[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…

[From PC World’s GeekTech blog; more information is in a post on MIT’s Technology Review Hello World blog] Gigapixel Hack Makes Photos More Interactive By Elizabeth Fish, PCWorld    Sep 7, 2011 Have you ever looked at a particulalry stunning photograph and wished you could really immerse yourself in it? A recent project attempts to do just that, with the help of a good camera, a hacked Kinect, and an Arduino board. Samuel Cox, a university collegue of mine, recently held an exhibition for his postgraduate project, based on interactive photography. Sam invited the public to really explore the UK…

[From The Maine Campus; the VEMI Lab web site is here] [Image: Richard Corey, VEMI Lab Manager, (left) and Timothy McGrath (right) take part in a virtual world in Virtual Environment and Multimodal Integration Lab, located on the third floor of Boardman Hall. Photo by Paul Perkins] Students create virtual realities in campus lab By Rachel Curit Posted on Sunday, September 11th, 2011, 11:10 pm Several University of Maine students are escaping the tedium of school on a regular basis, although classes began only two weeks ago, by plugging in to virtual realities. Unlike students who may avoid the pressures…

[From The New York Times, where the article includes a multimedia feature; information about Audyssey’s latest product, Personal Surround, is available here] [Image: Tyson Yaberg of Audyssey Laboratories listened to an experimental system at the University of Southern California. Audyssey’s goal is to make dens and living rooms sound like concert halls and movie theaters. Photo by David Ahntholz for The New York Times.] Sound, the Way the Brain Prefers to Hear It By GUY GUGLIOTTA Published: September 5, 2011 LOS ANGELES — There is, perhaps, no more uplifting musical experience than hearing the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah” performed…

[From Time magazine’s Techland blog, where the post includes additional information; the full Sony press release, which includes the claim that the product will “provide entertainment enthusiasts with a more immersive, engaging visual experience,” is here] Sony Unveils Ultra High-Def 4K Projector: So Long 1080p! By Matt Peckham on September 8, 2011 You’ve finally picked up a monster-sized high-definition 1080p flatscreen for your entertainment center, you’re plowing through your Blu-ray stacks of Lost or Friday Night Lights or Breaking Bad at a crisp, eyeball-thrilling 1920 x 1080 pixels, and then you see this: Sony’s launching a projector that’ll run at 4K,…

[From Wired’s Gadget Lab blog, where the original post includes many additional images; also see the follow-up at Venture Beat here] How Microsoft Researchers Might Invent a Holodeck By Dylan Tweney August 31, 2011 A few hundred yards away, in Hardware Studio B, the rubber gets a little closer to the road. An impressive, multistory curtain of LEDs hangs in the lobby, displaying some sort of interactive art that responds to movement and sounds in the space, while employees enjoy a game of pingpong. The rest of the building is more prosaic, with surplus computers stacked up in the unused…