Group items tagged

CAVE2™, the next-generation large-scale virtual-reality environment, is a hybrid system that combines the benefits of both scalable-resolution display walls and virtual-reality systems to create a seamless 2D/3D environment that supports both information-rich analysis as well as virtual-reality simulation exploration at a resolution matching human visual acuity.

It's easy to get lost in CAVE2. The next-generation virtual reality platform is one of the most advanced visualization environments on Earth. It combines 320 degrees of panoramic, floor-to-ceiling LCD displays with an optical tracking interface that gives rise to a "hybrid reality system" capable of rendering remarkably immersive 3D environments - whether you wish to explore the labyrinthine vasculature of the human brain, or soar swiftly over the vast canyons of Mars.

This is a guest post by Clark Dever, social media manager of Vuzix and a photographer. You can follow him on Twitter @clarkdever

Google's swooshy new concept video for augmented reality goggles (or "spex", if you will) has certainly put the virtual cat among the digital pigeons. An attempt, perhaps, to leapfrog the iPad - if Google can persuade us that what we really want is headwear that will let us see things that aren't really there.

In a controversial paper in Nature Physics, theorists claim they can prove that wavefunctions - the entity that determines the probability of different outcomes of measurements on quantum-mechanical particles - are real states.

Here's some bad news for those of you who like to think you can think rationally about risk. You can't. You know all those thoughtfully considered views you have about nuclear power or genetically modified food or climate change? They are really no more than a jumble of facts, and how you feel about those facts. That's right. They're just your opinions. Which is bad news, because no matter how right you feel, you might be wrong. And being wrong about risk is risky, to you AND to others.

In addition to a high-tech grocery cart and an augmented-reality mirror, one of the futuristic projects on display at Microsoft's TechForum event earlier this week was a research project exploring the possibilities for using a transparent LCD display in conjunction with a Kinect sensor to let people interact with virtual objects in a 3D space by moving their hands around behind the screen.

Results from FIA Aalborg: The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most important fundaments for the smart cities, and is becoming slowly but steadily one of the core elements of the Future Internet (FI). In fact, various architectures and approaches from Future Internet such as Cloud Computing (Software as a Service - SaaS), which are being linked with the Web of Things, which is also allowing to define Sensors as a Service (SaaS) are clear examples of this relation between Future Internet and IoT architectures. At this particular point, where the IoT is a reality, where several IoT-based high scale deployments are being carried out such as Rome, and Santander. It is essential to discuss what are the IoT-specific aspects that the FI architecture has to take into account, in order to efficiently map the IoT architectures into an overall FI architecture, and particularly, how to manage rights of the individual (i.e. privacy) and its interaction with IoT objects taking into account aspects like delegation, access control as key aspects in the inclusion of the Internet of Things in the common lives with its total inclusion in the city of the future.

As a child, I always looked up at the stars and wondered how I could make it into space. Hopefully, I will live to see that day, but for now, a homemade satellite will have to do. The Nanosatisfi team has made it their mission "to provide affordable space exploration for everyone!," and with ArduSat, they move one step closer to reality. ArduSat is a Arduino-controlled miniature 10cm cubic satellite, weighing 1 kg, which is roughly equivalent to half a store bought loaf of bread. Its size might not be impressive, but it packs over 25 sensors including: Myspectral's open source spectrometer, inertial measurement unit, magnetometer, along the standard set, and many others. This impressive little machine boasts a camera to take photographs, it could send messages back to earth, or it can run your space experiments. With the ability to upload code directly to the ArduSat while in space, the possibilities are virtually limitless.

Star Trek: The Next Generation may be coming to your living rooms soon courtesy of some hot new Blu-ray pressing, but one of the most compelling pieces of the technology shown on that series still remains elusive: the holodeck. Don't get down, sunshine, because we might soon be making our first, tentative steps into a virtual courtesy of Project Holodeck. It's underway at USC's School of Cinematic Arts as well as the Viterbi School of Engineering and starts out with a pair of Project Oculus glasses. These glasses, which were shown off at E3 by none other than John Carmack, cram a 1,280 x 800 display into a pair of glasses that present a wide, truly immersive field of view. Pair that with a PlayStation Move for head tracking and a Razer Hydra controller and you have the beginnings of a proper virtual reality environment.

Developer kit for the Oculus Rift - the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games.

It may be difficult to imagine a world where human beings are even more connected than we are now. Yet the reality is that when it comes to connectivity, we're barely scratching the surface in terms of where we'll be in the future. Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/02/21/the-connected-human-how-the-world-is-about-to-get-even-smaller/#ixzz1nATDjr5q