tagged w/ Virtual Reality
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Remember years ago when the games industry excitably told us that virtual reality was the future for games? Remember the bad guy in Hackers having one of those VR toys?
Well now you can have 2 (possibly networked) in your living room for just under $3,000. Apparently they can even play Halo.....
I just had to pysically stop myself from pressing the buy it now button.......Remember years ago when the games industry excitably told us that virtual reality was... more
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JClem
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added this
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1 month ago
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Technological visionary Ray Kurzweil discusses the future of humanity and its place in a world of super-intelligent machines and super-human intelligence.
...Over the past four decades, Ray Kurzweil has established himself as one of the world's most prolific and influential inventors. His specialty is pattern recognition — teaching machines to classify data and learn. He created the first program to enable computers to read text — the basis of modern scanning — as well as the first program to translate text into speech. Stevie Wonder, a close friend of Kurzweil, calls the inventor's print-to-speech technology a "breakthrough that changed my life." In 1983, with Wonder as an adviser, Kurzweil built the Kurzweil 250 — a synthesizer that revolutionized the music world with its uncannily realistic re-creations of acoustic orchestral instruments.
For his contributions to artificial intelligence, Kurzweil has been enshrined in the Inventors Hall of Fame and has received White House honors from three presidents — including the highest prize in his field, the National Medal of Technology. But nothing he has done in the past has shaken the scientific community as profoundly as his latest prediction. In our lifetime, Kurzweil believes, machines will not only surpass humans in intelligence — they will irrevocably alter what it means to be human. Cell-size robots will zap disease from our bloodstream. Superintelligent nanotechnology, operating on a molecular scale, will scrub pollution from our atmosphere. Our minds, our skills, our memories, our very consciousness will be backed up on computers — allowing us, in essence, to live forever, all our data saved by super-smart machines.
"Right now, people think it's irresponsible not to back up our PCs," Kurzweil says. "But increasingly, we'll be backing up the information in our brains. People will think it was remarkable that we couldn't back up our brains in 2010."
Kurzweil is very specific about when this epic shift will take place. By 2045, he predicts, machines and humans will merge, redefining life as we know it. The moment is known as the Singularity, referring to the term used in astrophysics to describe the point inside a black hole where the ordinary laws of physics cease to apply. To prepare himself and the rest of the world for the era of conscious machines, Kurzweil has turned himself into the chief prophet of the coming Techno Rapture. He crisscrosses the globe to rally top scientists, hosts an annual Singularity Summit that draws leaders from places like Google and MIT, and has even developed his own line of nutritional supplements to extend people's lives until the day when their existence can be endlessly preserved by technology. At 61, Kurzweil pops 150 of his own pills every day, determined to live long enough to see the day when, thanks to machines, he will never age.
To say that Kurzweil's prediction is controversial is to understate the scientific firestorm it has generated. No less a pragmatist than Bill Gates has hailed Kurzweil's vision, calling him "the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence." But to other leading thinkers, Kurzweil has gone off the deep end, venturing into an almost messianic fervor with his promises of life everlasting. "The Singularity is a new religion — and a particularly kooky one at that," says Jaron Lanier, a top computer scientist who pioneered the realm of virtual reality. "The Singularity is the coming of the Messiah, heaven on Earth, the Armageddon, the end of times. And fanatics always think that the end of time comes in their own lifetime."
Kurzweil shrugs off such criticism: He has the self-confidence of a man who is used to being so far ahead of the curve that others can't see where he's headed. The only time he falters is when he's asked if he could be wrong about the Singularity. For a moment he stares blankly into space, as if receiving an otherworldly transmission.
More...Technological visionary Ray Kurzweil discusses the future of humanity and its place in... more
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Sex with robots is coming and it's going to happen soon - probably within 40 years. The only thing holding it back at this point is the technology. Legal barriers do not exist, and moral barriers are eroding rapidly. Its advent will signal the impending end of the human race as "perfect" mates replace the imperfect ones we now have. In order to stop this perversion from destroying the human race, we must act now to change attitudes toward virtual sex of all kinds, including pornography.
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How do you feel about getting freaky with a robot?Sex with robots is coming and it's going to happen soon - probably within 40 years.... more
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For much of the seafloor, accurate computer images like the one at top are only now becoming possible.For much of the seafloor, accurate computer images like the one at top are only now... more
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A virtual reality exhibit is giving visitors the extreme ranges of sight and hearing that many animals have.A virtual reality exhibit is giving visitors the extreme ranges of sight and hearing... more
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The dream of many of paralysed people, computer-game designers – and pornographers – is one step closer to reality with the demonstration of a technique that allows people to physically identify with a virtual body.
