Lifeboat Foundation

You’re working from home. Your colleagues are too. Facebook wants to bring you together — sort of — with virtual reality. The company is launching “Horizon Workrooms,” a VR app aimed at reinventing virtual office spaces.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the product Thursday in an exclusive interview with “CBS This Morning” co-host Gayle King. Both Zuckerberg and King wore headsets for what Zuckerberg said was his first interview in VR.

Zuckerberg said that as far back as middle school, he thought about how to create an immersive system where people could feel like they were together playing games or exploring – part of something called the “metaverse.”

In its first full VR news briefing, the company showed how Workrooms users can design avatar versions of themselves to meet in virtual reality conference rooms and collaborate on shared whiteboards or documents, still interacting with their own physical desk and computer keyboard.

Aug 19 (Reuters) — Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Thursday launched a test of a new virtual-reality remote work app where users of the company’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets can hold meetings as avatar versions of themselves.

The beta test of Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms app comes as many companies continue to work from home after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down physical workspaces and as a new variant is sweeping across the globe.

Continue reading “Facebook launches VR remote work app, calling it a step to the ‘metaverse’” »

Virtual reality, the future of concerts.

With Covid-19 restrictions stopping live performances some musicians have turned to virtual reality to create new live experiences.

Continue reading “Is virtual reality the future of live music? — BBC News” »

This is interesting. 😃

A new discovery in rats shows that the brain responds differently in immersive virtual reality environments versus the real world. The finding could help scientists understand how the brain brings together sensory information from different sources to create a cohesive picture of the world around us. It could also pave the way for “virtual reality therapy” for learning and memory-related disorders ranging including ADHD, Autism, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and depression.

Continue reading “Virtual reality boosts brain rhythms crucial for neuroplasticity, learning and memory” »

We speak to AR experts about the future of the Oculus Quest.

Oculus is getting into AR, and it has big repercussions for the future direction of the company and its popular line of VR headsets – especially the eventual Oculus Quest 3.

The Facebook-owned company recently announced its intention to open up its Oculus platform to augmented reality developers, allowing them to use the Oculus Quest 2 headset to host AR games and apps rather than simply VR titles – setting the scene for an explosion of both consumer and business applications on the popular standalone headset.

Continue reading “Oculus Quest 2 is getting AR – but could the Quest 3 take it further?” »

A metaverse? VR? Ready Player One? I’m in.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked to The Verge about the company’s plans to help make the metaverse a reality.

A new wearable brain-machine interface (BMI) system could improve the quality of life for people with motor dysfunction or paralysis, even those struggling with locked-in syndrome—when a person is fully conscious but unable to move or communicate.

A multi-institutional, international team of researchers led by the lab of Woon-Hong Yeo at the Georgia Institute of Technology combined wireless soft scalp electronics and virtual reality in a BMI system that allows the user to imagine an action and wirelessly control a wheelchair or robotic arm.

The team, which included researchers from the University of Kent (United Kingdom) and Yonsei University (Republic of Korea), describes the new motor imagery-based BMI system this month in the journal Advanced Science.

If a virtual world has ever left you feeling nauseous or disorientated, you’re familiar with cybersickness, and you’re hardly alone. The intensity of virtual reality (VR)—whether that’s standing on the edge of a waterfall in Yosemite or engaging in tank combat with your friends—creates a stomach-churning challenge for 30–80% of users.

In a first-of-its kind study, researchers at the University of Maryland recorded VR users’ brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) to better understand and work toward solutions to prevent cybersickness. The research was conducted by Eric Krokos, who received his Ph.D. in computer science in 2018, and Amitabh Varshney, a professor of computer science and dean of UMD’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.

Their study, “Quantifying VR cybersickness using EEG,” was recently published in the journal Virtual Reality.

The ability to precisely control the various properties of laser light is critical to much of the technology that we use today, from commercial virtual reality (VR) headsets to microscopic imaging for biomedical research. Many of today’s laser systems rely on separate, rotating components to control the wavelength, shape and power of a laser beam, making these devices bulky and difficult to maintain.

Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a single metasurface that can effectively tune the different properties of laser light, including wavelength, without the need of additional optical components. The metasurface can split light into multiple beams and control their shape and intensity in an independent, precise and power-efficient way.

The research opens the door for lightweight and efficient optical systems for a range of applications, from quantum sensing to VR/AR headsets.