Reality

Google wrapped up its I/O presentation with one big surprise: a look at its latest AR glasses. The key feature Google showed off was the ability to see languages translated right in front of your eyes, which seems to me like a very practical application for AR glasses. While a big part of Silicon Valley is heavily invested in making AR glasses a reality thus far no has suggested a truly “killer” app for AR that would let you overlook the wide variety of privacy concerns inherent with the tech. Live translating the…

November 10, 1938. That morning the Jews in Germany woke up to the sight of shards of broken glass littered on the streets after their synagogues, shops and houses were burnt down. 91 Jews were killed overnight and the Nazis subjected thousands to terror and violence. The earlier night’s horror, a planned pogram against Germany’s Jews came to be known as the Kristallnacht – the ‘Night of Broken Glass’. Exactly eighty years later, million miles away from Germany, a novel-in-stories borrows its title from the same…

Francis Yoshimoto's Biochemistry II laboratory students were able to explore proteins in a unique way by utilizing virtual reality headsets in UTSA's VizLab. Credit: The University of Texas at San Antonio Francis Yoshimoto, assistant professor in the UTSA College of Sciences' Department of Chemistry, is introducing his Biochemistry II laboratory students to a new way of learning—using virtual reality headsets to observe and…

Metaverse. Metaverse. Metaverse.Say it three times fast, and you’ll still be confused about the promise of this much-hyped digital world where we’ll apparently work, hang out and more.Yet Peggy Johnson, chief executive of Magic Leap, can see it clearly. She doesn’t even have to put on the company’s high-tech headset.…

Scientists at a laboratory in England have shattered the record for the amount of energy produced during a controlled, sustained fusion reaction.The production of 59 megajoules of energy over five seconds at the Joint European Torus – or JET – experiment in England has been called "a breakthrough" by some news outlets and caused quite a lot of excitement among physicists.  But a common line regarding fusion electricity production is that it is "always 20 years away."We are a nuclear physicist and a nuclear engineer who…

Imagine you are in a virtual reality (VR) environment beside a drinking fountain and want to drink water from it. While you could lean and drink water, you were unlikely to feel anything. That is set to change. Researchers at a private institution in the US have found a way that allows people to feel the sensation of the water touching their lips in the so-called Metaverse. Simply put, it means users of their device can now feel even kissing sensations, among many others. Lips are surprisingly sensitive. The researchers…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain Companies that utilize augmented reality (AR) glasses as a new training and workforce tool to increase worker productivity risk stunting workforce innovation and ingenuity, according to new research findings published in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.…

What's the best VR headset you can buy in 2021? Thanks to Covid, this is a question that many people have been asking, and as it turns out, your options are pretty limited. That led to my trying out the Oculus Quest 2, to see if I could figure out if this standalone VR headset from Facebook can provide enough of an escape in a world that's still far from normal.Strap on a headset, controllers clutched in your palms, and you are transported to a whole new virtual world, where a play area is defined and games are at your…

Meta is set to open its first physical store where shoppers can try out and buy virtual reality headsets and other gadgets as the company plots a course to take its highly touted metaverse mainstream.The 1,550-square feet Meta Store at the company's Burlingame campus in California opens on May 9, and will feature demos for its Quest 2 VR headset and video calling device Portal, as well as smart glasses it produces with Ray-Ban, Meta said on Monday.The devices, except for the Ray-Ban glasses, will be available for purchase…