I feel like it’s a shade too early for this sort of thing, but just to give you a peek at the horizon, from Search Engine Land: Virtual environment optimization (VEO) is coming. Ready for it?. “VEO is the task of working within a virtual environment and utilizing the resources available to best position the clients’ products and services within an alternative reality.”
Brown University: “Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World,” Brown Library’s Digital Publications Initiative’s Second Born-Digital Scholarly Monograph, Published by Stanford University Press. “Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World, by Professor of Italian Studies Massimo Riva, explores popular forms of entertainment used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to transport viewers to a new world, foreshadowing present-day virtual, augmented, and extended reality experiences (VR, AR, XR). Published by Stanford University Press, Shadow Plays examines themes of virtual travel, social surveillance, and utopian imagination through six case histories and eight interactive simulations.”
Fast Company: 3 years ago Notre-Dame caught on fire. This video game lets you fight to save it. “A detailed architectural model of the building—originally made for another video game—has players working to save the burning cathedral.”
New York Times: Showcasing 27 Published Experiments in AR Storytelling. “Spatial data, real-scale explainers, interactive visual stories, 3D art, and immersive environments can enhance our readers’ understanding of the world. Since 2020, R&D has experimented with dozens of these stories in collaboration with the newsroom using Instagram’s Spark AR platform.”
University of Maryland Baltimore: New Center Brings Virtual Reality Research Into Focus. “The University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) is the joint recipient of $4.75 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a new Center for Medical Innovations in Extended Reality.”
Carnegie Mellon University: Over the Lips, Through the Gums, Look Out Gamers, Here It Comes — Or So It Seems. “Lips are famously sensual but, together with the gums and tongue, they are also surprisingly sensitive, second only to the fingertips in nerve density. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have exploited this latter characteristic to devise a practical way for people to receive tactile feedback in virtual worlds. Their system uses airborne ultrasound waves to create sensations on the lips, teeth and tongue, and is small and light enough to attach to the bottom of virtual reality (VR) goggles.”
TrekMovie: The Roddenberry Archive Recreates Sets From First ‘Star Trek’ Pilot “The Cage”. “The Gene Roddenberry estate is developing ‘The Roddenberry Archive,’ which is a multi-decade collaboration to collect and preserve Gene Roddenberry’s legacy at the highest levels of fidelity and historical accuracy. A number of Star Trek veterans are involved in the project, including artists Denise and Mike Okuda, Doug Drexler, and Daren Dochterman who are all working with the cloud graphics company OTOY. Their first project is to create a 1:1 virtual experience of The Motion Picture USS Enterprise.”
The Guardian: A barrage of assault, racism and rape jokes: my nightmare trip into the metaverse. “Before I went into the metaverse, I’d read a few articles on it and people didn’t have the nicest things to say. But I wanted to see if that was true, or whether people were just trying to find negativity. I’m a heavy user of social media, so a 3D virtual space where you can interact with other people – where artists are doing concerts and fashion houses are doing shows? That’s exciting to me! But within the first 10 minutes of putting on a VR headset and entering a chat room, I saw underage kids simulating oral sex on each other. I experienced sexual harassment, racism and rape jokes. At one point, I heard someone say ‘I like little girls from the age of nine to 12: that’s just my thing.’”
CNET: Extinct Ice Age Animals Like the Woolly Mammoth Will Roam the Metaverse. “On a remote Arctic island, some 4,000 years ago, woolly mammoths took their last steps on Earth. Around 6,000 years prior, the final few sabre-toothed cats preyed across the Americas. And 3,000 years before that, majestic dire wolves became creatures of the past. Scientists are revving up to bring these now-extinct animals, and more, into the domain of augmented reality.”
CNET: Meta’s Plea At MWC 2022: Come Build Metaverse-Ready Networks With Us. “On the eve of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Facebook parent company Meta issued a bid for partners to work with the company on bringing its vision for the metaverse to life.”
Reuters: Facebook’s Meta unveils AI projects aimed at building the metaverse. “Facebook-owner Meta is working on artificial intelligence research to generate worlds through speech, improve how people chat to voice assistants and translate between languages, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday, as he sketched out key steps to building the metaverse. Zuckerberg is betting that the metaverse, a futuristic idea of virtual environments where users can work, socialize and play, will be the successor to the mobile internet.”
CNET: Three new Frank Lloyd Wright houses built for the internet. “Three houses Frank Lloyd Wright designed but never built have been brought to digital life. The home contractor review site Angi had the houses modeled, and it published the results online in January, as reported by Wallpaper Magazine on Wednesday.”
New York Times: Augmented Reality Theater Takes a Bow. In Your Kitchen.. “The Immersive Storytelling Studio at the National Theater in London is using technology to bring a miniature musical to viewers’ homes. It’s one of several high-tech British projects pushing dramatic boundaries.”
The Verge: Meta reportedly canceled a 300-person VR / AR operating system project. “Meta reportedly pulled the plug on a custom operating system that was supposed to power upcoming virtual and augmented reality headsets, although its full reasoning and future plans still aren’t clear, and the company has denied it’s scaling back its overall OS efforts. The Information reported the news today, saying the company formerly named Facebook suspended development of a project called XROS — named after XR, an umbrella term for AR / VR — in November.”
Tom’s Guide: Google ‘innovative AR device’ reportedly on the way with all-new OS. “Google’s attempts to conquer the world of augmented and virtual reality haven’t met with much success. But it sounds as if the company is ready to give it another go. In a LinkedIn post, Mark Lucovsky, Google’s new senior director of engineering, operating systems and AR, says that the company is looking to fill key roles on the team responsible for building an augmented reality OS.”
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