Virtual Reality System In Tests To Help Drug Abusers
Because if there’s one thing drug addicts know, it’s altered realities. The system, being tested at Janus in Santa Cruz, allows patients to enter a simulation of real-world locations, like a house or a park, where they’re confronted by a situation that could drive them back to drugs. Say, a meeting with the wrong kind of friend, an old ex, or a party with drugs on tap. The patient can then practice their drug-avoidance skills in this safe, simulated environment.
Researchers have also found that patients in the virtual world are more likely to relax and open up with their feelings and experiences.
Read more here.
Sound Engineers Dance to the Beat of a Virtual Drum
Sound engineers at Ford are tuning in to the techniques of virtual reality to create better stereo systems for the automaker’s latest vehicles. By simulating the effects of a given sound system design inside a virtual car, engineers can carve away gaping swathes of development time in the real world. The result is a better sound experience, built cheaper and more quickly.
World’s Coolest Virtual Reality Chamber Helps Researchers
Scientists get all the cool toys. Not only do they get to play with a world-destroying supercollider, but now the labcoat set has themselves a giant virtual reality chamber with more speakers and screens than an audiophile’s wet dreams.
It’s called the AlloSphere, and the good folks at the University of California use the all-encompassing sensory overload device to step inside their data and see the information in a whole new way.
The biggest problem with modern science isn’t collecting data, but figuring out what it means. Scientists can gather so much information that they become lost in it, unable to see patterns or that one little number that stands out from all the rest. Displaying the data in new ways, such to use all the senses, helps to overcome this challenge.
Scientific American has the story.
Lockheed Martin Patents New Virtual Reality Machine
Virtual reality is coming ever closer to your living room, and recently, Lockheed Martin has filed a patent for a new type of portable VR machine. The system includes gloves, a helmet, and a stand with motion tracking cameras.
Because the system employs external cameras, it can bring really-real objects and environments into the simulation.
And, yes, of course, you can go into the sim with other people. It’s not just virtual reality, it’s an MMO.
The Baltimore Sun has the story.
Boston Planning “Mixed Reality” Charter School
One of the greatest powers of our teleconnected age is the ability to reach out and do good work from anywhere to anywhere. Telecommuting, it’s called. Virtual reality adds the power to actually be there without being there. The city of Boston is mulling over a charter school built around virtual reality and telecommunications technology.
The school is designed to host those students who can’t show up at a regular classroom, either because of distance, illness, or incarceration. Yeah, those prison kids need an education too.
Hypergrid Business has the story.
Returning Veterans Use Virtual Reality to Fight PTSD
The PTSD in question being Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which comes quick when a bomb blows the front half of your Humvee into tinfoil. The condition is easy to pick up, and hard to shake. You see, the problem with PTSD is that most sufferers avoid anything that might trigger a memory of some stressful incident. Without a confrontation of their fears, it becomes almost impossible to work through them and come down to a normal state of mind. Instead, the veterans remain on edge, always dreading the next loud noise or sudden surprise.
To help treat this condition, a company called Virtually Better, with funding from the Naval Research Office, created a “Virtual Iraq” environment. Based on the game Full Spectrum Warrior, this program allows the veteran to enter a realistic, but safe, combat environment. Okay, as realistic as Full Spectrum Warrior …
Virtual Surgery Using Video Game Technology
You see, back in the day when computers were new and exciting, I went to college and majored in something wonderful; virtual reality. Not to play games, not to do 3D animation, although there was that. Mostly, I knew that virtual reality would, in its creeping and secret ways, become just as important as real reality.
Consider that most of you spend somewhere between two and six hours a day inside a virtual world on your Xbox or PC and think about that for a moment.
But games aren’t the most important use of virtual reality, simply the most obvious one. Real work is being done by virtual tools, and those tools change everything they touch. Check out this article from khou.com, about video game surgery.
“So this is the difference between working …
US Army Seeks to Prevent Suicides by Deploying Video Games
The high-stress environment of the Iraq occupation, combined with longer tours of duty, has taken a deep toll on US soldiers. One grim result of these unfortunate conditions is the suicide rate among personnel, which has jumped up over 45 percent since 2003.
The Army has responded with various measures, but the most interesting is a program called Beyond the Front, a sort of role-playing video game, designed to encourage at-risk soldiers to seek the help they need. The game presents situations and scenarios that might affect the mental health of a soldier; a “Dear John” letter from home, a roadside bomb that kills a friend, and other stressful events that are part of the military life. How the player reacts to these events in the game determines the ending of the scenario, be it happy or deadly.
WILL Interactive, the creators of Beyond the …
TED.com — Will Video Games Become Better Than Life?
It’s my belief that the future of humanity will be something like the Matrix with friendly AIs, save points, and porn. The reason why I think this will come to pass is I’m a gamer. So many people are playing games these days that the old media standbys — TV and movies — are strangling, starving for new viewers. There are enough people banging about in World of Warcraft that, if they voted together, would not only decide the presidential election but politics for decades to come. We are moving to an online world.
In this video from the TED Conference, David Perry discusses the implications of gaming and what the future may hold for those generations that grew up attached to online, social games.
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