Virtual Reality

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the latest expansion beyond its main mission of organizing the world's information, Internet search leader Google Inc. hopes to orchestrate more fantasizing on the Web.The Mountain View-based company unveiled a free service Tuesday in which three-dimensional software enables people to congregate in electronic rooms and other computer-manufactured versions of real life. The service, called "Lively," represents Google's answer to a 5-year-old site, Second Life, where people deploy animated alter egos known as avatars ...

Jaguar Land Rover has opened a new 'Virtual Reality Center' at the Design and Engineering Center in Gaydon, UK. The 'state-of-the-art' design facility draws on advanced audio visual technologies with the projection power of the world's highest resolution projectors to significantly speed up product development cycles following an investment of £2 million.The new Virtual Reality Center allows engineers and designers to see and interact with life-size, three-dimensional models of vehicles and components, reducing the need for physi ...

SEOUL: As dusk falls, a restaurant-lined lane in Seoul's Mapo district fills up with customers, many from the nearby Obelisk office towers. For Kwon Sung Woon, it's time to switch on the tall illuminated advertising column outside his shop to attract patrons.Inside his establishment, men take off their neckties and play 18-hole rounds of golf, swinging real clubs at Pebble Beach in California, St. Andrews in Scotland and other famed courses around the world - except that it is all computer-simulated. They hit their balls into 4-meter- ...

Doctors are now using the technology to treat many disorders, from phobias to addictionsImagine the scenario: you're sitting on a plane, strapped in and ready for take-off. But you're terrified of flying and are suddenly hit by an uncontrollable urge to spring from your seat and run screaming out of the aircraft.However, at that moment, a soothing voice speaks to you - the voice of your therapist - telling you to try using your various coping strategies. The scene around you then disappears, you remove the headset and you're returned ...

WEDNESDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- People suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder may ultimately benefit from a combination of prescription medication and cutting-edge virtual reality psychotherapy, new research suggests.The study findings are preliminary. But, early results with Iraq war veterans point to a potent way to help PSTD patients through the use of drugs along with exposure to interactive reenactments of the sights, sounds, smells, and movements related to a highly traumatic experience."I am very optimistic," said s ...

New Delhi, May 5: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has recommended the entry of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) though existing players have expressed doubt about the success of the model.New telecom companies and foreign firms - who have licence but no spectrum - are eager to offer services through the MVNO route. However, existing operators argue that a model which allows a company to buy airtime in bulk and sell it to subscribers under its own brand may not be successful under the current tariff environment ...

Life for lab flies just got more interesting, thanks to an interactive virtual-reality system developed by Swiss and US researchers.They have built a wind tunnel for flies with changing scenes or images projected onto its walls. A camera tracks the fly in 3D, making the images move in response to it flying around inside.The VR system offers a new way to gain insight into how flies' visual environment affects how they move and behave. The researchers say that they hope to build VR setups for other animals too.Engineers building small, ...

Recently the DCCCD purchased an island in the online world Second Life so faculty and students would have new media for teaching, learning and interacting.Second Life is an online virtual reality world where people across the globe log in to engage in real-life experiences. The program, which has been in existence since 2006, simulates activities such as commerce, swimming, driving cars and dancing, but is not limited to just these areas. The system uses avatars to represent users in the virtual world.In SL students can use their avat ...

A playmate named Sam, a talking dog named Buddy and an Israeli street leading to a Toys"R"Us store all have starring roles in a new generation of virtual reality games designed to teach basic safety and social skills to children diagnosed with autism.For school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger's syndrome, skills often taken for granted can be torturously difficult, whether staying within the confines of a yard, crossing a street or navigating the social norms of group playtime.Aided by the observation t ...

Not me, I'm just perceptiveABOUT ONE THIRD OF the general population regularly experience persecutory and paranoid thoughts according to a new study. Boffins at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London, have been using a virtual reality tube ride to measure the extent to which people suffer from paranoia, and the results are higher than ever expected.Previously, in order to try and determine if a person was paranoid or not, boffins would sit them down in a nice comfortable room with a questionnaire and a choice of warm be ...

