[This link-filled report from the World Economic Forum describes the increasing use of presence-evoking VR and AR for shopping.  See the original story for two more images and three videos. –Matthew] [Image: Hugo Boss customers can try on clothes using an avatar based on their own measurements. Credit: Hugo Boss] How many consumers are shopping in virtual reality and what can it offer them? By Simon Read, Senior Writer, Formative Content August 23, 2022 More of us are turning to virtual reality (VR) to do our shopping – and it is a switch that could signal big changes in the…

[This press release from Airbus describes the five winning submissions by companies and individuals of the HeroX/Airbus Metaverse and the Future of Flight Challenge to envision “immersive, experiential ways in which a passenger can interact with the metaverse during the travel process” (quote from an April 2022 press release via PR Newswire). A search failed to reveal additional information about most winners but for more on Imirsifi’s entry see that company’s website. –Matthew] Exploring virtual reality’s future in air travel September 13, 2022 Imagine a future airline in-flight experience where travellers can enter a virtual environment via the Metaverse without…

[A new tennis simulator for virtual reality, with haptic feedback and both physical and mental training routines, will be available to the public starting in October; this story from Forbes (where the original includes two more pictures and three videos) provides the details. Key quote from Martina Navratilova: “The ball is coming at you a 100 miles per hour, you better be ready… It’s not the real deal, but it’s as close as you can get. All things being equal, of course you want to be on the court, but this is the best substitute.” –Matthew] Martina Navratilova-Backed Virtual Reality…

[Ars Technica has two stories about fast-evolving AI-based technologies that enable image and voice manipulation. The story below is about the latter – follow the links for the mentioned demonstrations and to create your own. The longer one is “With Stable Diffusion, You May Never Believe What You See Online Again. AI Image Synthesis Goes Open Source, with Big Implications” and includes these observations: “Stable Diffusion and other models are already starting to take on dynamic video generation and manipulation, so expect photorealistic video generation via text prompts before too long. From there, it’s logical to extend these capabilities to…

[Disney is experimenting with a new use of augmented reality to engage viewers in stories by evoking spatial presence, as described in this story from TechCrunch. The story also mentions related uses of AR by entertainment companies. See the original version for three more images and disney.com/remembering for more information, videos and images. –Matthew] Disney+ releases its first AR-enabled short film, ‘Remembering,’ starring Brie Larson By Lauren Forristal September 8, 2022 Today is Disney+ Day, and, as part of its perks, the company is offering Disney+ subscribers a new AR experience in conjunction with the short film “Remembering,” starring and…

[We’re used to watching movies and TV shows on high-definition screens and understanding but not consciously acknowledging (except perhaps during the credits) that large groups of people with a wide variety of specialized skills worked for months or years and spent large to huge amounts of money and used sophisticated, specialized technologies to construct every element of our (presence) experience. But a new project described in this story from PC Magazine suggests that in the future “everyone” will be able to merely describe their vision of a movie’s form and content to an AI-based technology that will then create the…

[Here is a thought-provoking essay from January about the potentially perilous effects of the growing “immersive entertainment industry” on both individuals and culture. It’s from the UKs leftist Tribune (its “About” page notes that George Orwell was a literary editor and HG Wells and Upton Sinclair were writers there). See the original essay for five more images. –Matthew] The Metaverse Is Just the Latest Step in Immersive Capitalism Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse is part of a much broader ‘immersive entertainment industry,’ which hopes to atomise popular culture – and force society to submit to its senses. By Adam Stoneman January 22,…

[This Sky News story from March presents an interesting ‘case study’ that illustrates the potential impacts of presence experiences with AI chatbots. It also includes some analysis by a London-based couples therapist. See the original version for 11 more images including some chat excerpts. –Matthew] ‘I fell in love with my AI girlfriend – and it saved my marriage’ A man who was struggling to support his depressed wife says his AI girlfriend has given him the love he needed to keep their family together. By Alexa Phillips, news reporter March 6, 2022 A man who had been planning a…

[This story from Horsetalk describes an unusual application of presence-evoking technology to provide hippotherapy, which the American Hippotherapy Association says “refers to how occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology professionals use evidence-based practice and clinical reasoning in the purposeful manipulation of equine movement as a therapy tool to engage sensory, neuromotor and cognitive systems to promote functional outcomes.” A quick web search indicates that there are already many types of horse-riding simulators (e.g., from Navi-IT), but the one in this story, and the new study in the journal Designs, was created specifically for children with cerebral palsy. See the…

[Technology has brought us far from the classic 1977 short film “Powers of Ten” by Charles and Ray Eames. This story from North Carolina State University describes the Scale Worlds virtual environment being developed to help students better understand size and scale in science by providing vivid, interactive experiences that humans can’t have with objects in the nonmediated world (the story also reviews some other available tools less likely to evoke presence). See the original version for a 1:48 minute video, and for more on “the broad spectrum of frameworks and attitudes towards scale” see the website of the June…

[As the excellent technology writer Mike Elgan reports in this story from Protocol, both video and audio deepfake technologies are already commonly used by a variety of fraudsters in remote hiring and will represent an increasingly serious threat as the ability to fool employers with deepfakes improves. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: z_wei/iStock/Getty Images Plus; Protocol] You just hired a deepfake. Get ready for the rise of imposter employees. New technology — plus the pandemic remote work trend — is helping fraudsters use someone else’s identity to get a job. By Mike Elgan, a journalist, opinion columnist and author August 22, 2022…

[Food Safety News reports on an unusual application of presence-evoking technology to simulate a free-range environment for hens, which a study shows can reduce their stress levels and increase their resistance to disease (though it also raises ethical questions about only simulating better treatment of many kinds of animals). –Matthew] [Image: Figure 1 from “Exposure to a Virtual Environment Induces Biological and Microbiota Changes in Onset-of-Lay Hens.” Representative pictures of Virtual Reality (VR) outside (A,B) and inside (C) of the chickens’ Pens. VR images were projected onto the vinyl projector screens placed against each pen wall in the VR group only.]…