The VirtuaSphere is the first of its kind, a rotating bubble like a giant hamster ball. It surrounds the user, responding to their every movement, and using doppler radar to detect, then translate that into a 3D virtual environment. Roaming freely without end. No walls, no obstacles, no boundaries to movement.

Looks more important than Sounds in Speech
A neurological experiment has confirmed that the McGurk effect - a long-known phenomenon where what you see overrides what you hear - is indeed codified directly into the sound processing regions of the brain. Meaning the McGurk effect is not something that can be barpassed in our virtual environments, and is not a trick of sensory perception, but rather is a cornerstone of sound perception itself.

Imagination Eases Pain: Study Reinforces Effect Shown by VRs
A study has been performed on the use of imagination in children as a pain blocker. Whilst not directly connected with VR in pain relief itself, the results do serve to reinforce the position that diverting the child's attention elsewhere during a procedure, utterly diverting it and holding that diversion, is successful in removing the effect of pain.

I 0Wn Y0u, d0Od! Part Deux
A detailed, in-depth look at why selling content from within MMOs, to others can damage the business on the company in question, by looking at the effect it has on the costs of the MMO.

Large Image Display: Animatrix: Beyond: Indoor, Cloudless Rain
Like most of the screens from Beyond, this one shows an effect of what happens when the laws of a virtual environment become too complex, and interactions go a little ca ca. In this case, a torrent of downpour, inside, on a sunny day.

Why Recoil at Unpleasant Noise Occurs
Nails on a blackboard. It is an unbearable noise, one that sends shivers through anyone who hears it. But why does it do this, and more importantly, how can a virtual environment replicate the effect in any sound?

It's the End of the World as we Know It
Dealing with disappointed players is one of the most important skills for a storyteller. No matter what you do, somebody will be disappointed with the result, and may leave, or worse. This short article covers several real example problems, and the steps that can be taken to lessen their effect.

A mis-fire in the teledildonics industry, this early attempt at sexual stimulation in VR fell short after it was discovered it had a minor side effect - bodily secretions caused a lethal electrical discharge.

VR Interfaces: Fogscreen
Fogscreen is a holoprojection method that utilises a layer of artificially fogged air as a display screen for projected content. It in effect, creates a cascading curtain of wet air that can be walked through whilst displaying moving, bright, images.

(23/07/2009)
Back on April 1, Google instigated a prank that allowed users to see an effect on Google Chrome that looked like 3D. It was actually pretty cool. But it seems as though that wasn't the only foray into 3D for Google. Apparently, the folks a...

(07/10/2008)
In an ironic twist of fate, helmets packed with sensors and software designed to give robots a sense of direction, may wind up on human heads.

AR headsets linked to SLAM (simultaneous location and mapping) software, allows a...

(07/05/2007)
Researchers from the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel have crafted a wearable augmented reality immersion apparatus designed to provide patients suffering from balance disorders with supplemental auditory and visual information to...

(08/02/2008)
A doppler radar that can pick up the tiniest chest movements, caused by breathing and even the beating of the heart, by detecting modulations of frequency from bouncing a radio wave off the chest. This removes the need for ECG leads to be f...

(24/08/2011)
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a way to detect incipient sunspots as deep as 65,000 kilometers inside the sun, providing up to two days’ advance warning of a damaging solar flare.

The key to the new metho...