[The author of this story from Space.com describes what it’s like to stand, walk on, and jump off of (!) a virtual version of a distant asteroid only visited by human-made unmanned spacecraft. It also mentions and provides a link regarding the experience of attending an academic conference in VR. See the original version for three more images. –Matthew] Jumping on an asteroid: How VR is being used to visit worlds we can never reach There was something about this experience that felt “sticky.” By Jackson RyanJuly 7, 2024 I’m standing so close to JAXA’s Hayabusa2 asteroid lander that I…

[Here’s a story about another very positive application of presence: The philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has collaborated with immersive experiences company REM5 Studios to produce and distribute a video for virtual reality headsets designed to raise awareness and resources to rid the world of the last cases of polio. The story from the Star Tribune provides the details; the original version includes the trailer for “Polio’s Last Mile” (it’s also available on YouTube). See the REM5 website for more information. –Matthew] [Image: At a Rotary conference in Singapore, attendees watch an immersive video created by REM5 that shows…

[In this essay from The Conversation, a group of researchers from Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) describe their work on an interesting application of presence that has implications for the design of food for long-term space missions and people on Earth who live in “isolated or confined environments, such as nursing home residents, individuals on military deployment, and submarine crews.” Follow the link to the group’s new publication in the fourth paragraph for much more information. –Matthew] [Image: Participants smelled different scents while immersed in a VR space station environment. Credit: Seamus Daniel / RMIT University] Astronauts don’t…

[A small survey study has found that most people believe that ChatGPT is conscious and can “make plans, reason, and feel emotions,” suggesting that much of the public experiences medium-as-social-actor presence when they use current AI. Some of the details are in this story from the University of Waterloo. Coverage in Futurism concludes with this: “Obviously, there will need to be way more research to determine how widespread these beliefs may be — but for now, it seems that many users are on the side of the small minority of AI experts who also think LLMs have become sentient.”…

[As technology gets better at simulating reality, it seems inevitable that we’ll be more likely to misperceive reality as simulation, i.e., inverse presence experiences will become more common. The short story below from The Verge provides an example from the recent UK elections. Follow the links, and an official debunking of the accusations about the candidate from Logically Facts, for more details. –Matthew] [Image: Source: The Independent] The UK politician accused of being AI is actually a real person Mark Matlock, a candidate for the far-right Reform UK party, aroused suspicion when he didn’t show up for campaign events.…

[As this story from Heise Online notes, virtual advertising – in which physical ads in a stadium are replaced digitally with different ads for home viewers – isn’t new. But the technology involved is advancing to make the (presence) illusion more convincing, personalized, and common. As the author notes at the end, “Virtual advertising opens up new opportunities for marketers and broadcasters, but it also raises questions about the authenticity of the sports experience and, like developments in AI, puts the concept of reality to the test.” The story was “originally published in German and… automatically translated” and I’ve made…

[We could sure use more of the kind of applications of presence described in this story from the United Nations’ Politically Speaking magazine. See the Futuring Peace website for more resources. –Matthew] [Image: Security Council members hearing a Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia in 2022. UN Photo/Manuel Elías.] Shifting Mindsets: Integrating Virtual Reality in Conflict Mediation and Peacebuilding When applied to conflict mediation and peacebuilding settings, Virtual Reality (VR) can help conflict parties step into their opponents’ shoes and enhance reciprocal understanding of local communities. In this story, we look at the impact…

[An enhanced version of the award-winning empathy-evoking presence experience Body of Mine that explores gender dysphoria and which was previously only available as an installation at festivals, is now available for Meta Quest VR headsets. The Forbes story below includes a first-person description of the experience (with a key spoiler). UploadVR adds these details: “While the SteamVR version requires five HTC Vive Trackers and a high-spec PC, thanks to the development team at Agile Lens, Body of Mine uses ‘advanced in-headset motion capture’ that integrates Meta’s full-body synthesis on Quest. It also supports hand tracking and Quest Pro eye tracking.…

[This story from Tech Times explains the benefits, first to researchers and then for training new drivers, of a new mixed reality simulator being developed at Cornell University. The new simulator illustrates differences in and allows comparisons of presence experiences across different technologies. Follow the link at the end of the story to read coverage in the Cornell Chronicle; you can watch the 9:40 minute CHI 2024 presentation on YouTube; and an April 2022 story from Tech Xplore describes some of the team’s earlier work. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot from animated gif posted on X by co-author Fanjun (Frank) Bu with…

[Here’s another application of presence for training people for a dangerous profession in a safe, virtual environment. The original version of this University of Utah story includes two more images and a 57 second video (also available on YouTube). For more information see a 2021 story in FedTech Magazine and a 2020 story in Safety+Health Magazine. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot of a module to learn safety techniques in an underground mine. Credit: HOTO Minverso/University of Utah] Immersive VR trains miners for the real world By David Pace, College of Science, University of UtahJune 6, 2024 It’s the end of a shift…

[Reactions to a robot in South Korea falling down a flight of stairs has apparently generated widespread medium-as-social-actor presence and triggered conversations about the integration of robots in society (“especially in roles traditionally occupied by humans”) and the ethical treatment of robots and AI. The story below is from Interesting Engineering; see coverage in DesignTAXI for more information and images. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Koreaboo] Civil servant robot ‘commits suicide’, deadly plunge under probe Witnesses saw the robot erratically circling before its fall, sparking speculation about the cause. By Aman TripathiJune 29, 2024 A first-of-its-kind incident has shocked the world after…

[This report from The Sector describes another application of presence in education, in this case via a simulated infant for students in early childhood education training programs who don’t have access to a real-life infant. Here’s a key quote from University of Canterbury Associate Professor Heide Lukosch: “We’re really intrigued by the opportunity and the power of virtual environments to help people in situations that would be otherwise hard to access, or potentially dangerous. In this case, we aim to create a virtual, immersive environment that enables the user to really feel present and accountable for their actions in certain…