VOTD: The Evolution of CGI Faces in Movies – /FILM

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Visual effects in movies have advanced in a spectacular way in the relatively short history of cinema. What once was thought to be impossible to create in post-production has become a mainstay in blockbuster tentpoles. More recently, visual effects companies have become quite skilled in creating human faces entirely with computer generated imagery, and a new video essay shows us how this part of movie magic has evolved in a small window of time.

Watch the evolution of CGI faces in movies after the jump.

While there have been plenty movies that have used digital doubles, or used visual effects to replace a stunt persons face with a digital recreation of a performers face, this video focuses on visual effects used to bring a human face to life thats prominently used as a character complete with a performance. Thats why they dont include Avatar or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes or other movies with motion capture performance and visual effects used to bring non-human characters to life.

Instead, the video begins with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the earliest use of extensive visual effects used to create a human face with visual effects and utilize it for performance. Then theres bringing back young Jeff Bridges in TRON: Legacy, a visual effect that looks amazing in some shots and then like a video game in other shots.

There was an impressive leap in lifelike recreation in Furious 7, though that digital version of Paul Walker didnt have to do nearly as much as previous CGI creations. Meanwhile, Teminator: Genisys suffers from some of the same video game quality issues as TRON: Legacy, though the double of Arnold Schwarzenegger looks identical to some shots in The Terminator from 1984.

Then were brought up to today with footage of the somewhat controversial recreation of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Though some fans complained that it looks fake, I maintain that Industrial Light & Magic pulled off something incredible, if only because several people I know (who didnt know Cushing was dead) had absolutely no idea the character was created with visual effects in the movie.

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VOTD: The Evolution of CGI Faces in Movies - /FILM

From agitator to enforcer: The evolution of Breitbart – Washington Post

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Washington Post
From agitator to enforcer: The evolution of Breitbart
Washington Post
February 19, 2017 11:00 AM EST - Breitbart started out as a small site bent on exposing the liberal bias in mainstream media. Now, its former executive, Stephen Bannon, is in the White House, and the site has begun targeting political adversaries of ...

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From agitator to enforcer: The evolution of Breitbart - Washington Post

Roots open All-Star Game with Evolution of Greatness NBA retrospective – ProBasketballTalk (blog)

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Is this the Hamiltonization of NBA history?

Maybe, but it was good. (Like Hamilton.)

The legendary Roots the hip hop/funk/R&B band that is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon put together this history of NBA greatness, along with help from other musical artists, that led to the introduction to the NBA All-Stars from 2017.

Check it out above.

DeMarcus Cousins signing a five-year, $209 million contract extension?

Thats out the window with his trade from the Kings to the Pelicans rendering him ineligible to become a designated veteran player.

Which could explain why Cousins agent, Jarrinn Akana, was making noise about not re-signing with another team. Dissuading potential suitors and staying in Sacramento was Cousins only path to the biggest payday.

Heres Akana, before the trade was set, viaMarc Stein of ESPN:

A straight contract extension next summer makes no sense. The most that could pay Cousins is $92,559,167 over four years ($23,139,792 annually).

If he simply lets his contract expire and re-signs in 2018, a new deal projects to be worth about $179 million (about $36 million annually).

The Pelicanscan try for a renegotiation-and-extension, but theywould need cap room to raise his 2017-18 salary from$18,063,850 toward his projected max of about $31 million. With significant money due to Anthony Davis, Solomon Hill, Omer Asik,E'Twaun Moore, Alexis Ajinca, Quincy Pondexter,Dante Cunningham,Tim Frazier,Cheick Dialloand, they hope, a re-signed Jrue Holiday, its unlikely the Pelicans clear enough room to renegotiate Cousins deal.

Cousins is probably headed toward unrestricted free agency in 2018. Then, New Orleans projects to be able toofferabout $179 million (about $36 million annually) to another teams projected max of about$133 million (about$33 million annually).

Its an advantage, but not a bulletproof one. I think Cousins will be more amenable to re-signing than his agent indicated now that a trade is actually happening, but he could still walk.

This is the risk the Pelicans took.