The achievement builds on previous work in which neuroscientists created out-of-body experiences in volunteers and tricked people viewing their virtual body into feeling that body being touched.
In the latest experiment, vibrating pads with flashing lights were positioned on the subjects' backs. Virtual bodies were generated by a camera filming their backs and were viewed as though 2 metres in front of the subjects through a head-mounted display. Repeated stroking of their backs, and the sight of the doppelganger being stroked, created the feeling that they were outside of their bodies.
The subjects then saw flashes on their virtual bodies, and felt vibrations on their real bodies. Participants were asked to ignore the flashing lights and only report where the vibrations were by pressing a button as fast as possible. The extent to which the flashing light interfered with the reporting of the vibrations was an indicator of where subjects perceived the spatial location of the vibrations to be.
Some volunteers had out-of-the-body experiences: reporting that the vibrations were felt in the location where the flash was seen on their virtual body.
'Promising future'
"This technology, although currently in basic research, seems to have a very promising future for clinical applications in restoring lost motor functions in paralysed people," says bioethicist Jens Clausen at the Institute for Ethics and the History of Medicine at the University of Tűbingen in Germany. "It's important to integrate prosthetics into one's self concept" (see also Brain could adapt well to cyborg enhancements).
Because this work confirms that people can be made to feel that a touch on the real body is a touch on the virtual body, Jane Aspell of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who led the study, says: "This emerging field has interesting implications for virtual computer gaming, such as making avatars seem more real."
Aware animals?
Although full out-of-body experiences in the lab remain elusive, the group is now aiming to boost the illusion by inducing the subject to identify more strongly with the virtual body.
The advantage of this technique, in contrast to previous methods that only used questionnaires, is that perceptions are measured during the test, and they are less biased and require no higher-order reflection, says Aspell. This means that it might be appropriate to use the method in a clinical setting where patients may be reporting psychiatric out-of-the-body experiences, for example.
Modified versions of these experiments could even be used in animals, the authors says – allowing scientists to look into whether self-consciousness is unique to humans or whether animals have some sense of self. Because the method doesn't require the filling in of a questionnaire, animals could possibly be trained to use the equipment.The dream of many of paralysed people, computer-game designers – and pornographers... more
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xiola
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added this
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3 months ago
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"Discover Magazine reports that although medical simulations have been around for a long time, medical schools like Imperial College London are starting to use virtual hospitals in Second Life so students can learn their way around an O.R. before they enter the real thing. The students can also test their knowledge in the Virtual Respiratory Ward by interviewing patient avatars, ordering tests, diagnosing problems, and recommending treatment. 'The real innovation in SL clinical simulations is that they bring people together in a clinical space — you are standing next to an avatar who is a real patient, and the doctor avatar to your right is a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and the nurse to your left is at the University of Pennsylvania hospital,' says John Lester, the Education and Healthcare Market Developer at Linden Labs. The most significant benefit of SL training may be the cost. Real-life training facilities require thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars to build and maintain, while SL simulation rooms can be created for minimal costs, and accessed from anywhere in the world for the price of an internet connection. SL can also expose students to situations that a standard academic program can't duplicate: 'You can take risks that aren't safe in the real world and teach more complex subjects in three dimensions,' says Colleen Lin. 'When you're resuscitating a dummy in real life, it looks like a dummy. But you can program an avatar to look like it's choking or having a heart attack, and it looks more real to the student responsible for resuscitating it.'""Discover Magazine reports that although medical simulations have been around for a... more
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The Robot Apocolypse got one step closer this week as President Obama unveiled his mechanical doppleganger in Disney's Hall of Presidents. In related news the R.N.C. Chairman Michael Steele is considering starting a rumor that Obama is a secret robot.The Robot Apocolypse got one step closer this week as President Obama unveiled his... more
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Computer games have come a long way from the pixelated graphics of the 1980s to the more polished characters of today. But the inexorable creep of Moore's Law has now taken us to the brink of further giant changes.
The latest multi-core processors and some smart software allow techniques used by physicists and engineers to simulate the real world in extreme detail to be used to create virtual worlds governed by real physics, rather than the simplified versions used today.
The video above shows how the results are streets ahead of the standard graphics of today. One expert evens predicts that such techniques could be used to create Matrix-like virtual worlds indistinguishable from reality within just a few years.Computer games have come a long way from the pixelated graphics of the 1980s to the... more
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In an article from Gamerpro the PSP camera, Project Natal, the DSi camera, the wii motion controller, the PS3 camera and motion controller, add to that the new Nvidea projct tegra and they postulate we are entering an era where the new meme in gaming may become altered or augmented reality and its an era that is occuring far sooner than many had predicted.
