[Reading this new story in PsyPost about a study demonstrating interesting effects of the illusion of having an opposite-sex body led me to the lead author’s earlier study of the effects of seeming to switch bodies with a friend. That study is nicely presented in a link-filled Vice story from August 2020 that reviews embodied cognition research based on these kinds of presence illusions. –Matthew]   Experiencing the illusion of having an opposite-sex body in virtual reality can shift aspects of gender identity By Beth Ellwood December 23, 2020 A new study published in Scientific Reports offers insight into how the…

[After ten months in which actual travel is risky or impossible, virtual travel options look more appealing, especially the personalized one offered by Cooee and described in this short story from Fast Company (the original includes three more pictures). On behalf of myself and ISPR I wish you, and us all, a much brighter year ahead. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Paul Szewczyk/Unsplash] Missing vacation? Take a custom Zoom tour of Cambodia or Peru Cooee is finding ways to keep tour guides in business during the pandemic—and let people get a view of somewhere besides their own house. December 23, 2020 By…

[MotorTrend reports on a Nissan intern’s innovative car design, which the company has brought to life in a full-scale model. The Nissan GT-R(x) 2050 allows the driver to share control via a brain-to-vehicle connection and “feel as one with the car.” See the original story for 35 photos and a 3:38 minute video. The Nissan press release (which includes even more images and the video) includes this quote from David Woodhouse, vice president of Nissan Design America: “JB [Choi] has essentially envisioned a new mode of transportation that people could experience like clothes, ‘wearable,’ instead of a traditional vehicle ‘carriage.’…

[This story from Davidson College describes the potential for presence-evoking technology to reduce the negative effects of gender stereotypes. See the original story for two more images and for links to Professor Peck’s publications on this and other presence-related topics see Google Scholar. –Matthew] Virtual Reality Holds Promise in Combatting ‘Stereotype Threat’ December 22, 2020 By Mark Johnson Harvard’s president lost his job. So did a Google researcher. Mattel recalled a new version of “Barbie.” Each was a consequence of reinforcing the harmful stereotype that girls and women can’t compete with boys and men in science and math. The stereotype…

[As this first-person report on the new VR mode in Microsoft Flight Simulator makes clear, there are many early-day bugs to overcome, but the experience evokes a strong sense of spatial presence and presence as realism. See the original Engadget story for three more images and a 4:51 minute video. A 6:52 minute video review by a professional pilot is available on YouTube, along with the same pilot’s sparsely narrated 23 minute video of a bush flight and flights around New York and San Francisco. –Matthew] Microsoft Flight Simulator’s new VR mode haunts my dreams When virtual reality meets dream…

[The theory that our entire existence is an advanced simulation is going viral on TikTok, as reported in this link-filled short story from Futurism. The December 22 Your Tango roundup it mentions has more examples and notes that “The simulation theory hashtag on TikTok already has 27.4 million views and the simulation hashtag has 624.4 million views — that means it’s gaining a ton of traction on TikTok.“ The September 2020 Bustle story “#GlitchTok Viral TikTok Videos Are The Best Way To Creep Yourself Out” says “There are thousands of videos to lose yourself in, and comment sections to theorize…

[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…