Back in 2015 there was already a push from people inside the Sacramento Kings organization to move on from the DeMarcus Cousins era. There were groundwork talks with a number of teams, but a lot of rumors circulated around the Lakers, where Jim Buss was trying to land a star for his franchise that would lead to a quick turnaround. While the deal was never finalized, reports had the Lakers offering both their first round picks that year, which became D'Angelo Russell (No. 2) and Larry Nance Jr. (27th), plus a few other pieces.

Kings owner Vivek Ranadive shot the deal down then as he did with every deal until Sunday night.

By the tine Ranadive came around to the idea of trading Cousins, the market had changed. And dried up. All the Kings landed was last drafts No. 6 pick Buddy Hield (who Vlade Divac has been higher on than most), the Pelicans pick this draft in the mid-teens, a high second round pick, and some pieces such as Tyreke Evans that are not part of the Kings future.

The deal has been widelypanned for the Kings, but what they got may well have been the best offer available right now. A lot of teams have concerns about Cousins impact on their locker rooms teams that liked their rosters didnt want to add drama. Plenty of teams would not talk trade. Also, there is a glut of bigs on the market right now. If teams wanted to give up multiple first-round picks for a center, they could have already because Nets have Brook Lopez on the block not as talented, but also not a challenge in the locker room. Jahlil Okafor, Tyson Chandler and other centers also are available.

The Kings went back to the Lakers, but when they asked for the young guy the Lakers are highest on, Brandon Ingram, it fell apart, according to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.

Kevin Ding of Bleacher Report added this interesting tidbit about the Kings and Lakers talks in recent days.

Then Buss, in particular, was sorely tempted to shift course yet again Sunday, break from those plans and trade whatever youth it took in the hopes of landing DeMarcus Cousins, according to a team source.

It wasnt just the Lakers who would not go in big on Cousins.

Calls to Boston found even worse offers, with Danny Ainge worried about Cousins impact in the locker room and if they could/would want to retain him. The Booklyn picks were never close to on the table.

Philly is no longer really interested thanks to Joel Embiid (even with the health concerns there).

There were talks with the Suns, but Sacramento didnt like Brandon Knight as the best player they would get back.

And so it goes down the list, teams were hesitant to give up much and the Kings were left to take the best of bad options. Part of the reason for the Cousins market being dry is that since he is traded, Cousins is no longer eligible for the designated player supermax deal, and the difference between what the team that has his Bird rights in 2018 can offer and what other teams can offer is not that great. Which is to say, a lot of teams think they can take a swing at Cousins as a free agent in two summers if they really want him, and they dont have to give up assets to get him.

The Pelicans were never going to get a seat at the table in those free agent conversations, so trading for him makes a lot of sense for New Orleans.

But for most teams, they were willing to pass. Which left the Kings without good options for a deadline trade.

Of course, what a more stable organization might have done is decide the offers were terrible and hold off on a trade until around the draft or into summer free agency. The deals are not going to get worse, and they might well get a little better. But for whatever reason concern that Ranadive would change his mind, again? the Kings moved now.

And that leaves them in a tough spot.

The Kings traded DeMarcus Cousins to change their culture.

So, Sacramento is also unsurprisingly dumping the player who allegedly partnered with Cousinsnightclub fight: Matt Barnes.

Marc Stein of ESPN:

Beyond fitting the Kings new vision, the move is necessary, because they have a full roster and are acquiring more players (Buddy Hield, Tyreke Evans and Langston Galloway) than theyre sending out(Cousins and Omri Casspi) in the Pelicans trade.

Barnes, who turns 37 in a couple weeks, is slipping. But he could still add experienced depth to a contender as a 3-and-D wing. (Hello, Cavaliers?)

A hard-nosed player, hes a great teammate in many ways. And the veterans who comprise contenders would be less likely to be influenced by the ways hes not which wasnt the case in Sacramento.

Since Dec. 1, the Washington Wizards have been the best team in the East.

That is if you go by their record, which 28-10 since the calendar flipped to December. However, nobody sane thinks the Wizards could beat a healthy Cavaliers teams in the Eastern Conference Finals. Its fair to ask if they need more help to get by Boston or Toronto just to get a shot at the Cavaliers.

