[Our colleague Andrea Stevenson Won is quoted in this story from Scientific American about a new study of how people come to perceive and control simulated extra limbs. The story says that “the results suggest participants felt like they had acquired whole new body parts—not just like they had extended their existing feet by adding a new tool [which] potentially opens up a world of virtual and real possibilities.” See the supplementary information at the end of the Scientific Reports article for a 1:36 minute video that demonstrates the experimental procedures. –Matthew] [Image: Figure 1c from the new study: “The…

[Virtual reality and the transcontinental spatial and social presence it enables played a key role in making possible the recent separation of three-year-old conjoined twins, as reported in this story from Futurism. You can watch a three minute interview withs surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani from BBC News on  YouTube (the role of VR is discussed at the end), and for more on the use of the “digital twin” concept in medicine see the February 2022 Screenshot story, “New project creates digital clones of human brains to help treat neurological disorders.” –Matthew] [Image: Source: BBC News] Surgeons Use VR Headsets…

[This CNN story makes clear that users, in this case in South Korea, are often unsure about the status of or actually perceive virtual influencers as real rather than digital humans, raising significant ethical issues regarding their potential influence (see the original story for several more pictures). An article produced by the Chinese company Baidu and published in MIT Technology Review describes some of the ways in which digital humans are becoming more sophisticated and taking on more roles in our lives. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Sidus Studio X] Forever young, beautiful and scandal-free: The rise of South Korea’s virtual influencers…

[The new Gorilla Trek Virtual Reality Experience from Immotion is designed to use presence to engage, entertain, inform, build empathy and encourage conservation. The story below from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provides details and describes audience member responses. Coverage from OnMilwaukee (with the headline of this post) adds this indirect reference to presence from Immotion Group Commercial Director Rod Findley: “People come out of Gorilla Trek and they really feel they have been transported to a different world.” The attraction is now also available at the Pittsburgh Zoo (follow the link for a description and a vivid 30 second trailer…

[This story from Frontiers Science News describes new research that uses virtual reality and presence to test the effects of simple urban design choices on wellbeing; see the original open-access journal article for full details. For interesting, related developments, see the example-filled DesignTAXI story “Artist Uses DALL-E To Make Real Streets Much More User-Friendly,” about how an artist is using “the popular DALL-E 2 art-generating AI as a landscape-planning tool, envisioning public spaces to finally be returned to the public.” –Matthew] [Image: Colorful virtual reality cityscape. Credit: A. Batistatou, F. Vandeville, and Y.N. Delevoye-Turrell] Colorful urban environments, even if just…

[As this story from VentureBeat notes, the vision of a company called Endiatx in which patients receive a small robotic ‘pill’ in the mail, swallow it during a telemedicine appointment, and a doctor controls the device remotely with a tablet or phone to explore the patient’s body via teleoperation, is the stuff of science fiction. But apparently this vision is well on its way to becoming reality. See the original version of the story for three more images. And see a May 2022 ISPR Presence News post for more on author Louis Rosenberg’s early experiences with augmented reality and haptics.…

[This post isn’t a news item, but after watching and appreciating the unusual, well-regarded 2014 horror film It Follows recently and reading up on interpretations of the many ambiguous and subtle aspects of the film, I found the explanation from Yahoo! Entertainment below by the film’s director of how the film was designed to be immersive and evoke spatial (and I’d argue social) presence. Though it’s not mentioned here, I also noticed several examples in which relatable sensory experiences are emphasized to evoke presence as perceptual realism, for example dabbling one’s toes in water, applying lipstick, holding hands, walking on…

[Presence via virtual reality has been used to increase the empathy of health care professionals for patients who are at the end of their lives by simulating the patient’s experience (e.g., see a 2018 WBUR story that includes a 3:31 minute video of a simulation by Embodied Labs). But a collaborative teaching project at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia is providing students with the caregiver’s perspective to help them develop empathy and learn how to navigate these difficult experiences by practicing, and then discussing and refining, their interactions with these patients. The story below from the University’s Jagwire describes the…

[With interesting details about the evolution of CAVEs and Google’s Tilt Brush, and using the language if not the terminology of presence, this article from PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) describes how collaborations “among artists, coders, and computer scientists” have made and are continuing to make “the barrier between the real and virtual world vanish” to benefit both art and science. See the original version of the article for high resolution versions of the image below and a second image, of Alison Goodyear’s Topsy Turvy. –Matthew] [Image: Computer scientist and artist Daniel Keefe has been combining virtual…

[The post below is a mashup of Elon University’s summary of a new Pew Research/Elon report about the possible futures of presence-evoking technologies, and the introduction to the extremely long full report from the Pew Research website. See the original versions of either or both sources for many more details about the methods, participants, findings and quotations from the report. –Matthew] The Metaverse in 2040 Hype? Hope? Hell? Maybe all three. Experts are split about the likely evolution of a truly immersive ‘metaverse.’ They expect that augmented- and mixed-reality enhancements will become more useful in people’s daily lives. Many worry…

[This CBC Radio story uses examples and interviews to describe some of the appeals of, approaches to, and views about the increasing use of presence-evoking virtual settings for attending church. The comments and predictions in the last two paragraphs are particularly interesting. The original version of the story includes five more images and a link to the recent 53-minute “How COVID rewired religion” edition of the CBC Radio program Tapestry, where the first segment focuses on “virtual church.” –Matthew] [Image: Jason Poling’s digital avatar greets visitors to his virtual-reality church community in a program called Alt Space. Poling is based…

[This example -and link- filled post from The Conversation (“Academic rigor, journalistic flair”) describes ways presence-evoking technologies can be used effectively in environmental education; see the original version for three videos. –Matthew] Virtual reality can support and enhance outdoor environmental education July 11, 2022 By Micheal Jerowsky, PhD Candidate, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia and Ann Borda, Associate Professor, Melbourne Medical School, The University of Melbourne The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) for environmental education is controversial. Some are concerned that these technologies might replace or disrupt outdoor experiences that can connect students to…