[As this story from The Ghost Howls blog explains, CrowsNest XR’s Anna is a multi-lingual, always-available digital concierge for hotels in China. While ‘she’ currently has to be triggered by a QR code and answers predetermined questions from a screen menu, the company and partner Amazon China have big plans to expand the service to evoke greater presence – she already can appear in augmented reality and will be able to interact conversationally and in other ways become more of a human companion for tourists and other guests. See the original story for three more images and three videos. –Matthew]…

[While technology-based presence experiences are usually designed to simulate ‘normal’ non-mediated human experiences of the world, they can become even more intuitive and direct, as with brain control interfaces. This story from Engadget explains the potential in reviewing a new developer kit for the NextMind BCI. For a similarly positive assessment see coverage in TechCrunch, which includes this:] “NextMind’s system is elegantly simple in conception, which is probably why it feels so powerful and rich in use. After the calibration process, I immediately jumped into the demos and was performing a range of actions effectively with my brain. First was…

[In this engaging first person story from Newsweek, the CEO of the Utherverse 3D virtual reality social network provides insights into the platform’s origins, evolution, and design philosophy and the experiences of users that mimic those in the physical world. See the original story for three more images and a 15 minute video. –Matthew] ‘I Run a Virtual Reality Dating Network Where You Can Have Sex and Marry’ Brian Shuster, CEO of Utherverse December 13, 2020 Before I was creating avatar real world representations, I was a key innovator for the very early internet in the 90s. Around that time,…

[The prospect of extremely realistic, presence-evoking masks that can make one person appear to be another is entertaining in the Mission: Impossible franchise (see a Variety story and CinemaBlend video compilation), but it raises all kinds of practical and ethical issues. The story below from Vice features an interview with the head of a Japanese company “buying faces” of members of the public to reproduce them in mask form in what it calls the “That Face” project. The original story features seven different pictures and a 28 second video also available via YouTube (for some reason the story introduction overlooks…

[The company Zylia has developed a new set of immersive audio technologies that expand the potential for evoking spatial presence. The original version of this VRScout story, which was “created in partnership” with Zylia, includes four different images and a third video (“Navigable 360 music streaming experience with the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra”; also available via YouTube). An August 2020 story from Audio Media International adds this detail: “’Applications of 6DoF audio and our technology are wide. Cinematic trailers for VR projects, naturally sounded audio for games, live performances recording, artistic audio content for domes with multi-loudspeakers installations, or virtual presentation…

[A new study explores the connections between two types of presence-related experience. Apparently opportunities or reasons to question the reality status of our experience, including those in VR, helps us initiate lucid dreaming in which we can control what happens. This story from Inverse describes the study and its interesting implications; see also “Scientists engineer dreams to understand the sleeping brain. Technologies such as noninvasive brain stimulation and virtual reality gaming offer insights into how dreams arise and what functions they might serve” in The Scientist. –Matthew] HOW VIRTUAL REALITY CAN UNLOCK AN ELUSIVE DREAM STATE Am I dreaming? By…

[As reported by Finnair’s Blue Wings magazine, the airline’s virtual flights to visit Santa are not only an entertaining holiday experience for children and families during a pandemic but suggest future widespread applications of the presence-evoking technology. See the original story for a second image; a 15 second trailer is available on YouTube, as is a 2:30 minute promotional video from Visit Rovaniemi titled “Santa Claus presents: Welcome to Rovaniemi, my official hometown in Lapland, Finland”; for more on the Finnish VR studio Zoan, see the company’s website. –Matthew] FINNAIR’S PIONEERING VR HOLIDAY FLIGHTS POINT TO THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL…

[This is a fascinating and disturbing story about the intense presence responses evoked by an AI designed not to serve humans but develop an emotional connection with them. The original version from Sixth Tone includes four more images and a 4:05 minute video. See also a 2016 ISPR Presence News post. –Matthew] [Image: Left to right: The fourth, fifth, and sixth generations of Xiaoice, released in 2016, 2017, and 2018, respectively. From @小冰 on Weibo] The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men In China, a sassy chat bot is stealing millions of men’s hearts. It’s also recording their most intimate…

[In addition to the impressive production values, big names and now important messages in the virtual reality productions of Baobab Studios, two stories in Variety (here and here) highlight the ways the studio is designing increasingly rich presence experiences; note the description of the company’s vision in the last two paragraphs below. For more information see the Baobab Studios website. –Matthew] Virtual Reality Studio Baobab’s Message of Climate Change Leads to U.N. Partnership By Carole Horst December 10, 2020 For Baobab Studios, partnering with the United Nations on VR short “Baba Yaga” was a natural step. The company, which has…

[Here’s a first-person report on a new virtual reality meeting app, along with some perspective on the potential of VR meetings during and after the pandemic. See the original version in Wired for three more images, and for more perspective see the Computerworld story “Cisco’s Webex vs. Arthur Digital and the future of collaboration and communication: Cisco looks to be moving toward video phones; Arthur is focusing on mixed reality. Somewhere in the mix is the future of communication.” –Matthew] VR Meetings Are Weird, but They Beat Our Current Reality A new VR app called Arthur allows you and your…

[The prospect of creating a digital replica of ourselves for people to interact with in even the distant future so that we are remembered and even continue to learn and evolve after we die epitomizes many of the things I find fascinating about presence, including the many complex ethical issues it raises. This CNET story describes some of the latest efforts and issues related to presence after death; see the original for a 1:07 minute video (also available via Vimeo). –Matthew] [Image: This isn’t Deepak Chopra. It’s Digital Baby Deepak. Credit: Deepak Chopra] Deepak Chopra made a digital clone of…

[This story from Futurism is about what it’s like to view and interact with the world in the third-person, as if you’re playing a video game, which logically involves multiple types of presence (including self and inverse presence). The original story features a different image; for a related 10 minute video see “Real GTA Simulator!“ on YouTube. –Matthew] [Image: Source: liam on Twitter] Living in “Third Person View” With VR and a Backpack-Mounted Camera With a VR rig and a backpack-mounted camera, you can experience life from a third person view — like a video game character. By Dan Robitzski…