Much in the same way FMV preceded fully rendered 3D graphics in the 1990's we may be entering into an era where graphics have gotten good enough that simply increasing graphical capability may not be enough to make visuals more realistic and instead we utelize real world elements and interactions to create a more seemless view of the gaming and physical world, in other words a new era of immersion before we finaly create a true virtual reality in gaming we will have an enhanced real world to play around in.
One of the sleeper hits of this years E3 is the focus, Invizimals. Utelizing the psp camera and a special disc simmilar to the one used in the PS3 game eye of destiny, players walk around the physical world searching for invizimals to capture and battle. To do so you will have to physically interact with them using the camera and yes you have to walk around your home or yard to conduct your searches.In an article from Gamerpro the PSP camera, Project Natal, the DSi camera, the wii... more
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Surgery can be a risky process if certain descisions aren't made with care. That's why doctors are developing virtual simulations of human body parts, to test surgeries before doing the real thing.
An array of simulations are being created to cater for different cases, which doctors may come across. One example comes from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, who have replicated a person's gait, which will be a part of trail programmes in clinics to analyse the affects of cerebral palsy.
The UK's University College London have simulated blood flowing through a brain aneurism, while researchers at the University of Oxford have created a virtual model of the changing direction of blood flow when the heart contracts.
These blood simulations could identify how drugs affect how blood flows through the designated area.
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*Image not representation of actual virtual images...those can be found in the video on the linked webpageSurgery can be a risky process if certain descisions aren't made with care. That's why... more
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"Meet Milo, a young boy who enjoys football, drawing and playing around his fish pond. It's not so remarkable that he avoids your gaze when asked about homework, except that he's not real — an artificial intelligence (AI) controls his interactions with real people.
That's the hope for a future game, anyway. But the press and avid gamers got a preview of the current Milo tech demo at the E3 video game conference, which kicked off yesterday in Los Angeles.
Milo is the creation of Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios and developer of ambitious games such as "Black and White" and the "Fable" series. Those games tried to present players with moral choices that had consequences for their characters, and also tried to play on people's real emotions.
Molyneux's latest effort takes advantage of Microsoft's new full-body controller for Xbox 360, known as Project Natal. The controller's sensor bar tracks the real-world movements of Xbox players and translates them into the game, which allows them to practically play with Milo in person.""Meet Milo, a young boy who enjoys football, drawing and playing around his fish pond.... more
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"Despite decades of hype, virtual reality has never really managed to live up to, well, reality. But new applications that blend real and virtual worlds via the medium of a smartphone may have the missing ingredient needed to make the technology take off.
Instead of completely immersing a person in a virtual environment, augmented or mixed reality involves adding digital features to the world they see around them.
Changing the world in this way requires drawing on nearly every faculty the latest smartphones possess – camera, GPS, tilt sensors, digital compass and wireless broadband – to determine exactly what is being looked at, and to find and display relevant extra data.
So what are the advantages of augmenting your reality? Simply, the technology allows you to point a phone at an object and see an enhanced version of reality on the screen – whether a mountain labelled with its height, a person tagged with their name, or celestial objects properly labelled in the night sky.
An application called Enkin developed by two German researchers for phones using Google's Android operating system provides a straightforward example. It acts like an enhanced satnav system, helping you to find nearby services or points of interest.
Nokia's Mobile Augmented Reality Applications project does a similar thing, drawing its annotations from known points of interest in the satnav software found in Nokia smartphones.
Despite some impressive demos, both these systems are still in development. But another, the Wikitude AR Travel Guide, is already available as an app for Android phones.
By drawing on Wikipedia it can label sites in the phone's view, such as castles, or augment mountain peaks with their altitude, like a kind of universal guide book.
That's powerful, but there is more to come, especially when these apps start to tap into social websites. Wikitude can already tap into location-based contents of Qype, an online user-based review service, allowing people to stroll down a street and read reviews of restaurants, bars or hotels just by pointing the phone's camera at them.""Despite decades of hype, virtual reality has never really managed to live up to,... more
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In these challenging times, they have become an escapist's dream. Online subscription computer games allow players to control a character - or 'avatar' in the parlance - explore the landscape, fight monsters and complete quests. Players can study for professions such as tailoring, mining, cooking and first-aid, while characters can form or join guilds and clubs.
Activision Blizzard's World of Warcraft has taken the gaming world by storm, making its creator the most successful gaming studio, with 11m paying subscribers worldwide and revenues topping $1.34bn (£875m). It is by far the most popular 'massively multiplayer online role-playing game', as internet pay-for games are known by the gaming community.
