[From NYU-Poly, where the press release includes a 0:52 minute video; the Kickstarter campaign details are here] Still Wearing a Real Mask This Halloween? NYU-Poly Team Suggests Latest in Augmented Reality Posted October 28th, 2013 Brooklyn, New York—Halloween costumes can be so…analog. Until this season. Artist and Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) augmented-reality researcher Mark Skwarek has teamed with one of his grad students to create 3D digital masks more appropriate to the year 2013. Skwarek, an NYU-Poly instructor of integrated digital media, and Animesh Anad, a computer science graduate student, developed the virtual masks to launch an…

[From Springer via ScienceDaily] Virtually Numbed: Immersive Video Gaming Alters Real-Life Experience Role-playing video games can alter our experience of reality and numb us to important real-life experiences, a new study finds. Oct. 28, 2013 — Spending time immersed as a virtual character or avatar in a role-playing video game can numb you to realizing important body signals in real life. This message comes from Ulrich Weger of the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany and Stephen Loughnan of Melbourne University in Australia, in an article in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, published by Springer.…

[From Tnooz, where the story includes a 2:01 minute video] Japan tourist attraction uses digital penguins to increase visits Karthick Prabu Oct 16.2013 Sunshine Aquarium, a 35-year old Japan tourist attraction, wanted people to easily locate it amongst other point of interests and activities in Tokyo. The aquarium is located in an extremely dense part of the city and is nearly a kilometer from the nearest station. So, what did officials do to put it on the map? The aquarium went down the augmented reality route.…

[From Australian Ageing Agenda, where the story includes two more images] Virtual dementia experience for aged care workers By Natasha Egan on October 24, 2013 Aged care workers can now experience what it feels like to live with dementia at an Australian-first dementia learning centre that uses light, sound, colour, visual content and serious gaming technology to create a virtual reality. The Perc Walkley Dementia Learning Centre is a key feature of Alzheimer’s Australia Vic’s new facility in Parkville, Melbourne, which was opened by Alzheimer’s Australia National President Ita Buttrose on Wednesday. The training centre features doughnut shaped mood lighting,…

[From Polygon, where the story includes more pictures and a 4:54 minute video] How the holographic gaming rig Valve didn’t want aims to conquer the virtual world By Colin Campbell on Oct 22, 2013 When Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson parted ways with Valve last February, they took away the thingamajig they’d spent the previous year developing. And now it’s got a Kickstarter. CastAR is a 3D holograph-style game display that runs through a pair of glasses. In the shorthand blurb of the gadget’s Kickstarter, it’s basically like that “let the Wookie win” scene in which R2-D2 and Chewbacca play…

[From Stanford News] [Image: Participants in an experiment in Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab used female avatars in sexualized or non-sexualized dress. Courtesy of Jeremy Bailenson] Sexualized avatars affect the real world, Stanford researchers find A Stanford study shows that after women wear sexualized avatars in a virtual reality world, they feel objectified and are more likely to accept rape myths in the real world. The research could have implications for the role of female characters in video games. By Cynthia McKelvey Stanford Report, October 10, 2013 Researchers at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab are delving into questions posed by…

[From The Next Web, where the post includes more pictures] Wake up and smell the virtual coffee: The OPHONE will take your breath away By Paul Sawers, Thursday, 17 Oct ’13 You’re well-versed in virtual pets, virtual reality and many other virtual variants of physical entities. But what about virtual coffee? Yes, this is a ‘thing’, it seems. The Next Web is at Wired 2013 today in London, where David Edwards, a professor in Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University and founder of Le Labatoire, was on hand to give a glimpse into the future of your favorite caffeinated beverage.…

[From IEEE Spectrum’s Automaton blog; we’ve often noted the irony of flying around the world to meet to discuss telepresence technologies that allow people to not have to fly around the world to meet; how long before we’ll do this for ISPR conferences?!] [Image: A Beam remote presence robot at a conference.] How to Attend Next Week’s RoboBusiness Conference as a Robot By Erin Rapacki Posted 18 Oct 2013 This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. If you were hoping to…

[From the Washington Post via AP] Halloween display depicting fatalities at Oklahoma home frightens neighbors, prompts 911 call By KRISTI EATON Associated Press Oct 17, 2013 MUSTANG, Okla. (AP) — One man lies on his stomach on the driveway. Blood is splattered along the garage door that smashed his head and presumably killed him. Another man lies a few feet away, run over by a truck. The scene in a middle-class Oklahoma neighborhood made of single-story homes and well-manicured lawns seems out of a horror story because, well, it is. The two accident victims are in fact dummies, created as…

[From Pittsburgh City Paper] [Image: Like a wormhole in time: Kurt Hentschlager’s POL] In Hive, the choreography of the figures is mesmerizing and almost mystical by David S. Berger At its best, art will refashion one’s way of seeing. This is true of the latest exhibits by Kurt Hentschlager, an Austrian-born artist who now teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibits, at Wood Street Galleries and Space, are the U.S. premieres of three works: Hive, Model 5 and POL. From 1993 to 2003, Hentschlager teamed with Ulf Langeinrich in a group called Granular Synthesis, and…

[From Fast Company’s Co.Exist blog, where the post includes more pictures and a 7:36 minute video] Power-Ups, Virtual Balls, And Quantum Engines: Watch The Future Of Sports Check out the first iteration of this new virtual reality version of sports, where the ball is generated by a computer and you can earn special powers, just like a video game. Jessica Leber October 11, 2013 Basketball, soccer, baseball–these are all fine sports. But wouldn’t they be even more fun if they could be released from the boring, been-there-done-that laws of physics? This is what human-computer interaction researchers in Germany were wondering…

[From CBS DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth), where you can watch the 2:53 minute video version of the story] UTD Combats Bullying With Virtual Reality Project October 10, 2013 DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Inside a dark room at The University of Dallas’ Center for BrainHealth Evan Harris gets to play a video game. It’s a virtual video game starring him. Evan has an Avatar which mimics his facial expressions. “He astoundingly looks a lot like me,” says Harris from Grand Prairie with a slight smile. There is a camera on the computer screen which captures Evan’s emotions. While he’s in one room, clinician…