M etaverse has been touted to be the next big thing to bring about a global evolution, not just in technology but in almost every sector.
Something that was considered possible only in Sci-Fi novels, films, series and video games a few years back is now a reality. A convergence of the augmented, physical and virtual reality, Metaverse is a digital world with endless possibilities. In a post-pandemic world that expedited the emergence of virtual spaces, Metaverse provides an opportunity to establish connections through its immersive technologies.
In a remarkable development, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ‘holoported’ the first human being into space late last year. Holoportation is the process through which a three dimensional holographic representation of an individual is created, in a combination of a ‘hologram’ and ‘teleportation’. NASA revealed the development late last week, as it announced that it had transported flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid, mixed and virtual reality firm AEXA Aerospance’s chief executive officer Dr. Fernando De La Pena Llaca and others to the International Space Station (ISS) during October 2021 while the ISS was orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.
NASA Uses Microsoft’s Hololens Konnect Camera To Create Live Hologram of Flight Surgeon In Space
The event place last year when NASA’s Crew 2 astronauts were present on the ISS. The astronauts took to the skies in April last year and returned in November, soon after Dr. Schmid and others were holoportated to the orbiting space laboratory.
You walk along a dark winding path deep in a forest. There is a swamp you must wade through. You spot an old wooden shack and walk to it past a smoldering fire. Its broken shutters and verandah sag under vines and neglect.
It’s a reference to the evil form in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ books. For those unfamiliar with the ‘Lord of the Rings” books and movies, the Eye of Sauron is the chief antagonist in the series, exemplified as a flaming eye and that is a metaphor for pure evil. It’s not something anyone would want to be compared to unless, of course, you are Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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Mark Zuckerberg (FB/IG) is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta, which he originally founded as Facebook in 2004. Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. In October 2021, Facebook rebranded to Meta to reflect all of its products and services across its family of apps and a focus on developing social experiences for the metaverse—moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.
Mojo Vision said it has created a new prototype of its Mojo Lens augmented reality contact lenses. This smart contact lens will bring “invisible computing” to life, the company believes.
The Mojo Lens prototype is a critical milestone for the company in its development, testing, and validation process, and is an innovation positioned at the intersection of smartphones, augmented reality/virtual reality, smart wearables, and health tech.
The prototype includes numerous new hardware features and technologies embedded directly into the lens — advancing its display, communications, eye tracking, and power system.
At GDC 2022 this week, VR glove creator Manus revealed its new Quantum Metagloves which the company says delivers significantly more accurate finger tracking than its prior solutions. Though priced for enterprise use, the company says it one day hopes to deliver the tech to consumers.
Manus has been building motion gloves for use in real-time VR and motion capture for years now, with prior offerings being based on IMU and flex-sensor tracking.
The company’s latest product, the Quantum Metagloves, moves to a new magnetic tracking approach which purportedly offers significantly more accurate finger tracking, especially when it comes to self-contact (ie: fingers touching other fingers or the palm of the hand).
Osso VR, the VR surgical training platform, today announced it’s closed a $66 million Series C financing round, something the company says will be used to broaden its VR surgical offering and hire more expert talent.
The Series C round was led by Oak HC/FT, which includes participation from Signalfire, GSR Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.
This brings the company’s lifetime outside investment to around $109 million, with its $27 million Series B arriving in July 2021.
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Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already.
Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis.
Dr. David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and codirector of the Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. He has given the John Locke Lectures and has been awarded the Jean Nicod Prize. He is known for formulating the “hard problem” of consciousness, which inspired Tom Stoppard’s play The Hard Problem, and for the idea of the “extended mind,” which says that the tools we use can become parts of our minds.
Computer engineers at Duke University have developed virtual eyes that simulate how humans look at the world accurately enough for companies to train virtual reality and augmented reality programs. Called EyeSyn for short, the program will help developers create applications for the rapidly expanding metaverse while protecting user data.
The results have been accepted and will be presented at the International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), May 4–6, 2022, a leading annual forum on research in networked sensing and control.
“If you’re interested in detecting whether a person is reading a comic book or advanced literature by looking at their eyes alone, you can do that,” said Maria Gorlatova, the Nortel Networks Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke.
