[From Nashoba Valley Technical High School’s Newswire; the VRSim web site is here and videos are here] [Image: Nashoba Tech sophomore Paul Gambardello of Chelmsford uses SimSpray, a 3-D, virtual-reality teaching tool that simulates painting. His performance can be seen on the screen behind him] Virtual Painting Latest Innovative Educational Tool at Nashoba Tech Posted by Dan Phelps September 20, 2011 WESTFORD — Nashoba Tech once again finds itself on the cutting edge as the first school in the area to employ an innovative, virtual-reality spray gun that allows instructors in the Automotive Collision Repair & Refinishing program to teach students…

[From Laughing Squid] EARonic, iPhone Cases That Look Like Ears By Rusty Blazenhoff on September 14, 2011 CollabCubed has produced the EARonic, a collection of iPhone cases with photographic images of ears. Designed by Rhode Island School of Design student, Daniela Gilsanz, there are five ears total, including one with stubble and piercings and another with a wireless headset. Daniela first came up with the idea last fall when applying to art schools. She was getting a portfolio together and while sketching some ears in her sketchbook (one of the prompts from a school) the initial EARonic mockup and portfolio piece came…

[From Diginfo.TV, where the story includes additional images] Simulating The Sensation Of An Object Passing Through Your Hands 14 September 2011 The Kajimoto research group at the University of Electro-Communications is developing a device that simulates the sensation of something passing through your hand. It is proposed to improve the sense of realism in games, and uses a vibration mechanism to create the illusion.…

[From The Korea Times, where the story includes additional images] [Image: Musicians in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, perform with players in New York, shown in the screen in the background, in a real-time telepresence concert on Monday morning or Sunday evening in the United States.] Telepresence inspires new cross-border music-making  By Lee Hyo-won 09-27-2011 ANSAN, Gyeonggi Province ? Cross-border music-making traditionally meant artists embarking on worldwide tours to reach audiences or musicians from different corners of the world gathering in one place to collaborate. But in this digital age, a live rock concert in London can attract full-house audiences in Sydney…

[From Science] [Image: Deus in machina. A semiautonomous robot can be controlled with the brain waves of paralyzed patients. Credit: José del R. Millán] Disabled Patients Mind-Meld With Robots by Sara Reardon on 6 September 2011 They’re not quite psychic yet, but machines are getting better at reading your mind. Researchers have invented a new, noninvasive method for recording patterns of brain activity and using them to steer a robot. Scientists hope the technology will give “locked in” patients—those too disabled to communicate with the outside world—the ability to interact with others and even give the illusion of being physically…

[From The Red & Black, the independent student newspaper of the University of Georgia] [Image from Angry AP] 3D will plague screens for years to come By MEGAN WHITE on September 25, 2011 My first televised encounter with the third dimension occurred at Disney World’s MGM Studios when I was only six years old. In order to fully embrace the tacky tourist experience, my parents had decided to take my sister and me to see “The Muppets” in the park’s high tech, state-of-the-art 3D theater. For a six-year-old in the 90s, anything involving the Muppets was instantly appealing, so with…

[From MIT’s Technology Review] Augmented Reality Meets Gesture Recognition A new app superimposes imagery over your smart-phone view, and lets you interact with it via hand gestures. Thursday, September 15, 2011 By Tom Simonite To make its business software more effective, HP recently paid $10 billion for Autonomy, a U.K. software company that specializes in machine learning. But it turns out that Autonomy has developed image-processing techniques for gesture-recognizing augmented reality—the type of technology that could be more attractive to consumers than IT managers. Augmented reality involves layering computer-generated imagery on top of a view of the real world as…

[From Nottingham Trent University; see also coverage from BBC Newsbeat] Excessive videogamers transfer virtual experiences into real world impulses Wednesday 21 September 2011 Some videogame players are becoming so immersed in their virtual gaming environments that when they stop playing they transfer some of their virtual experiences to the real world, according to new research. The first of its kind study, led by experts at Nottingham Trent University, reveals that some gamers experience ‘Game Transfer Phenomena’ (GTP) which results in them doing things in the real world as if they were still in the game. Extreme examples of GTP have…

[From 3DTV.com (important note: as of September 22, 2011 the original post at 3DTV is infected by a Trojan Horse)] MIT Develops a Panoramic 3D Motion Picture Camera System By Mike Lata on September 19, 2011 MIT continues to show interest in 3D technology in film; and has just developed a camera rig that aims to completely immerse viewers into the picture. The reason it offers such immersion is that 3D pictures being filmed with this camera will have 360-degree stereoscopic 3D. This will allow images to appear all around viewers. What is also interesting about this new camera rig…

[From Computerworld] Opinion HAL 9000 — not just in space anymore Your phone and other devices are quickly evolving into intelligent robot assistants you can talk to By Mike Elgan September 17, 2011 Computerworld – A few years ago, the Pentagon launched a program to create a fully functional HAL 9000 — the intelligent software robot depicted in the 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you’ll recall, the movie HAL carried on conversations in natural language, monitored the spaceship and communications from Earth and notified the crew about important events just at the right time. HAL could also…

Gamer Commute video brings gaming world to life Here’s a change of pace post: The short (2:17 minute) video Gamer Commute by FreddieW (Freddie Wong and Brandon Laatsch) provides an entertaining example of the merging of real and virtual, illustrating a form of inverse presence.…

[From PhysOrg.com] Reach out and touch 3D characters with RePro3D September 17, 2011 by Nancy Owano (PhysOrg.com) — Lonely gamers who have felt the pain of being separated by a screen from their favorite personalities now have a way to reach out and touch their game characters, and that new way is RePro3D. A group of researchers from Keio University in Japan have come up with a 3-D screen that lets the user, glasses-free, see and “touch” characters on the screen. The word “touch” is in quotes because the technology is about a 3-D parallax display with infrared camera that…