However, a rival online games company, Iceland's CCP Games, is quickly catching up with its $15-a-month subscription internet game Eve Online. While the number of subscribers is modest in comparison to World of Warcraft, it has become the second largest player in the market with 300,000 paying subscribers.In these challenging times, they have become an escapist's dream. Online subscription... more
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Hover above famous spots around the Big Apple like an omnipotent, slightly voyeuristic god with this aerial virtual tour of New York. Oh crikey, this is good. Click the link for the full experience.
Woah, wait! Is that popular actress Natalie Portman I spy, hanging out her washing on her roof garden?? Well, no. Still good though.
Where would you like to take a virtual tour? Me - London.Hover above famous spots around the Big Apple like an omnipotent, slightly voyeuristic... more
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richjm
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added this
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6 months ago
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There's an obvious appeal to getting lost in a virtual world, whether that world is a fantasy realm of knights and magic, an epic space opera, or a dystopian future where cybernetics blur the line between man and machine. But an imaginary world is only as good as its designer and, unfortunately, there's no laws out there dictating who can and can't start their own virtual existence. If there were, I'm pretty sure these would all be criminalized...
The town of Decatur, Georgia, has a plan to revive both flagging tourism, and civic interest: They want to build an MMO simulation of their city. While it could also be handy for people considering moving to their town, the main purpose of Virtual Decatur is as a hub for the townspeople to build, play, and interact through their avatars. The gaming aspect of VD (nice planning on that acronym, by the way) comes in the form of discounts and coupons earned for completing quests and gaining achievements. So, is the obvious striking anybody yet?There's an obvious appeal to getting lost in a virtual world, whether that world is a... more
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Alex Rivera felt that there was more that could be explored in cyberpunk. He looked at the idea of humans jacking into cyberspace, and saw a way that corporations could get their cheap labor without making the workers go through the whole, messy business of crossing the border. Thus was born SLEEP DEALER, a science fiction adventure in which a hapless, Mexican cyberhacker falls afoul of the U.S. government (you don’t mess around with anyone who sponsors a TV show dedicated to relaying live feeds from armed drones), and winds up in Tijuana laboring away in a “sleep dealer,” otherwise known as a virtual factory.
With a mostly Latino cast and a vision of the future that treads the line between BRAZIL-like absurdity and disturbing possibility, SLEEP DEALER makes for one unique indie project. I sat down with Rivera to explore how he pulled it off.Alex Rivera felt that there was more that could be explored in cyberpunk. He looked at... more
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Every summer thousands of people descend on Spain's infamous 'bull running' festival, where people, normally well tanked on alcohol, run through the streets of Pamplona being chased by bulls.
Now if that's not really your cup of tea, a new piece of software developed by Navarra firm Proevent, now lets you get right into the thick of the action, without any of the risk.
Those that want to give it a go, don a virtual reality headset which is linked to a special treadmill which covers a one-mile course around the a virtual city's streets.
And don't think you have to be all alone, players can apparently "join" other CGI players who are also running frantically from an enraged bull.
Is this virtual reality being used to full effect or is it just a bit of a gimmick?Every summer thousands of people descend on Spain's infamous 'bull running' festival,... more
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The Virtual Cocoon engages all five senses. All we are missing is the hover chair and slurpy food, and the movie "Wall-E" will have to be reclassified as "Non-Fiction".
A virtual reality helmet that recreates the sights, smells, sounds and even tastes of far-flung destinations has been devised by British scientists.
The device will allow users a life-like experience of places such as Kenya's Masai Mara while sitting on their sofa.
They can also enjoy the smell of flowers in an Alpine meadow or feel the heat of the Caribbean sun on their face.
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Scientists say the device will also enable users to greet friends and family on the other side of the world as though they were in the same room.
And students will even be able to find out what it was like to live in ancient Egypt, Rome or Greece.
Previously, scientists have only been able to use virtual reality technology to recreate sound and vision.
Now a team of British academics from York and Warwick universities are creating a virtual reality helmet they are calling the Virtual Cocoon.
They say it stimulates the senses so convincingly they have called the experience Real Virtuality...The Virtual Cocoon engages all five senses. All we are missing is the hover chair and... more
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The Virtual Cocoon is no average PC it effects all five senses and its so convincing that it will be indistinguishable from real life, designers promised.
The virtual reality headset will enable users to experience the smells, heat, sounds and sights of places such as Kenya's Masai Mara - while sitting on their sofa.
Prof Alan Chalmers from Warwick University says, "This will be a huge step forward in comparison to today's virtual reality devices."The Virtual Cocoon is no average PC it effects all five senses and its so convincing... more
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