DataCore Software Introduces SANharmony, Promotes Its New Feature-Packed Solutions, and Highlights New Virtual Server CustomersDataCore Software introduced a product in SANharmony, the next generation of storage virtualization that harmonizes NAS with SAN. DataCore also underscored the traction its new SANmelody-based Feature Packed Solutions are garnering by making the virtual enterprise a reality at SMBs throughout North America. Additionally, DataCore promoted its most recent industry success in becoming a Citrix Ready storage virt ...

This must be what torture feels like, Jamie Nieto thought during six weeks in 2003 of physical therapy for burns covering more than half his body. He bore the pain by telling himself that every day he inched closer to going home.Unlike Nieto, who could only close his eyes to cope, patients at Loyola University Medical Center's burn unit in Maywood, Ill., in the next few weeks will be able to distract themselves by gliding through a world of snowy canyons, launching snowball fights with snowmen and watching penguins cartwheel across ic ...

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary TV-antenna tower, Anywhere, USA.Thirty-five miles of dusty desert from the nearest highway, it telescopes almost 100 feet in the air, topped with cameras and radar.Nearby, a security man from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency sits in a dark-colored SUV, watching movies on a laptop. Two giant tanks of water, apparently for wandering migrants, have been placed close at hand by the human-rights group Derechos Humanos.The tower is one of nine surveillance turrets strung across 28 miles of A ...

The viability of a high-tech barrier to detect illegal border crossers remains uncertain, after a pilot project struggles.At first glance, it looks like an ordinary, TV antenna tower, Anywhere, USA.Thirty-five miles of dusty desert from the nearest highway, it telescopes almost a hundred feet up in the air, topped with cameras and radars.Nearby, a security man from Pinkerton National Detective Agency sits in a dark-colored SUV, watching movies on a laptop. Two giant tanks of water apparently for wandering migrants have been placed clo ...

Paranoia is much more common among the general population than was previously thought and just as commonplace as anxiety and depression, according to a study.Until now, researchers have been unable to study paranoia - exaggerated fears about threats - in lab settings, relying instead on questionnaires.Now, a team led by Daniel Freeman of King's College, London, has developed a computer simulation program to study paranoid thoughts.Wearing virtual reality headsets, 200 volunteers walked around a virtual London underground carriage in a ...

Development result of the Alcatel-Lucent University Innovations Program 4G Center of Excellence CTIA Wireless -- Alcatel- Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Georgia Institute of Technology today announced the development of the first widescale distributed mobile Augmented Reality (AR) - the addition of computer-generated graphic images onto a real-life environment - interface prototype. The prototype is the first development resulting from the Alcatel-Lucent 4G Center of Excellence established in 2007 at Georgia Tech.As part of ...

Kooc Media Ltd. has created an online virtual world that currently has more than 23,000 inhabitants although this virtual world, Roliana.com, is only nine months old. Since Roliana.com launched, the site has reached 1.5 million forum posts and 10 million page views monthly.The Kingdom of Roliana is described as a large kingdom of extraordinary beauty. With its current population of 23,000 (and growing daily), Roliana features a busy shopping district. Roliana's shops range from those catering to women's elegant clothing and men's fash ...

I got bit by the Poker bug playing no-money games on Facebook. It took some learning, but I finally understood what Kenny Rogers meant when he sang, "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away, and know when to run." But after I made my way up the players' ranks and felt more confident in my card-playing skills, I decided to give a shot at Online Poker. It was a stressful going in with real money on the table. The latest in security technology made me feel a little better about playing with a credi ...

Doctors at Loyola University Medical Center think video games might help soften pain for some of its patients. The west suburban hospital's burn unit is trying out a new virtual reality device. I look left, there's a snowman. I look right, and there's a bunch of penguins throwing snowballs at me. And in my ears is the music of Paul Simon. All that, of course, is after I've strapped on the headgear.GAMELLI: The notion that pain is something that always has to be treated with medication-we want to challenge that.That's Dr. Richard Gamel ...

What your avatar does in an online fantasy world may very well land you in court.As virtual worlds increasingly generate real-world legal disputes, a cyberlaw scholar at the Rutgers School of Law-Camden is authoring a book that promises to be the first to focus on the complex intersection of law and virtual worlds.In his forthcoming book "Virtual Law" (Yale University Press, 2009), Greg Lastowka, an associate professor at the Rutgers-Camden law school, will explore how the daily interactions of millions of people who "live" each day i ...

