[From the New York Times] [Image: The video game Disney Infinity shows how characters from the various Disney franchises might be mixed and matched.] Critic’s Notebook The Virtual World Welcomes Toy Players By Chris Suellentrop Published: August 15, 2013 Many people still think of video games as the province of children, precisely because, at the moment of their mass-market origins in the 1970s, they were genuinely kids’ stuff. A December 1980 article in The New York Times Magazine reported that electronics was transforming the toy industry the same way that plastics had 30 years earlier. The article barely differentiated the…

[From Hypergrid Business; a CNET story about Space Glasses is here and the product web site is here] Commentary and Opinion: Maria’s Worlds Virtual reality and the single office worker By Maria Korolov At some distant point in the future, virtual reality will be good enough and immersive enough that we can telecommute to our jobs by simply stepping into some version of a Holodeck or plugging into some version of the Matrix. Today’s virtual reality has only very limited use for the average corporate employee. There are some uses. Rapid prototyping, virtual simulations, the occasional virtual meeting or conference.…

[From Road to VR, where the story includes more pictures; in addition to the links at the end, there’s our recent article “Telepresence and Sexuality”] More Erotic Oculus Rift Games in the Works (Roundup) [NSFW] August 15, 2013 | Posted by Ben Lang The last few days have seen the release of several new erotic experiences for the Oculus Rift. Some are on the art side of the spectrum while others are just flat-out NSFW Oculus Rift pornography. Here’s a round-up of the latest. While we do our best to report on this news without putting any NSFW content directly…

[From Dundalk Chamber] European first as Louth County Museum installs a ‘virtual presenter’ Friday, 26 July 2013  – Dundalk Chamber Up-to-the-minute technology and history are combining with the installation of a Casio Virtual Presenter in the County Museum, Dundalk. The joint project by the Museum, Casio and Quick Response Ireland is the first of its kind in the country and the first such installation at a European museum. Internationally, only one other such Virtual Presenter has gone into use, in Japan. The Virtual Presenter is a cutting-edge tool of Casio Signage, with the power to captivate passers-by with a realistic-looking…

[From Digital Trends, where the story includes an additional images; by the way, as described last year in the Wall Street Journal, to save money Ikea is replacing product photographs in its catalogs with computer-generated images] Ikea’s new augmented reality app superimposes furniture into your empty room By Natt Garun — August 2, 2013 The typical Ikea experience usually goes like this: You get to the showroom, everything looks so wonderful and amazing, you pretend to live in the overly-organized fake bedroom, realize you should make a list of things to buy and… crap, now you’re not quite sure how…

[From The Next Web] DAQRI and the playful future of augmented reality By Josh Ong, Thursday, 25 Jul ’13 Augmented reality (AR) is a mixed bag. Early implementations have been gimmicky without adding much value to the experience, but when it’s done right, AR can be a wondrous experience. DAQRI is taking strides to legitimize the medium by partnering with big-name brands like Maxim and Target, and the company is charting a next step to bring AR experiences to educational toys and games. The startup tipped its hand on Wednesday with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign for a set…

[From the Cheraw Chronicle] Virtual Reality School applies for charter by Special to the Chronicle August 4, 2013 Can you imagine a school where students visit the Sistine Chapel and are back home by the bell? Or a school where students learn to operate lasers on the moon or explore sea life on the bottom of the ocean floor? Or a school where students travel back in time to meet Beethoven, Davy Crockett or Alexander the Great? Soon such a school might exist in South Carolina if the proposed NOBLE Virtual School, based upon interactive 3D virtual world technology, is…

[From XConomy, where the story includes an image slideshow; for an evaluation of the video walls for conferencing, see a post on Inrich Consulting’s web site] Prysm Eyes Telepresence as Next Application for Video Walls Wade Roush 8/6/13 One sign that your company has arrived is that you can afford telepresence suites from Cisco or Polycom—you know, those rooms equipped with a trio of 1080p flat-panel displays and special cameras, microphones, and lighting so that chief executives in New York can see tiny droplets of sweat on the faces of vice presidents in Los Angeles. The cost of building and…

[From Fast Co.Exist; more information is available from Shigeo Yoshida’s web site] A Portrait Of Your Face As A Happier Person This camera-powered mirror projects an image back to you where you’re happier than you are in real life. Can it actually make you happier? Sydney Brownstone August 6, 2013 Interacting with incessantly optimistic people can be one of the most depressing experiences on Earth, if you’re wired that way. Being told to “visualize success” can be good advice if it weren’t rendered meaningless by overuse (or cynicism). But with a new tool out from a team of graduate students…

[From Road to VR] VR Researcher Flips the Script, Augments Virtual Reality with Actual Reality August 6, 2013 | Posted by Ben Lang In what seems like a total reversal of the usual paradigm, a VR researcher is showing the benefits of augmenting the virtual world with the real world. In ‘traditional’ augmented reality, we take a scene from real life and overlay it with useful digital information that in some way enhances the experience. Oliver Kreylos, a VR researcher from UC Davis, has turned the tables by bringing the real world into the virtual world for the same purpose.…

[From Engadget, where the story includes a 1:10 minute video] NASA JPL takes a VR tour of Mars with Oculus Rift and Virtuix Omni (video) By Nicole Lee posted Aug 5th, 2013 NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory likes to dip its feet in cutting edge consumer hardware from time to time, as evidenced by its trial use of the Leap Motion to remotely control a Mars rover. Well, you can’t get much more cutting edge than virtual reality, which is why the team was so intrigued by the Oculus Rift when they first saw it at PAX last year. They signed…

[From the Washington Post’s The Switch blog; for more on this topic see “State of Virtual Reality Based Disaster Preparedness and Response Training” in PLOS Currents] [Image: CDC staff undergo a pilot phase of virtual reality training in 2009. The agency is increasingly turning to virtual reality to help train emergency responders.] The CDC just spent $626,000 on virtual reality. Here’s why. By Brian Fung, Published: August 2, 2013 You push past the flap of the command hut and instinctively shield your eyes from the brightness of the sun outside. As they adjust to the light, your eyes start to…