[As this story from New Atlas points out, key benefits of the new Teleport telepresence robot are its simplicity and affordability; the original story includes a gallery of 7 pictures and the video mentioned at the end. In coverage in the Brisbane Times (which includes another video), Teleport creator Marita Cheng is quoted as saying “It gives you much more freedom and mobility, it makes you feel like you are there… People who have used our robots say it is 100 per cent more immersive than what they thought it would be. I guess if you look at the product…

[Another example of the need to consider the ethics of presence; this story is from CNN. –Matthew] [Image: Leia (Carrie Fisher) is no longer a ‘Princess, going by ‘General’ in “The Force Awakens.”] Carrie Fisher’s death renews questions about digital re-creation By Brian Lowry, CNN January 16, 2017 Carrie Fisher’s death was a jolt to the broad community of “Star Wars” fans. But it could help spark a necessary and overdue conversation about what might be called digital etiquette, and the practice of using computer-generated imagery to re-create and manipulate the likenesses of dead actors. Last week Lucasfilm responded to…

[This story from Haaretz catalogs many recent uses of VR and presence to evoke empathy, with a variety of positive effects, but the last section considers more cautious perspectives (including from our colleague Doron Friedman) regarding the efficacy and morality of evoking empathy in this way. The original version of the story includes eight videos. –Matthew] [Image: Trying on VR headset at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, last February. Credit: Pau Barrena/Bloomberg.] Can virtual reality bring world peace? The technology is being put to seemingly good uses, but some researchers disagree. By Shira Makin Jan 16, 2017 You are standing on…

[This week’s change in White House occupants is causing profound anxiety – a Scottish newspaper Sunday provided a creative suggestion that we’re living in a “huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years” – but the Ad Week story below notes the continuity of efforts of U.S. Presidents to share the experience of being in “the people’s house,” with increasing ability to evoke a sense of (tele)presence. The new video is available on the White House Facebook page and a post on the Oculus blog has more…

[This story from TriplePundit provides a clear, layperson’s explanation of the many ways virtual reality (and presence) can improve the design, engineering and manufacturing of products, along with the lives of those involved in these processes. –Matthew] [Image: Immersive virtual reality uses a 23-camera motion-capture system and head-mounted display to virtually immerse an employee in a future workstation. Credits: 1) Ford (for press use only); 2) Courtesy of author.] Inside Ford’s Virtual Reality Labs By Phil Covington on Friday, Jan 13th, 2017 These days the buzz in the auto industry is all about autonomous vehicles and the future of personal…

[This story from CNET makes clear the value of being ‘present’ in a museum via telepresence robot, with the second half providing the author’s impressions of the experience; see the original story for several more pictures. Google’s Arts & Culture resources provide a more limited but still presence-evoking experience of many cultural treasures (e.g., as a clock collector and enthusiast I’d like to visit the (U.S.) National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania in person but I can ‘visit’ via Google. –Matthew] [Image: My virtual experience in the museum was comparable to my real-life visit. Photo by James Martin/CNET.]…

[This story from The New York Times provides an interesting look at the development and early-days potential of Google’s Tilt Brush technology and virtual art generally; see the original for more images and two videos. –Matthew] [Image: Roz Chast’s cartoon made with Tilt Brush. Credit: Google] The Making of Virtually Real Art With Google’s Tilt Brush By Frank Rose January 4, 2017 SAN FRANCISCO — In 1949, a Life magazine photographer named Gjon Mili made a pilgrimage to the French Riviera to see Pablo Picasso. Mili had come up with a way to photograph trails of light, and he wanted to…

[The installation described in this story from Alphr (where it includes more pictures and a 0:23 minute video) looks like an intriguing, and even important, presence project. –Matthew] Enter a psychedelic virtual forest in Treehugger: Wawona Open at the Southbank Centre today, Treehugger: Wawona combines VR and physical set design to create a virtual giant sequoia by Thomas McMullan Unless you happen to be 80 metres tall, have a circumference of 30 metres and have lived for 2,500 years, giant sequoias will make you feel small. These vast trees exist on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains in…

[I’ve often thought it’s amazing that we feel empathy for animated characters and stories; here’s a post from the (excellent) Kottke.org blog about the invention 80 years ago of the multiplane camera and how it helped enable this element of social presence. The original post includes a 7:20 minute video. –Matthew] [Image: Walt Disney, center, with Bob Gibeaut, left, head of the camera department, and Bob Broughton, in front of multiplane camera. Source: Los Angeles Times.] Disney’s multiplane camera, an innovation in illusion posted by Jason Kottke   Jan 05, 2017 In a short film shot in 1957, Walt Disney described…

[According to a recent Parks Associates marketing study, “more than 60% of U.S. broadband households claim to know little or nothing about virtual reality,” but “50% of consumers who try a VR headset enjoy it and make plans to purchase one, while 15% who try one enjoy the experience and then buy a headset.” So the Facebook pop-up ‘stores’ described in the story below from USA Today make sense. The original story includes a 0:27 minute video and more pictures, and coverage in The Denver Post has a list of the cities that are hosting the demos. –Matthew] [Image: Facebook’s…

[This post from The Economist’s Gulliver blog considers the potential isolating effects of telepresence in the context of air travel; for more information about Skylights see the company’s website and coverage in Apex that includes a 4:07 minute video. –Matthew] Flying solo together Virtual-reality headsets on planes mean we can isolate ourselves from irritating cabin-mates Flying is becoming less communal Gulliver Jan 4th 2017 by A.W. In the early days of commercial flight, people would dress up to take to the air and marvel at the fact that they, members of a heretofore land-bound species, were flying through the sky.…

[A next key step in the evolution of VR may be the development of episodic storytelling; this is from CNBC, where the original story includes two related videos. See the PhoenIX VR website for more information and a 2:31 minute teaser video. –Matthew] [Image: The PhoenIX, an animated science-fiction virtual reality series developed by Warrior9.] Episodic virtual reality content could transform consumer entertainment Nyshka Chandran Thursday, 29 Dec 2016 What was television like before episodic narratives? The development of serialized content transformed traditional entertainment media and virtual reality (VR) startups are now hoping it will do the same for their…