Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality News & Discussions

[wjfox]

[Yuli Ban]

This could be the breakthrough that we've been waiting for in virtual reality.

They published the study in Soft Robotics, describing soft skin with a thickness of less than 500 mm. They equip the skin with pneumatic actuators that will make you feel you are touching something real and not just the simulation of an electronic aperture engine that really feels like a real thing at all. The artificial skin also has integrated sensors which transmit the data used to modulate the pressure. The scientist says that this is the first time that such an excellent result has got.

According to the report, "their SPA skin is a multi-layer system that can easily be applied as a simple, wearable two-way interface to feel contact and feedback." Whether you wear gloves or an artificial leather suit, the product would allow you to feel a proper surface in the virtual reality world.

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

Winect: A system that tracks 3D human poses during free-form motion

by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-11-win ... poses.html

Wireless sensing devices, tools that allow users to sense movements and remotely monitor activities or changes in specific environments, have many applications. For instance, they could be used for surveillance purposes as well as to track the sleep or physical activities of medical patients and athletes. Some videogame developers have also used wireless sensing systems to create more engaging sports or dance-related games.

Researchers at Florida State University, Trinity University and Rutgers University have recently developed Winect, a new wireless sensing system that can track the poses of humans in 3D as they perform a wide range of free-form physical activities. This system was introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv and is set to be presented at the ACM Conference on Interactive, Mobile, Wearables and Ubiquitous Technologies (Ubi Comp) 2021, one of the most renowned computer science events worldwide.

"Our research group has been conducting cutting-edge research in wireless sensing," Jie Yang, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "In the past, we have proposed several systems to use Wi-Fi signals to sense various human activities and objects, ranging from large-scale human activities, to small-scale finger movements, sleep monitoring and daily objects For example, we proposed two systems dubbed E-eyes and WiFinger, which are among the first work to utilize Wi-Fi sensing to distinguish various types of daily activity and finger gestures."

While the wireless sensing systems developed by the researchers in their past studies achieved promising results, they mostly rely on models that were pre-trained on a fixed set of known activities, thus they can only classify a limited number of human poses or movements. In their new study, Yang and his colleagues explored whether they could also use Wi-Fi signals to sense free-form human activities (i.e., involving swift and more elaborate movements). The accurate tracking and estimation of free-form movements could enhance several real-world computing applications, including virtual reality (VR) implementations, tech-augmented fitness and videogame development.

[weatheriscool]

How lame.

[Yuli Ban]

‘AR Is Where the Real Metaverse Is Going to Happen’

WE CAN ALL agree that leaving the house is a marvelous thing. But what if your city stroll was enhanced by encounters with historical figures who walked those streets when they were cobblestoned? Or if it featured sightings of extinct or even imaginary species? John Hanke not only wants to see things like that happen, he has made it happen by sending millions of people on outdoor quests to capture imaginary cartoon characters.

As the CEO and founder of Niantic Labs, Hanke launched Pokémon Go in 2016, and he remains obsessed with a vision of a physical world enhanced by digital objects, the concept now called augmented reality. He has been pursuing this vision since at least 2010, when he founded Niantic as an internal startup at Google, then spun it out and launched Go. The game, in which players wander the streets with phones held to their faces trying to capture Weedles, Squirtles, and Nidorinas, was both a cultural phenomenon and a financial success, reaping over a billion dollars in revenue. Like Wendy sewing Peter Pan’s shadow to his foot, Hanke has been gradually binding the ephemeral to the real, providing a substrate for the merger of pixels and atoms that he sees as the future.

But now people are babbling and swooning about this thing called a … metaverse. Companies like Facebook—well, mainly Facebook—are pitching a more immersive vision where people don hardware rigs that block out their senses and replace the input with digital artifacts, essentially discarding reality for alternate worlds created by the lords of Silicon Valley. “Our overarching goal … is to help bring the metaverse to life,” Mark Zuckerberg told his workforce in June.

