NEWS
► Disney offers an elegant solution to VR’s movement problem. HoloTile is a system composed of hundreds of small, round “tiles” about the size of a silver dollar. Each serve as a kind of mini, omnidirectional treadmill. Working together, their only task is to stop the walker from leaving the pad. If it’s going to see the light of day, it seems likely that it will be as part of a Disney Parks VR experience.
► Meta is Working on an Airplane Travel Mode for Quest. Responding to X (formerly Twitter) user Andrew Fox, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says the company is working on a way to make Quest work better for in-flight entertainment. Undoubtedly one of the biggest names to promise a solution to travel woes lately is Apple, as the company announced its $3,500 Vision Pro headset would include a ‘Travel’ mode, which Apple says can be used to “stabilize visuals for use on planes.” Could Meta be up to something similar? It’s likely.
► Microsoft Teams now supports 3D and VR meetings. Microsoft has launched its immersive 3D meetings inside Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Mesh, the company’s mixed reality platform, is coming out of preview and being integrated into Teams to let people gather in virtual spaces with or without a VR headset.
► The XR Association released its State of the Industry report. The report offers reflections on 2023 and a look ahead to 2024. According to the report, ‘The global market for XR continues to grow, reaching more than $31 billion in 2023 and is expected to surpass $100 billion by 2026.’
► The transformative role of virtual reality-based meditation. Immersive technology like virtual reality (VR) is providing new hope to Veterans with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) at San Diego VA’s neuromodulation clinic. Ketamine therapy is prescribed to address the challenges of patients with severe depression who have tried numerous medication-based and behavioral therapy approaches without success. In 2019, nursing informatics specialist Kevin Sojourner began piloting VR meditation with some of his more tech-savvy patients. Now, the program uses VR meditation with most TRD patients as a bookend to ketamine therapy. Before administration of the drug, patients appreciate the transitional space meditation provides. Following ketamine, VR also provides a space for introspective reflection on their experience.
► Meta wants to bring your own hands into VR, photorealistically. Researchers from Meta's Codec Avatars Lab and Nanyang Technological University present URHand in a new research paper. The name refers to "Universal Relightable Hands" and "Your Hand". URHand is a hand model that can be adapted to a user's individual hands and allows for realistic illumination. The hand model can be adapted to the user's hands using a series of smartphone pictures, so that one day it may be possible to bring one's own hands into virtual reality using simple means.
► Interpol report on improving crime scene analysis and law enforcement. Metaverse platforms could become a valuable tool for law enforcement training and crime scene preservation and analysis, according to a white paper released by Interpol’s Metaverse Expert Group. Interpol’s report highlights a handful of concrete use cases for law enforcement agencies that tap into the physical, augmented and virtual reality aspects of metaverse applications. An innovative approach is to use metaverse platforms to create virtual replicas of crime scenes. This allows investigators to access and analyze crime scenes indefinitely.
► Using virtual reality to get inside the criminal mind. Psychologists from Edith Cowan University (ECU) have used virtual reality (VR) technology in a new study that aims to better understand criminals and how they respond when questioned. Dr. Shane Rogers, who led the project, said that VR has a future in training police, more specifically detectives for interviews, where interview practice can be conducted in a wide range of virtual scenarios.
► New Reality Labs research project demonstrates mind-bending AR capabilities. Researchers at Meta Reality Labs Research and University of Duisburg-Essen devised a method for making real objects virtual so they can be interacted with in real-time. By not only digitizing the objects, but also seamlessly erasing their real counterparts, the method creates a mind-bending blend between the real and virtual worlds.
PERSPECTIVE
► Apple's Car Project: Everything We Know. Apple is now working to release an electric vehicle with driver-assistance features similar to the functions offered by Tesla vehicles.
► Canon unveils exciting lens & camera innovations for 3D & VR content creation. Canon already has a solid foothold in VR content creation with the professional 5.2mm VR180 Dual Fisheye lens. Now, the company has shown further products for the 3D VR sector at CES 2024.