[Would brain responses to sensorially richer virtual environments, or even a Holodeck, be more similar to those for nonmediated environments? This is from BrainBlogger. –Matthew ] Brains Aren’t Fooled By Virtual Reality by Viatcheslav Wlassoff, PhD | February 24, 2015 The scenes and the environments in World of Warcraft games appear so real that, for a moment, you forget you are staring at the screen. Technology has advanced so much that we can not only recreate reality but also engage with it. But however real the virtual may seem, the brain knows the difference! According to the recently published findings,…

[Telepresence robots are changing the experience for teacher and students at Michigan State in this article from Campus Technology; more details from are available directly from MSU, and Slate has a similar story about the introduction of the robots in high schools. –Matthew ] Michigan State Tests Telepresence Robots for Online Students By Leila Meyer 02/24/15 Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI, has been experimenting with telepresence robots that let online students participate in face-to-face classes. The university offers a doctoral program in educational psychology and educational technology, which is available in both face-to-face and distance education formats, but…

[This installation creates an interesting set of embodiment illusions; the creators explain the origins and purpose of the project in the second half of this post from the Leap Motion blog, which includes lots of pictures and videos. –Matthew ] Reach into the Uncanny Valley with the Augmented Hand Series Golan Levin / March 5, 2015 An earlier version of this post appeared on flong.com. The Augmented Hand Series is a real-time interactive software system that presents playful, dreamlike, and uncanny transformations of its visitors’ hands. Originally conceived in 2004, the project was developed at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative…

[This story focuses on a central aspect of presence, the technology becoming invisible to the user; it’s from Fast Company, where you’ll find several more pictures. By the way, note the Samsung “Presence sensor” in the image (upper right in the middle). –Matthew ] The Future of Consumer Tech Is About Making You Forget It’s There Microsoft, Samsung, GoPro, and others take their best guesses at the next five years of consumer electronics. By Jared Newman February 27, 2015 When Apple introduced the iPad 2 in 2011, it laid out a noble goal for the future of technology. “Technology alone…

[Several reporters who experienced a demo of the Valve and HTC collaboration Vive VR system at recent conferences have written mostly glowing reviews (see stories in BBC News, PC World, Re/Code, Venture Beat and a review roundup in the Christian Science Monitor). The most enthusiastic, and the one that most explicitly mentions presence, is in Gizmodo – here’s an excerpt: “What this headset nails—and I mean f***ing nails—is a sense of presence. A sense that you’re not just seeing a different world, but that your actual body is being transported there. Strap on the Vive and you are somewhere else.…

[As I mentioned in a post in the ISPR Members Facebook group yesterday, I’ve noticed what seems to be an increase in the use of the term presence in the tech industry and press; here’s a good example from AMD; this is the company’s press release but it’s been covered in venues like Slashgear and Forbes, and Sasa Marinkovic, the head of software marketing for AMD’s computing and graphics group, writes about it in detail in a new piece in TechCrunch titled “First Rule of VR: Don’t Break the Presence.” –Matthew ] AMD Takes Aim at Exceptional Content, Comfort and…

[Incorporating not just tracking, touch or vibration but physical resistance in screen-based and more immersive technologies has exciting potential applications… This is from Forbes, where the story includes other pictures and a 2:37 minute video; for more information see http://www.therealmsystem.com –Matthew ] World’s First 3D Force Gaming Tech Launches Crowdfunding Campaign on Kickstarter Jason Lim 2/18/2015 In the backyard of a terrace house in the Sydney suburb of Paddington, the world’s first gaming system that measures energy expenditure whilst using resistance, is being developed. The start-up behind it is The Realm, a tiny team with a big vision. Many have…

[Another unusual context for social presence… this is from All Day, where there are 21 more images and the link below to a 6:30 minute documentary on Vimeo. I particularly like that you can ‘visit’ the town and its dolls via Google Earth. For a more unsettling example of this kind of thing, there’s Mexico’s Isla de las Munecas (Island of the Dolls) – see isladelasmunecas.com and the 2:34 minute video by David Maurice Smith on Vimeo. –Matthew ] Nagora, Japan: Valley Of The Dolls By Ash M. Richter If all of your neighbors were replaced by dolls, what would…

[This story from The Verge includes some interesting impressions comparing standard and Dolby Atmos audio for different VR content; only a step forward, but it’s (exciting) early days. –Matthew ] Dolby dives into virtual reality with Atmos surround sound for VR By Bryan Bishop on February 26, 2015 As the momentum behind virtual reality slowly continues to build we’re seeing more traditional movie companies dip their toes into the medium. Today Dolby is announcing a partnership with Jaunt that will bring its Atmos surround sound technology to the world of VR — and it may turn out that virtual reality…

[I wonder how this will change physical rehabilitation in the future – manipulating perceptions of a person’s body movement can affect, and logically could be used to treat, their experience of pain; this is the press release from the University of South Australia. –Matthew ] Neck pain can be changed through altered visual feedback February 23 2015 Using virtual reality to misrepresent how far the neck is turned can actually change pain experiences in individuals who suffer from chronic neck pain, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. It may seem like…

[This is a dramatic illustration of the power of the form of presence in which a medium itself is perceived as a social actor! The story is from The Japan Times, where it includes two more images. –Matthew ] [Image: An A-Fun employee put[s] the Sony’s pet robot AIBOs at an altar prior to hold[ing] the robots’ funeral at the Kofukuji Temple in Isumi, Chiba Prefecture. | AFP-JIJI] An afterlife for man’s best robot friend? AFP-JIJI Feb 25, 2015 Incense smoke wafts through the cold air of the centuries-old Buddhist temple as a priest chants a sutra, praying for the…

[This is a particularly thoughtful, big-picture story about presence and sexuality, from Wired. Note the connection between immersion in books and VR, the historical perspective, the role of popular culture portrayals, the critique of some technologies and predictions for their success, and especially the explicit (no pun intended) discussion of the role of presence in mediated intimacy. Matt Jones and I argued in an article in Human Technology (pdf) that presence scholars should pay more attention to this context for presence experiences. –Matthew ] [Image: When Ela Darling and her collaborators filmed some test footage for the Oculus Rift, what…