[From Time] [Image: The U.S. military is already using virtual-reality therapy to help troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Air Force photo / Senior Airman Renae Kleckner] Embracing Virtual Reality By Artin Terhakopian April 03, 2013 The flood of behavioral-health problems in the military seems to have peaked. Fortunately, things stayed far from the degeneracy of the late 1960s and early 1970s described by Colonel Robert Heinl Jr. in his 1971 Armed Forces Journal article. Things are definitely changing for the better. It is now over two years since the publication of General Peter Chiarelli’s Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide…

[From Canada’s Metro, where the story includes a 4:25 minute video from Kickstarter; more information is available at Polygon] Vancouver developed first-person ‘blind’ video game offers new perspective By Elizabeth Hames Metro April 1, 2013 A group of Vancouver developers is offering gamers a new way to see. Pulse, a first-person video game prototyped by Vancouver Film School students, features a blind protagonist who uses echolocation to create a mental picture of their environment. Thus, the player can “see” only what is directly in front of or beside them, while the rest of their world remains dark. While the game…

[From Gizmag; see also Google’s April 1st entry into this space, Google Nose BETA] “Smell-o-Vision” display emits localized virtual odors By Darren Quick April 1, 2013 Localized dimming is a feature found in many televisions these days, but what about a display capable of producing localized smells? That’s exactly what a team from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology in Japan has created. The “smelling screen” that was recently presented at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2013 conference in Orlando, Florida can produce odors that appear to emanate from specific areas of the screen. Over the years, we’ve seen various…

[From The Verge, where the story includes video interviews and additional images] Oculus Rift at SXSW: Is virtual reality the Holy Grail of gaming? Cliff Bleszinski, Chris Roberts, Paul Bettner, and Palmer Luckey share their vision for the future of gaming By Ellis Hamburger on March 9, 2013 The SXSW Gaming Expo is preposterously loud. At one side of the room, a Starcraft tournament is reaching its climax, but on the other side, one group of guys is yelling louder. They sound like a basement full of adolescents discussing the newest Electronic Gaming Monthly cover story, or like the NINTENDO SIXTY-FOUR…

[From Digital Trends, where the story includes additional images] How one Russian millionaire wants to save the world … with immortal cyborgs By Andrew Couts — March 28, 2013 Dmitry Itskov has a plan to save humanity from impending doom. The question is whether we will still be “human,” if Itskov’s dreams come true. At least, that’s one of the many, many questions. The 32-year-old Russian mogul, who made his fortune as founder of the Web publishing company New Media Stars, is creator of the 2045 Initiative, a non-profit, and its Avatar project, which seeks to transpose human consciousness into…

[From The Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; the story includes a 1:41 minute video] ‘Virtual Exertions’ research uses muscle activity to move virtual objects [VIDEO] March 26, 2013 Marianne English Today’s smartphones and computers offer gestural interfaces where information arrives at users’ fingertips with a swipe of a hand. Still, researchers have found that most technology falls short in making people feel as if they’re interacting with virtual objects the same way they would with real objects. But a WID team says it has developed, for the first time, a way to move virtual objects in an…