[The King’s College London report below describes a clever use of presence to immerse, distract and calm patients while they have an MRI scan. The original version of the story includes three different images and a 6:41 minute demonstration video is available on YouTube. For related news see “Virtual reality application helps prepare children for MRI examination without fear” in News Medical and the 2018 ISPR Presence News post “First person report: MRI scans are horrible for kids – so I created a VR app to help.” –Matthew] [Image: Source: Medical Xpress] A novel virtual reality technology to make MRI…

[New research described in this story from Nautilus demonstrates how “reality and imagination are completely intermixed in our brain which means that the separation between our inner world and the outside world is not as clear as we might like to think.” As technology-mediated experiences become increasingly similar to experiences of either the external or internal world, the potential for further blurring seems likely to increase. See the original story for a second image and reader comments. –Matthew] [Image: One shade of gray: Our knowledge about how shadows influence color makes the B square look lighter than the A square,…

[With continuing unease about returning to in -person learning during a pandemic, a Business Wire press release from a new partnership between a university and technology companies announces “one of the first virtual reality campuses” in the US, using “[a]dvancements in hardware and 5G networks… to power more immersive and engaging learning experiences for students in ways we never imagined.” Coverage in ZDNet comments that: “A big part of this story concerns access. Tuition at in-person colleges and universities is rising… At the same time, competition for seats is rampant. Virtual campuses may be an answer to both problems —…

[In this intriguing post from The Splintered Mind blog, University of California, Riverside philosophy professor Eric Schwitzgebel combines the facts that especially with the pandemic people are increasingly interacting via technology and that deepfake technologies are creating increasingly convincing simulacra of people to present a thought experiment about how we may come to experience and think about the medium-as-social-actor presence of a person after their death. See the original post for a video, links to related posts, and thoughtful reader comments and author responses. –Matthew] [Image: A simulated version of a person who has died appears on a laptop screen…

[The story from Canada’s The Globe and Mail describes how a projection mapped art installation on the underside of a Vancouver bridge has been transformed into a free public virtual reality experience following an interruption by the pandemic. For more information, images and videos, see the project’s website and the Canada Wild Productions site. A review of the original 2017 installation from Vancouver Is Awesome describes it this way: “Uninterrupted Swim with the salmon with Nettie Wild’s stunning film Sous le pont / Cambie Bridge / Salmon are dancing / Salmon are dancing. Your heart will dance, too, as the…

[Smartphone companies including Oppo are working to successfully hide the forward-facing (“selfie” camera) behind the display screen, with the latest advances reported in this story from Engadget. Beyond the aesthetic and immersive effect of having the image occupy the entire screen, the advances hold the prospect of solving the eye-contact problem in video collaboration, enabling users to look directly at each other. See the original version of the story for more images including the sample photo mentioned. –Matthew] Oppo’s latest under-screen camera may finally be capable of good photos The company’s third-gen camera setup benefits from some AI trickery and…

[In this story from Forbes, a retail industry expert argues that ambitious, and even less ambitious, virtual experiences not available in the home will engage consumers and draw them back to ‘real world’ retail venues after the pandemic. For more details see an interview with the CEO of Sandbox VR in VentureBeat. –Matthew] [Image: A boy reacts while wearing virtual reality (VR) glasses in a roller coaster simulator. Credit: Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)] Want To Bring People Back To The Real World? Provide A Virtual One By Greg Maloney (“I write on the confluence of shopping centers, ecommerce &…

[An industry expert asks why voice assistants haven’t become more popular and used for more significant tasks, and provides two key answers, in this short commentary from MediaPost. See also “A Siri-ous guide to the world of voice assistants: AI virtual assistants explained for 2021” from UneeQ. –Matthew] [Image: Source: “This is how people are using voice assistants during Coronavirus” in Voice] COMMENTARY Where Are All The Voice Assistants? By Cory Treffiletti, Featured Contributor July 28, 2021 A few years back I was involved in helping launch and build a voice assistant business. I loved it. The company was Voicea,…

[Many aspects of presence phenomena, including the sense of freedom and exploration many creator-users fear will be lost as corporations take over as they did the early versions of the internet, are explored in this interesting story from Input; see the original story for more images, tweets and videos. –Matthew] ANTHROPOMORPHISM How furries are making virtual reality actually worth visiting The community is at the vanguard of VR — from world design to teledildonic orgies. Matt Baume July 27, 2021 Here I am, standing in the basement of a sprawling house full of stolen merchandise in Louisville, Kentucky, and I…

[This short story from Wallpaper, and supplementary excerpts from V Magazine that follow, describe a new coffee table book that uses augmented reality integration with vivid images to create a sense of presence as transportation (though that term isn’t used). See the original stories for more images from the book; the authors’ Instagram for more samples of their work; and the publishers’ page for the book to read the “journey”-themed description, see dynamic illustrations of the “experiential” effect and order a copy (for $120). –Matthew] Go on a dream holiday with this virtual reality book Kiss & Fly is a…

[Here’s a good primer on the past, present and possible futures of immersive, presence-evoking technology. The original version from Big Think includes an additional image and two videos. –Matthew] [Image: Man using VR device seen with glitch effect. Credit: nuclear_lily via Adobe Stock] Immersive technology will revolutionize everything from theme parks to daily life Virtual reality continues to blur the line between the physical and the digital, and it will change our lives forever. By Stephen Johnson 22 July, 2021 Immersive technology aims to overlay a digital layer of experience atop everyday reality, changing how we interact with everything from…

[I’ve pieced together parts of recent stories from different sources to tell the story of how Samsung’s latest huge, modular television will be used as the foundation of a new virtual production studio in Korea (I join the author of the last excerpt in disappointment that “for those of us still hoping to one day live in a home with virtual walls that can change their decor at-will, pricing for The Wall still puts it well out of reach for most domestic installations.”). For more information see the link in this sentence from the Engadget story: “virtual production is expected…