|
May 14th, 2008
The Archives
-
05.14.08Autodesk, MegaPrims, and the 3D Pipeline Puzzles ContinueSecond Life set out on its own, carving a path outside of the usual frontiers of game development and virtual reality headsets and imagined a virtual world where the tools for building 3D objects were accessible to all. Remember, this was back in the day before Google Sketch-Up, before Content Paradise and 3Daz and Poser....or at least the days before anyone could download them and order up some books from Amazon or watch tutorials on youTube. And the power of those tools created what Hamlet Au called a Be Bop reality. Meanwhile, over in the other 3D silos games were still big ...
-
05.14.08Worth Reading: MSNBC Reports on Advances of VW/RW MergerMSNBC reports on recent advances in VW programming and supercomputing, noting that one day soon, a "Matrix-style world... could be up and running in just a few years." The article summarizes advancements from researchers and scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory (increased processing speeds), the University of California at San Diego (graphics algorithms and global illumination), and Queen's University Belfast (the Sensitive Artifical Listener.) It also brings up applications for counseling, noting that there have been great advances in getting avatars to recognize subtle, non-verbal shifts in human communications - and also notes that the Sensitive Artificial Listener is based on ...
-
05.14.08Worth Reading: New Yorker on Virtual Iraq and Virtual TherapyThe ever-literate New Yorker magazine published a fascinating piece on Virtual Iraq, a program designed to attempt to treat war veterans psychological wounds. Virtual Iraq is currently being tested by the Department of Defense in six different locations, and the article goes to great length discussing the development of the program and its historical precedent, Virtual Vietnam. Virtual Iraq is using something called 'exposure therapy' for victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Exposure Therapy forces patients to revisit a traumatic event repeatedly, and in the process, hopefully helping the patient deal with the painful memories. But the New Yorker reports that exposure therapy ...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.