Hanke hates this idea. He’s read all the science fiction books and seen all the films that first imagined the metaverse—all great fun, and all wrong. He believes that his vision, unlike virtual reality, will make the real world better without encouraging people to totally check out of it.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Oh my, looky here

Vive Flow looks almost like a pair of goggles

[weatheriscool]

Speckle-free holography for virtual displays
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-11-spe ... rtual.html
by Stanford University

Virtual and augmented reality headsets are designed to place wearers directly into other environments, worlds and experiences. While the technology is already popular among consumers for its immersive quality, there could be a future where the holographic displays look even more like real life. In their own pursuit of these better displays, the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab has combined their expertise in optics and artificial intelligence. Their most recent advances in this area are detailed in a paper published Nov. 12 in Science Advances and work that will be presented at SIGGRAPH ASIA 2021 in December.

At its core, this research confronts the fact that current augmented and virtual reality displays only show 2D images to each of the viewer's eyes instead of 3D—or holographic—images like we see in the real world.

"They are not perceptually realistic," explained Gordon Wetzstein, associate professor of electrical engineering and leader of the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab. Wetzstein and his colleagues are working to come up with solutions to bridge this gap between simulation and reality while creating displays that are more visually appealing and easier on the eyes.

The research published in Science Advances details a technique for reducing a speckling distortion often seen in regular laser-based holographic displays, while the SIGGRAPH Asia paper proposes a technique to more realistically represent the physics that would apply to the 3D scene if it existed in the real world.

[Yuli Ban]

Dyson delivers virtual reality in new twist to home shopping

Dyson, best known for its revolutionary bagless vacuum cleaners, will enable customers to test its hairdryers, straighteners and stylers from the comfort of their home through virtual reality.

The Dyson Demo VR has been built with the same visualisation and simulation technology used by the British firm's engineers to prototype, test and develop new products and software.

James Dyson, company founder and chief engineer, said VR was a way to improve people's understanding of Dyson products.

"We have been harnessing powerful virtual reality technologies to engineer new products in our labs for many years, now we are applying those same technologies to re-invent how people explore our products," he said.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

‘Project Cambria’ is a high-end VR headset designed for Facebook’s metaverse

Facebook is working on a new high-end VR headset codenamed Project Cambria. The company teased the device during its recent Connect conference on Thursday. It plans to release the headset sometime next year. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it will be a separate “high-end” product from the company’s $299 Quest 2 headset. It will also cost more than that device.

Cambria will include capabilities that currently aren’t possible on other VR headsets. New sensors in the device will allow your virtual avatar to maintain eye contact and reflect your facial expressions. The company says that’s something that will allow people you’re interacting with virtually to get a better sense of how you’re feeling. Another focus of the headset will be mixed-reality experiences. With the help of new sensors and reconstruction algorithms, Facebook claims Cambria will have the capability to represent objects in the physical world with a sense of depth and perspective.

[Yuli Ban]

This led me down a very interesting path that I can't stop thinking about. I thought the Index and Quest 2 and Pimax and Vive Pro 2 was where we're at in VR technology right now I knew that it would get better over the years inevitably, but I didn't know that VR technology is this far along

Oh Christ... This gives me so many ideas. Imagine this five to ten years down the line. We might be able to get the XR-3 for about as expensive as a Quest 2. What's high end now will be mid-to-low end by then, and God only knows what the high-end will be like thusly.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Police will embark on the research and development of a virtual reality-based driving ability evaluation solution for those aged 65 and older. The solution will become a stepping stone for the adoption of conditional driver's licenses for elderlies in a rapidly aging country where about 15 percent of the population is aged over 64.

According to data compiled by the Road Traffic Authority's Traffic Accident Analysis System, out of 209,654 road accidents in 2020, 31,072 were caused by old people. The fatality rate of elderly traffic accidents accounted for 46 percent. To prevent accidents, old people have been encouraged to surrender licenses in return for subsidies and public transport coupons, but the participation rate was low at 2.8 percent.

The most frequent road accident cases are old taxi drivers. About 40 percent of 241,029 taxi drivers are aged 65 and more as of November 9, 2021. The Korea Transportation Safety Authority (TS) adopted driving ability evaluation tests for old commercial vehicle drivers in 2019. Taxi, bus, and freight truck drivers are required to go through cognitive skills and memory capabilities to maintain licenses.

[Yuli Ban]