High school teacher Kenny Saxe has played his fair share of racquetball, but not even his time on the racquetball court could prepare him for a match quite like the one he played on Saturday.That game Saxe was playing is called Nintendo Wii. Players use a remote control and the flick of a wrist to swing tennis rackets on a TV screen, a virtual reality version of the real game. The tournament held Saturday, ironically, was a fundraiser to help build four "real life" outdoor tennis courts at U-32 High school. "We've got a foot of snow o ...

To a patient recovering from severe burns, no place would be more soothing than a polar landscape of gently falling snowflakes, snowmen, penguins, igloos and icy rivers.That's the thinking behind SnowWorld, an interactive, virtual-reality video game being used at Loyola University Hospital in Maywood, Ill., to manage pain felt by burn patients during wound care and physical therapy. Loyola is the first hospital in Illinois and only one of a handful across the nation that is employing this 21st century technology to help burn patients ...

What your avatar does in an online fantasy world may very well land you in court. As virtual worlds increasingly generate real-world legal disputes, a cyberlaw scholar at the Rutgers School of Law-Camden is authoring a book that promises to be the first to focus on the complex intersection of law and virtual worlds. In his forthcoming book "Virtual Law" (Yale University Press, 2009), Greg Lastowka, an associate professor at the Rutgers-Camden law school, will explore how the daily interactions of millions of people who "live" each day ...

F/A-18 Simulated Avionics Maintenance Trainer Provides U.S. Navy With Realistic Aircraft Training in a Safe and Secure Virtual Environment AMERICAN SYSTEMS, a government and commercial IT solutions provider and one of the top 100 employee-owned companies in the U.S., recently demonstrated its F/A-18 Simulated Avionics Maintenance Trainer (SAMT) in front of Congress at the 11th Annual Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO-STRI) Demo on Capitol Hill. More than 700 members of Congress participated in ...

The Wyoming Virtual School will become an official school next year and will be open to students across the state.The Campbell County School District has funded the virtual school since it opened in the 2006-2007 school year. Under direction from the Wyoming Department of Education, enrollment has been limited to Campbell County residents.The school was in danger of shutting its virtual doors at the end of this year if it did not get state funding.After a state task force studied the issue, the just-completed state Legislature decided ...

The Wyoming Virtual School will become an official school next year and will be open to students across the state.The Campbell County School District has funded the virtual school since it opened in the 2006-2007 school year. Under direction from the Wyoming Department of Education, enrollment has been limited to Campbell County residents.The school was in danger of shutting its virtual doors at the end of this year if it did not get state funding.After a state task force studied the issue, the just-completed state Legislature decided ...

When 12 Cents for Marvin frontman Tom Werge told his band mates he was headed to Miami for law school some tough choices had to be made.But after almost 12 years together, the ska band wasn't about to call it quits."When I made the decision to move down to Florida I went to the band and said here's the situation and put it back on them - do you want to go on or look for a replacement or... and they all said let's keep going and we'll just fly you out every few months for shows. For a minute, I definitely thought this could be the end ...

Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, might one day be a useful business tool but they are not yet enterprise-ready, analyst group Gartner has warned. Virtual environments can be used by firms as an easy way of holding conferences, meetings and other collaborative activities. But they may require "gaming class" PCs and other devices to ensure the user experience is not compromised, said Gartner's chief of research, Steve Prentice. Other potential problems of deploying a virtual environment include security, downtime and concurrency - t ...

Hospitals in Israel have started to involve virtual reality in the treatment of stroke patients.As part of the therapy, a computer program is used which helps in projecting on a screen actual motions of patients' hands when tennis balls are virtually thrown at them from all directions.University of Haifa computer scientist Dr. Larry Manevitz, his research fellow Dr. Uri Feintuch, who is also a neuroscientist at Hebrew University, and a computer science graduate student Eugene Mednikov have developed the new program.The researchers sai ...

One of the benefits arising from the South by Southwest Film Festival is the rare opportunity to see pictures that might otherwise go unnoticed."Second Skin," is one of those films, and it examines the world of massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPG.Think you don't care about that world? The following is a transcript by KXAN Austin News' Jim Swift, who says maybe you should."My name is Heather Callan," says a woman. "I play Ashlian Leadan, who is a fury in Everquest II. She's just like an extension of myself in the ...

