[If you’re in the ISPR Presence Community Facebook group you saw this clever example of inverse presence a few days ago (along with several others lately); the story about it below is from Daily Star Trek News. CNET’s coverage adds this detail: “A close-up of the fan-made holodeck interface screen says, ‘Early C21 Outdoor, Los Angeles City Park, Survival Mode, VELDT, Variation 7.’ According to [designer Arthur] Chadwick, VELDT is a nod to the short story called The Veldt by science fiction author and famous Los Angeles resident Ray Bradbury.” Both stories include tweeted reactions and several more are in…

[This New Atlas story about Eight360’s impressive virtual reality platform includes lots of references to compelling presence experiences (without using the term); see the original version for more pictures and the video mentioned at the end, and see the company’s website for more coverage and videos. –Matthew] Eight360 Nova: A crazy, untethered, fully rollable VR motion platform By Loz Blain April 23, 2020 By far the most extreme gaming and simulation platform we’ve seen, the Nova places you in a fully untethered ball that’s free to spin in any direction, creating all sorts of wild gravity effects for total immersion…

[A clever campaign to promote travel to Iceland lets people release their pandemic-related (or other) stress by having their recorded screams broadcast into the empty and beautiful Icelandic countryside, creating presence as transportation until they can “come let it out for real.” This story from CBS News includes a 1:01 video (also available via YouTube) and a 6:54 minute news report about adapting to isolation. –Matthew] Iceland is broadcasting the world’s screams to relieve coronavirus stress By Sophie Lewis July 16, 2020 People around the world are finding different ways to relieve stress during the coronavirus pandemic. Some have tried…

[The WindowSwap project lets users visit a website and “voyeuristically travel by looking out of somebody else’s window for a while.” This story from Smithsonian Magazine, where the original version includes seven more example images, also highlights other virtual travel experiences available online. The Kottke.org blog post “Let’s Go for a Stroll Outside” covers, and provides video examples of, another. –Matthew] [Image: The view from WindowSwap user Ula’s window in Doha, Qatar. Credit: Courtesy of Sonali Ranjit and Vaishnav Balasubramaniam / Coded by Maryam Touimi Benjelloun)] This Website Highlights Views Outside Windows Across The World The WindowSwap project provides a…

[Lucas Rizzotto recorded his life in first-person 3D for all of 2019 and created a VR interface that allows him to re-experience any part of it. The short description below is from PetaPixel, where the story includes his 28:11 minute video (also available via YouTube) and some interesting quotes taken from it. For information on an award-winning and thought-provoking earlier social VR project by the artist-inventor, “Where Thoughts Go,” see coverage in VRScout. –Matthew] This Guy Wore a Face Camera for a Year and Built a VR Time Machine By Michael Zhang July 11, 2020 San Francisco-based inventor Lucas Rizzotto…

[A new company is using virtual reality and the presence it evokes to give people in the workplace first-person experiences to help them understand and counter “bias, inequity, and incivility.” This story is from IEEE Spectrum, where it includes a second image. For more information see the company’s website and for related stories see these previous ISPR Presence News posts: Presence for good: “Traveling While Black” VR documentary creates impactful experience Presence for good: Changing your race in virtual reality U. of Illinois students crowdfunding VR films to increase understanding about police-minority relations Can VR and presence help stop sexual…

[This is a thoughtful survey of some fascinating and important issues and questions raised by incorporating artificial intelligence in human-like machines, creating medium-as-social-actor presence. It’s from USC Dornsife and draws on the expertise of researchers affiliated with the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; see the original version for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Mathieu Persan] Do Humans Dream of Androids Dreaming? From the species that brought you the moon landing and the hot dog eating contest, artificial intelligence is here to change the world. By Stephen Koenig July 7, 2020 The first question…

[The pandemic has accelerated the use of presence-evoking technologies in many contexts including psychological therapy, the subject of this story from The New York Times (where the original includes a second image). Even with the current limitations of presence via videoconferencing covered here, wider use of remote therapy is said to be likely to continue after the pandemic. The potential of emerging media such as virtual and augmented reality (as well as artificial intelligence) is not considered in the story but seems likely to even further enhance the effectiveness and success of teletherapy. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Kim Ryu] Teletherapy, Popular…

[The study described in this short story from Massive Science is interesting both as a clever use of virtual reality and presence in psychology research and for the implications of its results for how we choose to structure our work activities in actual and virtual environments. –Matthew] [Image: Figure 2 from “Studying the effects of visual movement on creativity”: “Three screenshots from the participants’ point of view in the moving condition, with the lights moving from front to back.”] Moving – even in virtual reality – can increase our creativity and problem-solving Feeling low on ideas? Trick yourself into thinking…

[Among the presence-evoking technologies useful during a pandemic is teleoperated robots. This story from Digital Trends describes how they’re being tested by the FamilyMart chain of Japanese stores; the original version of the story includes the impressive 1:20 minute timeline video from the website of the robots’ maker, Telexistence (it’s also available via YouTube). Coverage in VRScout begins with this: “Imagine walking into your local convenience store only to find the usual checkout person had been replaced by a remote-controlled robot operated in VR by a human being located hundreds of miles away”; see that story for more images and…

[Effective social presence in virtual reality depends on realistic real-time digital representations of human eyes; this short story from UploadVR describes a new system developed by Facebook Research to accomplish this. The abstract of the detailed research report about the system concludes with this: “Our quantitative experiments show that our method results in higher reconstruction quality, and qualitative results show our method gives a greatly improved sense of presence for VR avatars.” You can find the abstract and full paper along with a 5:14 minute video (also available via YouTube) on the Facebook Research website. –Matthew] Facebook’s Prototype Photoreal Avatars…

[Vox reports on a rare positive use of deepfake technology: disguising identities of vulnerable people who appear on camera while allowing viewers to fully “see” them. See the original story for two different images and three videos. For more details and a video about the process, see coverage in Documentary Magazine, which adds this important detail: “It’s possible for the face veil to be completely undetectable. But France and his team wanted viewers to know who wore a [digital] veil and who didn’t. (The Russian activists generally did not.) ‘It’s an instant visual communicator that that person is in danger,’…