virtual reality

Nov 15 2008   4:21PM GMT

g-speak: Oblong brings the “Minority Report” operating system to science reality

Posted by: Alexander Howard
operating systems, virtual, media, data, Technology, fun, video, Internet, multimedia, innovation, cool, culture, interesting, futurism, invention, creativity, entrepeneurship, interactive media, tool, buzz, science, virtual reality, interface, display, geek, demonstration, immersive 3D worlds

William Gibson noted recently that the cyberpunk fiction he’d been writing over the past quarter century has now become science fact. Pattern Recognition and Spook Country are both set in near-futures with technology and social norms that are only a slight extension of the complex technological realities of the present. The neural shunt that jacks you into the network he imagined in Neuromancer hasn’t quite have arrived yet but some humans now have direct brain-computer interfaces implanted in their brains.

Brad Feld appreciates this relationship between science fiction and fact as few others do. As he writes in ‘Science Fact‘ on Oblong’s web blog, the future of human-computer interaction is looking breathtaking. And, while the genetically-engineering precognitive humans Philip K. Dick imagined in “Minority Report” in 1956 haven’t arrived yet, g-speak certainly has.

g-speak is a spatial operating environment from Oblong Industries that combines a gestural interface, DLP projectors and ‘recombinant networking.” It’s modeled upon the virtual OS operated by Precrime Agent John Anderton in Minority Report, the film adaptation of Dick’s short story.

That connection is no accident. The science adviser that Spielberg consulted for the film, John Underkoffler, has been quietly busy since the film’s premiere in 2002. A few stories have popped up over the years, to be sure, but since Oblong Industries was founded in the research in 2006 he and other technologists have advanced the technology considerably, as you’ll see in the video below.

Once you’ve watched it, read g-speak in slices and about the origins of Oblong in the MIT Media Lab to learn about the potential for this human-to-machine interface and the long road to bringing it into reality..

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

[Hat tip to Engadget's Josh Topolsky and Jamie.]

Embedded below is a 2007 report on g-speak featuring an interview with Underkoffler.

Jun 27 2008   8:42AM GMT

Have you got your avatar yet? Gartner says you will.

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
business, Web 2.0, new media, multimedia, culture, futurism, participation, interactive media, social networking, virtual reality, gaming, immersive 3D worlds, virtual worlds, predictions

It’s 2008. Do you know where your avatar is?

Only three years to get your avatar unless you want to be lumped in with the bottom 20% — by 2011, Gartner says that the vast majority of Internet users will have avatars to represent them online in various gaming and non-game virtual environments. Which, I guess, are expected to proliferate. The clock’s ticking — Gartner predicted that last year at their Symposium/ITxpo 2007 Emerging Trends.

And they aren’t talking about the 2D image that pops up beside your posts in forums. I mean, even I have one of those. And she’s cute, if a little on the flat side. But she’s no Lara Croft — her ass-kicking ability is extremely limited. And I can’t see the world from her perspective, in a 3-D immersive world.

I have friends in virtual worlds, have had invitations extended — but so far, I haven’t wandered into one. I completely understand the appeal. Wow — talk about a rich fantasy life! My stock response, though, is that I don’t have time for my first life, let alone a second one.

I guess I’m going to have to make time. According to Gartner and near-futurists such as Gerri Sinclair, more and more of our online activities will move to virtual environments and our interactions will be conducted by 3D representatives with all the capabilities we and others possess in the real world — and then some. Sinclair is executive director of the master’s degree program for digital media at the Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver and her students are creating a parallel virtual university.

Here’s an interview on MSDN’s Channel 10.

Apparently, the future of online interaction is going to be pretty much conducted by avatars, in 3-D surround everything. I was thinking about that — my worklife avatar would be plunked in front of a computer looking at a computer screen and my online leisure time avatar would best represent me by sitting around chatting in book store cafes. But then, I guess, “I” could wander over to the shelves and find something to read or go get some sprinkles on my latte…

Maybe it’s just a failure of imagination on my part. In a 3-D immersive world I can be and do — virtually — anything… Hmmm… Well, it looks like I’m going to get sprinkles on my latte. Then… on the way to the counter I feel inspired to… do a triple backflip. Hey! Perfectly executed — and not a drop spilled! Now I’m going to drink my coffee. For real.

~ Ivy Wigmore

Apr 23 2008   8:46AM GMT

Video: Exploring presence technology with tele-immersive dance in cyberspace

Posted by: Alexander Howard
applications, virtual, media, Technology, fun, video, YouTube, new media, Internet, innovation, cool, culture, college, learning, academics, interesting, invention, event, creativity, collaboration, participation, interactive media, music, mashup, science, virtual reality, geek, demonstration

Often the title of a video alone raises an eyebrow. Today’s video selection certainly does — it’s a presentation from two tele-immersion labs, one at UC Berkeley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the other within the University of Urbana-Champaign Computer Science Department. According to the IEEE Computer Society, tele-immersion is when “collaborators at remote sites share the details of a virtual world that can autonomously control computation, query databases, and gather results.” It might be a stretch but I see tele-immersion used in that was as an advanced version of presence technology, in which an application make it possible to locate and identify a computing device wherever it might be, as soon as the user connects to the network.

As it’s a dance performance, both labs worked in close collaboration with the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, and the Dance Department and Intermedia Program at Mills College. The video quality admittedly isn’t great — and you may want to skip ahead to 11:30, when the actual performance begins, or to 20:00, when the dancing starts — but the concept itself is noteworthy for its aspiration to bridge the gap between real and virtual environments.

From the show notes on YouTube:

The Resonance Project Dance Group performed for a very large crowd in the Hearst Memorial Mining Building at UC Berkeley. The performance was a blend of live, modern dance with live tele-immersed dancers from University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Using a large network of cameras and computers the dancers were able to span the geographic distance and mingle in cyberspace. The computers merged three-dimensional video images of the dancers onto a single projection, which was broadcast alongside live dancers.

The Resonance Project is a team of choreographers, dancers, computer engineers, and visual and sound artists who are investigating concepts of presence/remote presence and corporeal and code interactivity within live and media based performance. Unique to the project is the use of a “performance as research” model, within which scientists and artists collaborate to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence.

The nature of the performance has a close conceptual relationship with CAVE, a tele-immersive environment used for learning in a wide variety of disciplines, and the CAVEman, the first 4-D human atlas.

May 30 2007   3:43PM GMT

A very sophisticated CAVEman

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
science, nanotech, virtual reality

Scientists at the University of Calgary have created what they’re calling a 4-D human atlas, dubbed CAVEman for the virtual reality room he resides in, AKA the “research holodeck.”

CAVEman is an model of a human body consisting of over 3,000 anatomically correct, catalogued body parts. The interactive, object-oriented model is projected from three sides and the floor of the CAVE, in which it appears to float.

The user can rotate the figure in all directions and magnify or zoom in or out on any area. Created at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, CAVEman will be used to study surgical techniques, human development, disease and treatment.

4-D includes the three spatial dimensions plus time which allows researchers to observe the progression of a disease or the effects of a treatment over a period of time.

The University of Calgary’s CAVE pages provide more information and interactive demos.

Here’s a collection of images of CAVEman.