[From Bdaily] [Image: Emma-Jane Alexander, Coordinator at HIVE] University to develop 3D virtual reality wind turbine 14 Nov 2012 Miranda Dobson A virtual reality 3D “cave” created by the University of Hull has been commissioned to provide training for wind turbine engineers and green energy industries. The Higher Education Funding Council has awarded £240,000 to the University to develop the training facility in the Hull Immersive Visual Environment (HIVE), which will be used to simulate the most extreme and hostile conditions that workers in the green power industry face. Hull’s scheme is part of a multimillion pound investment in the…

[From Gamasutra] The Holodeck may be possible, but it’s going to need game designers November 13, 2012 | By Mathew Kumar Science fiction for many is mere fantasy and escapism, but Lee Sheldon—a writer and producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation and now an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—sees the fantasy of Star Trek’s Holodeck as entirely possible. With a seed grant, he and his team are working towards creating the Emergent Reality Lab, using modern technologies to create a “first-generation Holodeck.”…

[From Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; note that Mei Si presented her work at ISPR 2012] Rensselaer Launches Center To Explore Intersections of Science and Humanities Nov. 13 Launch of Center for Cognition, Communication, and Culture Features Demonstrations of Current Research Published November 12, 2012 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today launched the Center for Cognition, Communication, and Culture (CCC) with a series of multimedia presentations and demonstrations of research in the initial core research areas: cross-modal displays, mixed reality, and synthetic characters. Now one of the 10 Institute-wide research centers at Rensselaer, CCC will focus on the intersections and interdependency of cognition, communication, and…

[From CONTROL; more information is available in the press release from Invensys] [Image: Field operators in the EYESIM environment can interact with simulated incidents like the gas leak shown here. And because both the simulated plant environment and control room are linked to the same underlying DYNSIM model, operators on both ends can be trained in effective communication.] Immersive Simulator Boosts Operator Preparedness SimSci-Esscor Solutions Help Train Clean-coal Plant Operators 10/22/2012 Operator training took on a new sense of realism this summer, when the U.S. Department of Energy started up its new immersive simulator at the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (NETL)…

[From Religious Dispatches magazine] [Image: Apartment building on 8th Avenue between 14th and 15th Street. Credit: Gilad Lotan, @gilgul] Escape From Manhattan: Tech, Tragedy and Storytelling in Sandy’s Wake By Rachel Wagner November 2, 2012 Two weeks ago, I attended the New York Comic Con, braving the crowds of thousands to get a taste of what drives so many to invest so much in costume construction, role-play, and fan devotion to popular media franchises. And, because the convention ended not long before Halloween, I decided to compose a retrospective on America’s two favorite modes of imagination-driven investment in other worlds.…

[From Phys.org, where the story includes additional images and a 1:36 minute video] Build your own home theater for full-blast entertainment with ‘Virtual Sound Ball’ November 5, 2012 Watching a 3 dimensional (3D) film at home can be just as real and fun as going to a movie theater. Professor Yang-Hann Kim and Research Professor Jung-Woo Choi from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST, have succeeded in building an audio rendering system that will considerably improve the current 3D audio effects technology. 3D audio effects can be produced by stereo speakers, surround-sound speakers, speaker-arrays, or headphones, which essentially give an…