Virtual reality

Facebook Is Buying Oculus VR, The Incredible Future of Virtual Reality

Completely out of the blue, Facebook has announced that it is buying Oculus VR—the future of virtual reality awesomeness—for $2 billion. What?! https://gizmodo.com/i-wore-the-new-oculus-rift-and-i-never-want-to-look-at-1496569598 Facebook’s plans for the totally rad VR headset aren’t immediately apparent, and the social media giant’s announcement of the acquisition does little to clear it up, citing the possibility of using the…

Oculus Rift Perfectly Recreates … The Grocery Store?

I’m not really sure what’s going on here. This video seems to be demonstrating the mind-blowing virtual reality capabilities of Oculus Rift by taking people on a stroll through a virtual land. But it’s not an alien landscape, a grizzly battlefield, or even a national monument. It’s the damned grocery store. Huh? https://gizmodo.com/i-wore-the-new-oculus-rift-and-i-never-want-to-look-at-1496569598 It turns…

Project Morpheus: Sony’s Oculus Rift VR Competitor Looks Unbelievable

It was only a matter of time. The Oculus Rift has caught so much attention—deservedly so—that of course one of the big dogs was going to start honing in on its virtual reality territory. Tonight, that’s Sony. And its Project Morpheus VR headset sounds fantastic. This isn’t Sony’s first exploration into the world of faceputers;…

I Wore the Navy’s Oculus Rift, and It Showed Me the Future of Warfare

When we think of the future of the military, we think of bigger and better weapons. Laser canons and the like. But what about the people operating those lasers? How can a behemoth like the Navy ready its future sailors for the high-tech combat of tomorrow? Believe it or not, with an Oculus Rift. At…

“The images most of us conjure up when we hear the words ‘virtual reality’ were drawn against the backdrop of science fiction from the 1980s and ’90s. By calling Oculus Rift a ‘virtual reality headset,’ Oculus VR has implicitly linked its product back to the Holodeck, The Lawnmower Man, and William Gibson’s descriptions of near-bodily…

How Moto Tech and Pixar Brains Turn Phones Into Storytime

If you own a Moto X, chances are last fall you noticed a small, red hat appear in your notification tray. You either assumed your phone had been hacked and set it on fire, or you boldly clicked the mysterious chapeau and were whisked off to a 3D world that was like being inside a…

SurroundWeb: Microsoft’s Plan To Cloak Your Living Room With Internet

Your browser is in all your devices. Hell, you can even get it in your watch if you’re down with that. And in the Microsoft world, its next destination is your living room wall. Microsoft Research has cooked up a prototype of something called SurroundWeb, a holodeck-style system that finds the flat surfaces in a…

This Is What I See Every Time You Tell Me How Cool Oculus Rift Is

Virtual reality sure is cute. And, yes, I do mean that in the most condescending way possible. Look, I understand just how cool the Oculus Rift may seem to my tech nerd brothers and sisters. And I shouldn’t judge something before I’ve tried it. But every time someone tells me how awesome this cutting-edge virtual…

What will life be like when digital brains outnumber humans?

These days, people worry about robots stealing our jobs. But maybe we should be more concerned about massive populations of computerized human brains. Called “ems,” these infinitely-reproducible brains could change the world. Here’s what will happen when digital brains vastly outnumber biological ones. To learn more about this prospect, I spoke to economist and futurist…

Light Paintings That Make the Real World Look like Tron

You’ll never ride a lightcycle, or compete on the Game Grid. But the most dazzling “light paintings” use slow shutter speeds and other tricks to create light trails, giving the illusion that the real world has become a luminous virtual space. Here are the greatest light paintings of the past and present. The amusement park…

Forget Augmented Reality. What About Diminished Reality?

Technology Review ran an article this past week about a new app called PlaceAvoider that is being developed by computer scientists working at Indiana University. In a nutshell, PlaceAvoider allows the user of a first-person lifelogging device to essentially blacklist locations from visual storage and sharing by matching the visual signature of a location against…

Crazy Oculus Rift Rig Turns Any Room Into a Holodeck Full of Zombies

The Oculus Rift is already great when you’re just sitting down, but it’s easy to imagine an awesome future where you walk around with it on. A holodeck on your face. Well, that future’s already here. Meet the Inversion VR system from Zero Latency. Unlike a holodeck, you can’t just walk in though. To get…

The Oculus Rift Put Me In Game of Thrones and It Made My Stomach Drop

Game of Thrones might be fantasy, but the characters are so deep and the betrayals so gripping that it feels real. And thanks to Oculus Rift, I just experienced a brief slice of life in the Seven Kingdoms. It was awesome—but I’m glad to be back in our reality. For the second year in a…

Oh Look, the Navy’s Got Itself an Oculus Rift

The above is not bonus footage from Battleship. Nor is it promotional material for a fancy video game. What it is, though, is definitive proof that the U.S. Navy will always have way cooler toys than you. That’s right; not only does Uncle Sam have an Oculus Rift, he’s found maybe the most futuristic-fantasatic purpose…

How Google Glass Will Save Car Enthusiasts From Extinction

“Computers are killing the automotive hobby!” Car geeks say this with defeatist disdain; tech nerds utter it with futurist superiority. Thing is, they’re both wrong. Virtual reality and wearable tech could very well save hobbyist mechanics from becoming the 21st century’s horseshoe installers. Here’s how. Modern cars have gotten enormously complex. Increasingly stringent emissions and…

Why You Should Upload Yourself to a Supercomputer

We’re still decades — if not centuries — away from being able to transfer a mind to a supercomputer. It’s a fantastic future prospect that makes some people incredibly squeamish. But there are considerable benefits to living a digital life. Here’s why you should seriously consider uploading. As I’ve pointed out before, uploading is not…

Valve Wants to Create Standardized, Affordable VR Controllers

Virtual Reality can be great, but it’s expensive and highly proprietary. That might soon change, though, because Valve apparently wants to create an affordable and standardized systemfor in-game VR control. The BBC reports that Valve will unveil a software development kit at Steam Dev Days which starts on January 15th. According to Valve designer Brian…

I Wore the New Oculus Rift and I Never Want to Look at Real Life Again

So the Oculus Rift is fantastic. If you’ve used it in its original incarnation, you know that it’s incredible. It’s virtual reality done better than you’ve ever seen it before. It’s revolutionary. And it’s nothing compared to what’s coming next. I mean Oh. My. God. Dubbed Crystal Cove, the newest model of Oculus isn’t meant…

Move Over, Virtual Reality: Is Mixed Reality the Future?

Virtual Reality has promised big since the 80s, but never quite delivered in the way many of us hoped it would. Now, though, a new form of augmented reality called Mixed Reality hopes to up the game. New Scientist reports that researchers from University College London have modified an Oculus Rift headset to combine real-time…

Bionic humans are about to get an upgrade, thanks to monkey cyborgs

In a big step towards making humans more bionic, scientists have trained monkeys to control not just one, but two virtual arms by thoughts alone. The work could someday be a boon to double amputees or quadriplegics. In 2011, researchers led by Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis demonstrated a unique two-way interface between mind and…