[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…

[Microsoft has created a fully mobile version of its holoportation technology, vastly reducing the bandwidth necessary to create the social and spatial presence illusion. The original version of this story from NextReality includes videos about Mobile Holoportation and the original incarnation of the technology as well as a 26:50 minute video of a presentation about the project from October’s User Interface and Software Technology (JIST) Symposium; more information and images are also available from Microsoft Research. –Matthew]   Microsoft Research Shows Off Mobile Holoportation Jason Odom November 28, 2016 In recent years, wave after wave of technological advancement has led…

[Aside from the important role of (spatial) presence in this story from USA Today (which includes a 3:04 minute video news report), note the solicitor general’s comment that jury members develop their knowledge and expectations about real-life law and order from their mediated entertainment experiences. –Matthew] Virtual reality could take jurors inside crimes Rebecca Lindstrom, WXIA-TV, Atlanta December 29, 2016 ATLANTA — A Georgia company wants to use body cameras to help jurors experience a crime scene for themselves. Utility Associates, of Decatur, Ga., is a software company that helps public safety, utilities and transit enterprises stay connected. Simon Araya,…

[If you’re away from loved ones this holiday weekend, there’s always the Kissenger (!). This story is from IEEE Spectrum, where it features a second image. By the way, don’t confuse this Kissenger with the closely related Lovatics robot Kissenger. Here’s wishing all of us a healthy, safe, productive, and most of all, happy 2017. –Matthew] [Image: With the Kissenger, video chats could be sealed with a kiss. Photo: Emma Yann Zhang.] Robotic Kiss Transmitter Lets You Smooch a Loved One From Afar By Eliza Strickland Posted 23 Dec 2016 If you can’t be with your loved ones this holiday season, perhaps…

[Dimitri Williams argues that social presence is more important than spatial presence in this opinion column from the Los Angeles Times. –Matthew] [Image: Mark Zuckerberg on a Facebook Messenger phone call with his wife Priscilla Chan while in VR. From the October 2016 story “Facebook Shows Us The Future of Social VR” in 3D VR Central.] Op-Ed Community is the ‘killer app’ missing from virtual reality By Dmitri Williams (Associate Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism specializing in games, communities and data) December 27, 2016 I have played with several virtual reality systems over the last…

[This story from WPTV is about a variation on the increasingly well-regarded idea of using distraction via presence to ease the experience of pain (e.g., see Kenney and Milling’s recent meta-analysis). The original story features two videos including the 2:35 minute news report, which is also available on YouTube. –Matthew] Boca Raton pediatrician’s office offers ‘flinch free vaccine experience’ Stephanie Susskind Dec 27, 2016 BOCA RATON, Fla. – Imagine being transported off the ground or even out of this world, all while sitting in your doctor’s office. That’s what one Palm Beach County pediatrician is doing for his patients to…