People have wept, nearly puked and now they may shit their pants for the sake of virtual reality.
Gaming company Bandai Namco is opening up a virtual reality arcade center in Tokyo from April through October, according to VR Scout. It’s hoping to lure in human guinea pigs to test out the HTC Vive virtual reality system and Bandai Namco games, one of which looks especially terrifying.
In a teaser video for one of the HTC Vive experiences, Fear of Heights Show, users have to rescue a cat on a wooden plank 60 stories above the ground. The promo video itself may be dramatized, but the premise definitely has pants-shitting potential.
In the world of emerging technology, prognostication is a tricky business. Things can change quickly in the tech business, where one breakthrough — in research, application or even legislation — can trigger a cascade of rapid consequences.
But what the hey — we’ll give it a shot. Here are ten tech trends to watch for in 2015, including developments in personal stealth wear, immersive virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
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The antidote to racism partly lies in empathy, or the willingness to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” as the saying goes. But scientists from universities across Europe are taking the maxim one step further, providing people an opportunity to experience life in someone else’s skin by experimenting with virtual reality as a means of helping people shed racial stereotypes.
Researchers from London and Barcelona teamed up to discuss their recent experiments on virtual reality and race in an opinion piece for the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, published Dec. 15. The researchers found that if people got the chance to physically experience their own body with different skin colors (or ages and sexes), their unconscious biases against other racial groups could be diminished.
This isn’t merely a question of changing mentality or perception. The experience of “living” in different skin triggers sensory signals in the brain that allow it to expand its understanding of what a body can look like. This can “cause people to change their attitudes about others,” wrote the study’s co-researcher, Professor Mel Slater, a part-time professor of virtual environments at the University College London and research professor at the University of Barcelona.
Facebook’s stepping into the world of virtual reality.
The company announced on Tuesday afternoon it has reached a deal to acquire Oculus VR, a company paving new roads in the field, for $2 billion. The deal is comprised of $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock.
Oculus VR’s flagship product is the virtual reality goggles known as the Oculus Rift, which was first funded through a massively successful Kickstarter campaign. It has already received more than 75,000 orders for development kits.
It’s got “self-healing wings,” “virtual reality windows,” room for up to 755 passengers and may just offer a glimpse into the future of air travel. Introducing the AWWA “Sky Whale,” a concept airplane from Spanish designer and aviation enthusiast Oscar Viñals that uses technological innovation to make air travel more efficient and eco-friendly.
Viñals claims his flying behemoth could, using a mix of existing and anticipated technology, reduce aircraft noise, drag, weight, fuel consumption and emissions. “The AWWA-VA could be equipped with new advanced technologies from alloys, ceramic or fiber composites, carbon nanotube and fiber optic cabling to self-healing skin, hybrid electric engines, active wings, double fuselages and virtual reality windows with adaptable opacity,” Viñals explains in his proposal.
This week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas may be the place where the likes of Samsung and Panasonic announce their latest TVs and cameras, but it’s also full of extremely weird — yet sometimes surprisingly useful — devices from big companies and small.
Full-body gaming suit As for virtual reality, this guy is experiencing the next best thing. The PrioVR “gaming exoskeleton” puts trackers on your head, body, arms, and legs — but you still play games on the TV, at least for now. All this might be obsoleted by 3-D tracking systems like the Kinect, but there’s something special about getting wired up with all that gear. The zombies don’t stand a chance.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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