Massively notes in an interesting post about human behaviour in virtual worlds how people actually tend to keep their social responsibility on a high level when going virtual.
A buzz was created around the AlloSphere, a spherical cave developed by the researchers at the California NanoSystem Institute, lead by Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin. It is conceived as a space where researchers can easily visualize complex data. [ Positive Technology Journal ]
Studies show that distraction through virtual reality reduces pain perceptions after repeated exposures, according to an article published in The Journal of Pain. [ News-Medical ]
Qwaq, who recently added to their list of customers the US Navy and Chevron, has published the second version of its leading product - Forums.
Qwaq Forums 2.0 is an online platform for building virtual workspaces, "with all the tools, data and interactivity that people need to explore ideas, resolve issues, track progress, and be more productive". Over a hundred companies and organizations are already using Forums to build virtual offices, training rooms, operation centers and other collaborative virtual spaces, in sectors such as energy, semiconductors, education, manufacturing, and healthcare, as well as in military and civil government agencies.
The new version's improvements are the following :
Meeting DVR
Smart Rooms
RSS streams
Streaming Video
"Allways-on" toolbar
… and several others
To be noted the existence of a tool called Qwaq Virtual Campus, which allows users to create outdoor spaces, and the ability to integrate Qwaq Forums with existing LDAP or Active Directory, through the Qwaq Forums Enterprise Server. The company offers their customers also the possibility to deploy a workspace behind a firewall.
The pricing for the platform starts at $60/user for a month, and a 30-day trial is available.
University of Southern California and Nokia Research Center Hollywood have announced they are engaging in a research collaboration in order to develop together new applications and services in the field of augmented reality. This collaboration should accelerate the ongoing efforts Nokia is putting into this field and help bringing innovative solutions to the market.
Augmented reality projects are the beginning and other projects are to follow, according to the officials. The Finnish giant seems to appreciate the experience USC has in developing new technologies, and USC, as the first university to enter into a collaborative research with Nokia, sees this as an excellent opportunity to deepen their already existing research and reach the public with future results.
After they recently presented Point & Find, and more than clearly gave everyone a gaze of what their vision of innovation might look like, Nokia is preparing to deploy on a ground that up to now was claimed by other actors. For the sake of constructive competition, let's wish them luck!
Google's O3D plugin was released to public yesterday.
O3D is a new solution from Google for making and publishing interactive real-time 3D applications. As everything that comes from big G, it is completely web oriented and aimed to run in a web browser. Very simple: you download and install the plugin (available for all major browsers on PC, Linux and Mac, of course), the plugin exploits low level 3D features of your graphic card and exposes its API to JavaScript (yes, that's right), which is used to script the application. Some of the key points of this shader based 3D framework are :
import of COLLADA media (thus SketchUp, 3DS Max, Maya… )
standard JavaScript event processing and callback methods
support for HLSL/Cg shading language
It is still unclear how exactly this development fits into the efforts promoted by the Khronos group. The group officially backs-up an OpenGL solution for web 3D APIs, but O3D is built on DirectX, with Google apparently having good reasons to do so. Opinions are that a phase of standardization is probably to follow, but the merits of Google's pioneer project are praised.
It seems that not all graphic cards are supported (for the moment?), hopefully this doesn't affect a big number of users and will be resolved in a near future.
For the eleventh time, the Europe's no. 1 annual virtual reality fair opened its doors today in Laval, western France. This year's edition, April 22-26, will host participants from 40 countries, and is expected to attract roughly 11.000 visitors.
Laval Virtual is a 5-day (three for professionals and two for general public) gathering of VR enthusiasts from all horizons, mixing exhibition with conferences, competitions and demo presentations. It is a unique occasion for numerous (mainly local) actors and decision makers in the domain to exchange with their peers as well as with potential clients.
The key issues this year will be Town planning and heritage, Industry and Events and Entertainment. Conferences will be held on subjects like "Virtual Reality and Sport", "Virtual Humans in Psychological Science and Therapy" or "Digital Art". Among the exhibitors : Dassault Systemes, who will be presenting it's recently edited products, Renault (with the R-Screen project held by CLARTE), MIT, University of Tokyo, Total Immersion and many (roughly 70) others.