Having now tested the 3rd Space Vest I should say that having rapidly inflating small balloons on your chest and back does not feel very much like being fried by alien weaponry.I tried the jacket while playing a game called Incursion, which was similar to first person shooter game Half Life.Being pretty hopeless at spotting the circling baddies of various shapes and sizes provided plenty of opportunity to test whether the jacket provided anything like an accurate simulation of being shot and hit at close range.Much as I like the idea ...

Israeli hospitals have recently started to use virtual reality therapy for stroke patients. One commonly used program has the patient watch his virtual image on a screen. For example, tennis balls are virtually thrown at the patient from all directions and the patients' actual hand motions are recorded on screen. In the first stage of development of this new program, computer scientists Dr. Larry Manevitz of the University of Haifa, together with Dr. Uri Feintuch, a neuroscientist from Hebrew University and a research fellow at the Ha ...

AUSTIN, TEXAS - Second Skin made its world premiere on opening night (March 7) at the South by Southwest Film Festival with director Juan Carlos Pineiro and his producers in attendance, along with many of the film's subjects: virtual reality gamers involved (heavily) in Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). After seeing the film, it stacks up as quite an accomplishment that the filmmakers were able to drag these folks away from their computers to attend.We're talking guys (and gals) who spend upwards of half their w ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart, scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system. Through bidirectional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum "sensed" the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one."In a mixed reality state there is no clear boundary between the real system and the virtual system," said U. of I. physicist Alfred Hubler. "The line blurs between what's real and what isn't."In the experiment, ...

Israeli hospitals have recently started to use virtual reality therapy for stroke patients. One commonly used program has the patient watch his virtual image on a screen. For example, tennis balls are virtually thrown at the patient from all directions and the patients' actual hand motions are recorded on screen. In the first stage of development of this new program, computer scientists Dr. Larry Manevitz of the University of Haifa, together with Dr. Uri Feintuch, a neuroscientist from Hebrew University and a research fellow at the Ha ...

If you never had the opportunity to attend Princeton or Yale, higher learning is now just a mouse click away. The world's first online public university is now a reality, and anyone with an internet connection can easily access various lectures from universities around the world from the comfort of their home. This ambitious project is the brainchild of a 26-year-old university student from Aarhus, Denmark.Suddenly, knowledge is no longer confined to the stuffy walls of the lecture hall. At PublicUniversityOnline.com students - and an ...

Dassault Systemes (DS) (Paris:DSY) (NASDAQ:DASTY), the leading provider of software solutions allowing users to create, share and experience in 3D, affirms its commitment to the athletic arena with its "Virtual Plus Reality Challenge", a new technological experience:-- A technologically advanced mini-website based on the latest 3D solutions allowing the general public to watch the Paris-Beijing race run by renowned marathon runner Philippe Fuchs in real-time-- A global premiere for science and sports with the Marseille Motion Science ...

CAVE(TM) Display in Fossett Laboratory for Virtual Planetary Exploration Brings High-Resolution, Immersive Imagery of NASA Data to EarthMechdyne Corporation today announced that it has installed an immersive CAVE(TM) display system as the focal point of the new Fossett Laboratory for Virtual Planetary Exploration at Washington University St. Louis (WUSTL). As a teaching and research facility of the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, the Laboratory will provide 3D imaging capability for visualization of data collected by nationa ...

Much about online education can be learned in homes At 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Alex Van Dyck and three siblings opened a door plastered with photos and "Proud Moments" just off the living room of their rural De Pere home.There, inside a cheerful, 10-by-12-foot classroom, the Van Dyck kids - Alex, 11, Eric, 9, and twins Jennifer and Ryan, 7 - began their lessons as pupils of Wisconsin Connections Academy, an online school based in the Appleton Area School District.The children's desks lined the walls, along with a colorful profusion of book ...

20 mushers will be rigged with high-tech tracking devicesIt's always been impossible to witness the entire length of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race except, of course, for the competitors. Many top contenders like it that way.But organizers say fans will get the next best experience in the 36th running of the 1,100-mile race, which begins with a ceremonial start in downtown Anchorage on Saturday. Race buffs around the world will be able to follow online the virtual progress of 20 veteran mushers whose sleds are rigged with technology ...