Mouth Haptics for VR Headsets Are Just Going To Be Used for Kissing
Scientists at the Futures Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University added ultrasonic devices to a standard VR headset. They point at the mouth and target pulses and swipes at the lips, teeth, or tongue. Most haptic devices currently involve our hands and fingers, like cell phone menus and VR accessories. The mouth is the second most sensitive area, thus the researchers focus for enhancing VR. It also means their accessory mounts to the headset and doesn’t add any other equipment.
Varjo’s New High-end XR-3 & VR-3 Headsets Expand Retina FoV While Reducing Weight & Price
Varjo’s New High-end XR-3 & VR-3 Headsets Expand Retina FoV While Reducing Weight & Price
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more on VR goggles in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=VR+goggles
https://andreasfender.com/
My (his) main research interests are augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) as well as camera networks. This includes building novel 3D user interfaces (e.g., using projection mapping or VR headsets) that adapt the layout of spatial UI elements based on implicit user input (e.g., gaze data) and building toolkits for room-scale interfaces. More recently, I also investigate different realities afforded by the combination of VR devices and camera networks.
The Metaverse Is Bad
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-name-change/620449/
In the simplest explanation, the metaverse is just a sexy, aspirational name for some kind of virtual or augmented-reality play. Facebook owns a company called Oculus, which manufactures and sells VR computers and headsets. Oculus is also making a 3-D, virtual platform called Horizon—think Minecraft with avatars, but without the blocks. Facebook, Apple, and others have also invested heavily in augmented reality, a kind of computer graphics that uses goggles to overlay interactive elements onto a live view of the world. So far, the most viable applications of VR and AR can be found in medicine, architecture, and manufacturing, but dreams of its widespread consumer appeal persist. If those dreams become realized, you’ll probably end up buying crap and yelling at people through a head-mounted display, instead of through your smartphone.
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more on the metaverse in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=metaverse
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/company-leaders-your-teams-need-vr-headsets-yesterday-john-duffield/
According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, VR was last featured in the “Slope of enlightenment” in 2017, which is stage 4 out of 5 on the way to mass adoption.
Microsoft Teams enters the metaverse race with 3D avatars and immersive meetings
Microsoft and Meta are on a collision course for metaverse competition By Tom Warren@tomwarren Nov 2, 2021, 11:00am EDT
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/2/22758974/microsoft-teams-metaverse-mesh-3d-avatars-meetings-features
Microsoft Mesh always felt like the future of Microsoft Teams meetings, and now it’s starting to come to life in the first half of 2022. Microsoft is building on efforts like Together Mode and other experiments for making meetings more interactive, after months of people working from home and adjusting to hybrid work.
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Rather than ruling one metaverse, Microsoft wants its Mesh platform to be the glue that holds a multiverse of many worlds together.
Microsoft has been developing its own take on the metaverse through Mesh for several years now in conjunction with the launch of its Hololens AR headset.
Microsoft connects people across any device (smartphones, laptops, headsets, etc.) into shared spaces where they can all interact, no matter how they may have dialed in.
Microsoft imagines Teams as a prototype for the metaverse, where companies can set up their own spaces. Rather than rule its own metaverse as Meta/Facebook aspires to, Microsoft sees its role with Mesh in providing the foundational glue that helps hold a multiverse of worlds together. This is not just a philosophical view on technology. Microsoft’s Mesh is built to allow companies to use APIs, much like apps can on the iPhone today, to help a company build its metaverse and have a persistent identity across all these metaverses.
https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fastcompany.com%2F90691700%2Ffacebook-wants-to-build-a-metaverse-microsoft-is-creating-something-even-more-ambitious&group=9ypxjpYK
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more on metaverse in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=metaverse
Extended Reality Tools Can Bring New Life to Higher Education
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-03-29-how-extended-reality-tools-can-bring-new-life-to-higher-education
Zoom, Teams, Skype, and FaceTime all became daily fixtures, and many of us quickly became fatigued by seeing our colleagues, students and far-away loved ones almost exclusively in 2D. Most video conferencing solutions were not designed to be online classrooms. what is missing from the current video platforms that could improve online teaching: tools to better facilitate student interactions, including enhanced polling and quizzing features, group work tools, and more.
While universities continue to increase in-person and HyFlex courses, hoping to soon see campuses return to normalcy, there is mounting evidence that the increased interest in digital tools for teaching and learning will persist even after the pandemic.
We should move beyond 2D solutions and take advantage of what extended reality (XR) and virtual reality (VR) have to offer us.
Professor Courtney Cogburn created the 1,000 Cut Journey, an immersive VR research project that allows participants to embody an avatar that experiences various forms of racism. Professor Shantanu Lal has implemented VR headsets for pediatric dentistry patients who become anxious during procedures. At Columbia Engineering, professor Steven Feiner’s Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab explores the design and development of 2D and 3D user interfaces for a broad range of applications and devices. Professor Letty Moss-Salentijn is working with Feiner’s lab to create dental training simulations to guide dental students through the process of nerve block injection. Faculty, students and staff at Columbia’s Media Center for Art History have created hundreds of virtual reality panoramas of archaeology projects and fieldwork that are available on the Art Atlas platform.
In spring 2020, a group of Columbia students began to build “LionCraft,” a recreation of Columbia’s Morningside campus in Minecraft. Even though students were spread out around the world, they still found creative and fun ways to run into each other on campus, in an immersive online format.
5 higher-ed programs using XR to transform how college students learn
Colleges and universities are using virtual and augmented reality in courses that range from human anatomy to media as a way to make education more immersive and inclusive.
medical school students at Colorado State University’s Clapp Lab reach for virtual reality (VR) headsets, which dangle from the ceiling of the 2,500 square foot facility.
Distance learning in VR
Building community and critical thinking skills
Exploring XR storytelling
Evaluating the influence of media in XR
At Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, Associate Professor T. Makana Chock is conducting research on storytelling in XR
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More immersive and higher Ed in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=immersive+higher+ed
Benefits of Virtual Reality Training
According to a 2021 report, 75% of business leaders anticipate using Augmented or Virtual Reality by 2023. VR Training solutions have become a powerful way to revamp traditional training methods, and it’s as cost-effective
A Baylor study took 20 subjects and taught them a fire safety procedure. Half with traditional methods (video presentation and reading) and half with a VR training experience. A week after their training they were all given a memory test with mock scenarios, and 70% of the VR group performed the right sequence of steps compared to 20% of the video group.
With VR, virtual environments can house as many pieces of hardware at whatever scale you’d like all at the same cost. Especially once a framework has been developed, adding new procedures, objects, or environments to your training can be designed and deployed within a few days.
Another one of the benefits of VR training is the ability for trainees to learn what they need to at their pace. If a certain training scenario is a challenge, it’s easy to reset a scenario from the beginning. If a trainee is confident in a process, they can jump to a final procedure test.
Virtual Reality allows for a risk-free environment, allowing learners to prepare themselves and train in these stressful situations without the possibility of danger.
During a VR experience, trainees can be exposed to stressful situations in safe conditions. Over time, these experiences reduce the stress or fear response of that stimuli, allowing learners to gain confidence in real scenarios. The increased multi-sensory aspect of an immersive experience can be incredibly similar to real-life stressors. In addition, there exists the ability to have controlled exposure of these situations based on the learner’s own limits.
As more sophisticated data collecting methods are being developed, such as eye or facial tracking, more metrics can be used to understand how people are reacting to VR training. This is probably most sought after in soft skills training, where emotional input plays a larger role.
VR headsets can be implemented remotely, greatly reducing the requirement for in-person training.
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More on virtual reality training in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=Virtual+reality+training
