[SyFy Wire reports on a state-of-the-art planetarium in Northern France that seems sure to offer impressive presence experiences. The original story includes two more images and the referenced press release, which describes “An absolute immersive experience” in which “Users & the audience will feel as if they are really travelling through the Universe & stepping into educational shows,” links to a 2:15 minute video (also available via Vimeo) and other resources. –Matthew] World’s First 10k 3D Planetarium Was Once A WWII German Rocket Bunker By Jeff Spry June 18, 2021 Making more illuminating use out of an old Nazi rocket…

[As this story from The National observes, virtual reconstructions of archaeological sites represents a “game-changer that offers an immersive and tangible experience for a subject sometimes viewed as dry when presented through textbooks.” The original story includes two more images and for more information see coverage in Smithsonian Magazine. Inside Indiana Business features a 4:25 minute interview with Bernard Frischer, Professor of Informatics at Indiana University and founder of the company Flyover Zone; the accompanying text includes this: “[H]is concept is rooted nearly 50 years ago when as a student studying in Rome, he became fascinated with a model-sized layout…

[In a blog post this week Facebook announced that it’s beginning a test of advertisements in its virtual reality apps; this story from The Verge focuses on some of the key issue the move raises. As with other media experiences, the number, prominence, repetitiveness, quality, relevance, and other aspects of form and content of ads in VR will have important implications for the consumer’s experience of presence (and breaks in presence). –Matthew] Three big questions about Facebook’s new VR ads Lots of people saw this coming, but what will it look like? By Adi Robertson June 17, 2021 Yesterday, Facebook…

[Here’s another positive application of presence, the use of virtual reality to train emergency medical services (EMS) providers to diagnose pediatric health crises, which are relatively rare and intense events for EMS first responders. This story from EMSWorld describes the details (and includes a second picture); a related story from the Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS) reports on a study being conducted on the effectiveness of the VR training and includes a 1:43 minute video (also available on YouTube). –Matthew] Virtual Reality Helps Fla. EMS Providers Prepare for Peds By Carol Brzozowski [see bottom of story for information] June…

[This story from Forbes looks ahead in the short and medium term to how presence-evoking technologies will evolve and affect our lives (note the link at the end to the author’s new book on the topic). –Matthew] Future Predictions Of How Virtual Reality And Augmented Reality Will Reshape Our Lives By Bernard Marr June 4, 2021 With the extended reality (XR) revolution already underway, it’s easy to envision a future in which the lines between the real world and the virtual world become even more blurred than they are today. In this article, I look at the technological advances coming…

[There’s a fascinating and depressing history of conferences and journals, particularly in the field of computer science, publishing hoax research articles containing content usually generated by primitive algorithms. Nature reports on the problem and new work by two researchers who are identifying these papers in the May 2021 article, “Hundreds of gibberish papers still lurk in the scientific literature.” But the story below from The Conversation describes a study demonstrating that AI can be used to generate articles across the critical fields of Cyber Security and Medicine that fool experts (i.e., make them overlook the fact that the stories were…

[A February 2021 ISPR Presence News post described ARHT Media’s holographic technology (the company’s website boasts of “A Sense Of Presence You Need To See”). This Fast Company story from May reports on a new ARHT partnership with coworking company WeWork to implement the technology in many of its “800+” locations around the world (the press release is available via Intrado GlobeNewswire). –Matthew] Your next meeting at WeWork could be with life-size holograms The coworking company is equipping some of its workspaces with holographic gear so that people thousands of miles away can participate in events. By Mark Sullivan May…

[The pandemic has caused many more of people to think about how to use technology and configure spaces to create a sense of being together, i.e., spatial and social presence. This Fast Company story examines some of the considerations that will be important in the new post-pandemic world of remote and hybrid meetings. See Diginomica for an interview with the author Phil Simon who is quoted here. –Matthew] [Image: Meeting room illustration by Marc_Osborne/iStock] We still need conference rooms. Here’s what they should look like post-pandemic A big table, a bunch of chairs, and a speakerphone are no longer enough.…

[Road to VR reports on the Sense Arena hockey trainer. The original version of this story includes another image and three 3 videos, and the NHL.com story mentioned includes more videos and images and quotes goalie Antoine Bibeau of the Carolina Hurricanes saying “You put it on and you basically appear in the net in an NHL arena and you look around and it’s really like being in an NHL arena. I’m shocked by how realistic the whole thing is.” –Matthew] ‘Sense Arena’ is a VR Hockey Trainer That’s Being Adopted by NHL Teams By Ben Lang June 9, 2021…

[This Museum Association story uses the VR component of a new V&A exhibition about Alice in Wonderland to comment on the larger shift towards the use of immersive media at museums, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. As FashionUnited UK’s coverage notes, the exhibit also includes other elements to create immersion and presence: “Described as one of the museum’s ‘most ambitious’ exhibitions by its director Dr Tristram Hunt, ‘Alice: Curiouser And Curiouser’ aims to transport visitors into the otherworldly experiences shaped by theatrical sets, immersive environments and playful displays, including the museum’s first virtual reality experience.” The original version…

[Researchers at Columbia University Engineering have created EVA, a blue-faced robot that uses deep learning to mimic the subtle changes in facial expressions of the humans around her and evoke medium-as-social-actor presence, as reported in this news release. See the original version for a different image and a 2:24 minute video (also available on YouTube) and see the project’s website for much more information. –Matthew] The Robot Smiled Back Columbia Engineering researchers use AI to teach robots to make appropriate reactive human facial expressions, an ability that could build trust between humans and their robotic co-workers and care-givers By Holly…

[This story from Forbes earlier this year describes a study that reinforces the ideas that presence-evoking technology amplifies at least some of the impacts of media content (as in early studies of screen size) and that media content and form interact in important ways. Experiencing driver training messages in virtual reality produced increased risk-taking for fear appeal messages and reduced risk-taking for positive messages compared to viewing the messages in 2D film conditions. Here’s an excerpt from the published study: “As VR is designed to provide a more realistic experience of driving collisions (Lin, 2017; Parsons & Rizzo, 2008), it…