VR/AR
Blood, sweat and fear: Resident Evil candle adds 4D to VR
Get into Biohazard mood with the officially-licensed Resident Evil 7 candle for you to burn while exercising your personal bloodshed! The £14.99/€19.99 accessory is appropriately putrid: its makers describe the Blood, Sweat and Fears 4D Candle as having odours of musty "old timber and blood". The creators call it the ultimate 4D experience, while the 3D game also holds a promise of being turned into VR.
Boosting experience-thinking on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform
Dassault Systèmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, announced that 3DEXPERIENCE platform users can now view, explore and validate product designs in immersive VR at any stage of the product development process with support from the HTC Vive Business Edition virtual reality system. This opens new ways to create and refine engaging customer experiences faster.
The sword of Damocles gets a reboot
Virtual reality (VR) may be viewed by most people as a very recent invention. However, the first VR headset was created as far back as 1968 by computer scientist, Ivan Sutherland. It was called the sword of Damocles, as its formidable size and weight meant it had to be anchored to the ceiling so it didn’t crush the user – a far cry from the modern Oculus Rift and Microsoft HoloLens.
AR helps patients with chronic phantom limb pain
Dr Max Ortiz Catalan at Chalmers University of Technology has developed a novel method of treating phantom limb pain using machine learning and augmented reality. This approach has been tested on over a dozen of amputees with chronic phantom limb pain who found no relief by other clinically available methods before. The treatment reduced their pain by approximately 50%, reports a clinical study published in The Lancet.
The retail experience gets a VR makeover at Slush
A new Virtual Reality concept for retailers is being presented by Tieto at the startup event Slush in Helsinki. With this concept Tieto aims to co-innovate new retail and brand experiences with its customers. The VR experience is developed by Tieto Experience Hub (XHub) and Tieto’s Customer Experience Management startup.
MRI and ultrasound produce 3D VR model of a fetus
Parents may soon be able to watch their unborn babies grow in realistic 3D immersive visualisations, thanks to technology that transforms MRI and ultrasound data into a 3D virtual reality model of a fetus, according to research being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). MRI provides high-resolution fetal and placental imaging with excellent contrast. It is generally use...
What does Pokémon Go reveal about the future of Augmented Reality?
The lifecycles of breakthrough technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) are heavily reliant on mainstream take up. Many believed AR would initially be used by architects to visualise buildings and design companies for 3D graphic imagery. Yet its first major adoption saw more than 100 million people take to the streets to hunt Pokémon.
MR headset will turn your living room into a playground
Mixed Reality has tremendous potential for gaming, but it’s not without its challenges. According to Stereolabs, current solutions like Hololens suffer from a limited field of view and display transparent holograms which break the sense of presence and realism. It also requires you to map out the entire area before use.
Why VR won't replace cadavers in medical school
Virtual reality has been described as a game changer for medical education. Some even predict it will see an end to using cadavers to teach anatomy. It's a big call but it doesn't reflect the actual reality of medicine and medical training for a number of reasons. Remember, we have overestimated the role of new technologies in the past. It seems hard to believe now, but in the 1990s we thought Microsoft's PowerPoint was cutting edge. B...
Enabling wireless virtual reality
One of the limits of today’s VR headsets is that they have to be tethered to computers in order to process data well enough to deliver high-resolution visuals. But wearing an HDMI cable reduces mobility and can even lead to users tripping over cords. Fortunately, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have recently unveiled a prototype system called “MoVR” that allows ga...