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.

Read more here.

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.

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.

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.

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 gets.

Here are two articles about the system, one at WCAX.com in Vermont, and another from Defense-Update.com.

The techniques of creating false experiences to help someone get over the nastier real experiences in their lives is not new. Without the aid of technology, these efforts have been limited to patients imagining things at the prompting of a doctor, or using sounds and images from movies. Virtual reality is far more immersive, and so allows the patient and the doctor to work together on a level beyond conventional treatments.

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 in 2-D and guessing and working in 3-D and knowing,” Dr. Aloia said.

“We’re just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of how this is going to affect surgical therapies,” Dr. Butler added.

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 Front, feel the game will benefit soldiers by giving them the chance to play out the dark spiral of suicide before they actually live it. Hopefully, the gaming experience will give them the training they need to save their own lives.

Check out a demo of Beyond the Front over at WILL Interactive’s site.

Read this Christian Science Monitor article for more information about the program and how the Army is trying to blunt the rise in suicides among their ranks.

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.