Lifeboat Foundation

Summary: Computer-generated, or virtual humans, prove to be just as good as humans in helping people practice leadership skills.

Source: Frontiers.

A virtual human can be as good as a flesh-and-blood one when it comes to helping people practice new leadership skills. That’s the conclusion from new research published in the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality that evaluated the effectiveness of computer-generated characters in a training scenario compared to real human role-players in a conventional setting.

Take my micro-transaction.

We may be on track to our own version of the Oasis after an announcement yesterday from Epic Games that it has raised $1 billion to put towards building “the metaverse.”

Epic Games has created multiple hugely popular video games, including Fortnite, Assassin’s Creed, and Godfall. An eye-popping demo released last May shows off Epic’s Unreal Engine 5, its next-gen computer program for making video games, interactive experiences, and augmented and virtual reality apps, set to be released later this year. The graphics are so advanced that the demo doesn’t look terribly different from a really high-quality video camera following someone around in real life—except it’s even cooler. In February Epic unveiled its MetaHuman Creator, an app that creates highly realistic “digital humans” in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Continue reading “Epic Games Raised $1 Billion to Fund Its Vision for Building the Metaverse” »

What’s New: Intel today announced that it has signed an agreement with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to perform in its Data Protection in Virtual Environments (DPRIVE) program. The program aims to develop an accelerator for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). Microsoft is the key cloud ecosystem and homomorphic encryption partner leading the commercial adoption of the technology once developed by testing it in its cloud offerings, including Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft JEDI cloud, with the U.S. government. The multiyear program represents a cross-team effort across multiple Intel groups, including Intel Labs, the Design Engineering Group and the Data Platforms Group, to tackle “the final frontier” in data privacy, which is computing on fully encrypted data without access to decryption keys.

“Fully homomorphic encryption remains the holy grail in the quest to keep data secure while in use. Despite strong advances in trusted execution environments and other confidential computing technologies to protect data while at rest and in transit, data is unencrypted during computation, opening the possibility of potential attacks at this stage. This frequently inhibits our ability to fully share and extract the maximum value out of data. We are pleased to be chosen as a technology partner by DARPA and look forward to working with them as well as Microsoft to advance this next chapter in confidential computing and unlock the promise of fully homomorphic encryption for all.” – Rosario Cammarota, principal engineer, Intel Labs, and principal investigator, DARPA DPRIVE program

Dr. Shawna Pandya MD, is a scientist-astronaut candidate with Project PoSSUM, physician, aquanaut, speaker, martial artist, advanced diver, skydiver, and pilot-in-training.

Dr. Pandya is also the VP of Immersive Medicine with the virtual reality healthcare company, Luxsonic Technologies, Director of the International Institute of Astronautical Sciences (IIAS)/PoSSUM Space Medicine Group, Chief Instructor of the IIAS/PoSSUM Operational Space Medicine course, Director of Medical Research at Orbital Assembly Construction (a company building the world’s first rotating space station providing the first artificial gravity habitat), clinical lecturer at the University of Alberta, podcast host with the World Extreme Medicine’s WEMCast series, Primary Investigator (PI) for the Shad Canada-Blue Origin student micro-gravity competition, member of the ASCEND 2021 Guiding Coalition, Life Sciences Team Lead for the Association of Spaceflight Professionals, sesional lecturer for the “Technology and the Future of Medicine,” course at the University of Alberta, and Fellow of the Explorers’ Club.

Continue reading “Dr Shawna Pandya MD — Physician, Scientist, Astronaut Candidate, Aquanaut, Martial Artist, Sky-Diver” »

“The quality of VR headsets has improved exponentially since the 1990s. These graphs illustrate how the rapid improvement is likely to continue in the coming decades, with graphical resolutions practically indistinguishable from real life by 2040.”

Virtual reality – future trends.

The quality of virtual reality (VR) headsets has improved exponentially since the 1990s. These graphs illustrate how the rapid improvement is likely to continue in the coming decades, with graphical resolutions practically indistinguishable from real life by 2040.

Continue reading “Virtual reality – future trends” »

All of which would be nice and handy, but clearly, privacy and ethics are going to be a big issue for people — particularly when a company like Facebook is behind it. Few people in the past would ever have lived a life so thoroughly examined, catalogued and analyzed by a third party. The opportunities for tailored advertising will be total, and so will the opportunities for bad-faith actors to abuse this treasure trove of minute detail about your life.

But this tech is coming down the barrel. It’s still a few years off, according to the FRL team. But as far as it is concerned, the technology and the experience are proven. They work, they’ll be awesome, and now it’s a matter of working out how to build them into a foolproof product for the mass market. So, why is FRL telling us about it now? Well, this could be the greatest leap in human-machine interaction since the touchscreen, and frankly Facebook doesn’t want to be seen to be making decisions about this kind of thing behind closed doors.

Continue reading “Facebook’s upcoming AR wrist controllers will hijack your nerves” »

Facial tracker for your virtual avatar. 🙂

Wow! I just tried out the facial tracker from HTC Vive in Neos VR and I have to say it is next level! Can’t wait to see this become the standard in virtual real… See More.

A new method called tensor holography could enable the creation of holograms for virtual reality, 3D printing, medical imaging, and more — and it can run on a smartphone.

Despite years of hype, virtual reality headsets have yet to topple TV or computer screens as the go-to devices for video viewing. One reason: VR can make users feel sick. Nausea and eye strain can result because VR creates an illusion of 3D viewing although the user is in fact staring at a fixed-distance 2D display. The solution for better 3D visualization could lie in a 60-year-old technology remade for the digital world: holograms.

Holograms deliver an exceptional representation of 3D world around us. Plus, they’re beautiful. (Go ahead — check out the holographic dove on your Visa card.) Holograms offer a shifting perspective based on the viewer’s position, and they allow the eye to adjust focal depth to alternately focus on foreground and background.

Continue reading “Using Artificial Intelligence to Generate 3D Holograms in Real-Time on a Smartphone” »

TOWARDS a METAMATERIALLY-BASED ANALOGUE SENSOR FOR TELESCOPE EYEPIECES jeremy batterson.

(NB: Those familiar with photography or telescopy can skip over the “elements of a system,” since they will already know this.)

Continue reading “Navy engineer devises new way to enhance night vision for ground forces” »