a project that uses presence experiences to help people affected by such events in the past. See the original version for the seven minute video and many more pictures. –Matthew] [Image: Ishar Das Arora, 83, watches a 3-D video of his birthplace in Pakistan, through a virtual reality device. Credit: Raksha Kumar/NPR] 75 years after India’s violent Partition, survivors can cross the border — virtually By Lauren Frayer August 13, 2022 NEW DELHI — First comes the melancholy twang of a South Asian…

[The mixed reactions to a digital recreation of beloved baseball announcer Harry Caray, at a game celebrating a much-loved film about “a farmer who builds a baseball field in his cornfield that attracts the ghosts of baseball legends” (Wikipedia), illustrate the challenges of creating effective presence illusions of people who have died. The report below is from The Washington Post, where the original includes more pictures, video clips and Tweets; find more reactions in coverage from TV Insider, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated. Note that the reactions seem to have been more positive in the stadium than on social media…

[Many of us have had the strange experience in which the recorded music we’re listening to (e.g., in headphones or earbuds while walking) coincidentally seems to match up with the environment we’re moving through. This story from Creative Boom describes a new purposeful effort to create these matches between mediated and nonmediated elements of our experience, a type of presence illusion. See the original story for several different pictures and a 1:06 minute promotional video (also available via YouTube) and see the “Projects” page of the Circus Family website for other interesting presence-related projects such as “Vlisco – We are…

[This Associated Press story describes some of the ways people around the world have been using technology and presence to experience religious sites and rituals, including during the pandemic. See the original version of the story for six more pictures and a video. –Matthew] [Image: This July 22, 2019 photo taken from video gives a 360-degree view of Ramadan prayers on the plateau of the Dome of the Rock, which can be seen in The Holy City, a virtual reality experience in the metaverse. Credit: The Holy City VR via AP] From Mecca to the Vatican, exploring sacred sites with…

[A project and publication from University of York researchers focuses on how to design audio experiences in virtual reality to create more effective presence experiences. See the original version of the story for a 1:46 minute gameplay demonstration (also available on YouTube) and find more videos in the article’s supplementary material. –Matthew] [Image: Figure 3 from Constantin Popp et al., Creating Audio Object-Focused Acoustic Environments for Room-Scale Virtual Reality, Applied Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.3390/app12147306. Screenshot showing an area in Planet Xerilia. The collision-based system is implemented in the “water” droplets, here visible as randomly rotated white small squares, which fall…