That need for a little more help has led to trade rumors about Washington heading into the trade deadline Thursday (Feb. 23), and John Wall confirmed the team is looking to J. Michael of CSNMidAtlantic.com.

I think so, Wall said when asked if he expected president Ernie Grunfeld to make a move as he has done the last several years, and the most recent being for Markieff Morris. Were looking at some options to help our bench out. Other than that I dont know. I havent talked to him about it.

There are two scenarios for a Wizards trade that get the most traction around the league.

One is to get Lou Williams from the Lakers. This makes sense as a plug-and-play option, Williams is averaging a career-high 18.6 points this season and is a candidate for the Sixth Man of the Year award with his play. Hes a bit of a volume scorer, but that can work well with a sixth man (see Jamal Crawford for example).

The other rumor is Nets forward Bojan Bogdanovic, who brings more size up front (68) but can still shoot the three (35 percent this season). Bogdanovic is averaging 14.2 points per game.

Of course, the question is what the Wizards would have to give up to make these deals happen? Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical at Yahoo Sports has said the Wizards might well be willing to give up a protected first-round pick in a deal, and that could well be enough to get a trade done (depending upon the exact protections, and the year). That said, the Lakers, in particular, have been hesitant to make a move.

Dont be shocked if the Wizards make a move at the deadline. This is their best team in a long time, and they want to capitalize on it.

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Roots open All-Star Game with Evolution of Greatness NBA retrospective - ProBasketballTalk (blog)

Robotics scrimmage – Corvallis Gazette Times

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In its first match, Crescent Valley High Schools robot had pieces falling off one wheel because it hadnt been properly screwed together.

Later, the robotics team from South and West Albany high schools had trouble going straight in its first scrimmage because the students forgot to reset a gyroscope after moving it onto the field.

But students on both teams said they were actually glad to find the problems so they could fix them before the competition season for FIRST Robotics starts officially.

Learning moments like this took place frequently Saturday at a robotics pre-season scrimmage at Corvallis High School, which was attended by 25 teams from across the Pacific Northwest. Organizers say the event, held annually in Corvallis, gave students a chance to get practice playing this years game for the first time and shake out problems with their robots, which they have been hastily building over the last nearly six weeks.

Matthew Sundberg, captain of the Crescent Valley team, said he was glad for the scrimmage because it gave the team a chance to find problems like the improperly assembled wheel.

But he said the team also realized how important it will be to put cameras on the robot that send video feed to the teams drivers, because the field is large and had enough obstacles the drivers couldnt always see where the robot was.

We learned a lot about how helpful vision will be, said Sundberg, a senior

Eric Sisson, a senior on the combined team from the Albany high schools, said the takeaway from their first match was to make sure the robots gyroscope is reset after it is moved.

The first (match) is always rough, he said.

Sisson is the lead scout for his team and added that the event is also valuable because he gets to see other robots in action, which may affect which robots they try to form alliances with in the upcoming competitions. The game allows robots to score points by collecting wiffle balls and throwing them into a hopper, collecting gears from the ground and placing them on a peg or by climbing a rope.

Sisson said the robots compete on teams of three, so its valuable to see which robots might have complementary abilities for their robot, which specializes in picking up gears and placing them on pegs and climbing the rope.

Oh my gosh, Ive learned so much, he said. Every year I think, Why didnt we do that?

Daniel Arthurs, a member of Philomath High Schools team, said at last years scrimmage the team didnt have its robot functional until the scrimmage was mostly over, but this year they were mostly ready at the start, so the team was happy it would get more practice time this year.

Were feeling a lot better about where we are at, he said. The Philomath robot is also specialized to collect gears and climb, Arthurs said.

Arthurs, a sophomore, said he likes robotics competitions because of how much hes learned through participating in them.

It gives you a lot of career choices, he said.

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Robotics scrimmage - Corvallis Gazette Times

SPONSOR STORY: Robotics at Martin improving urologic procedure outcomes – TCPalm

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Treasure Coast 12:03 a.m. ET Feb. 20, 2017

Dr. Adam Mues performs surgery.(Photo: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Treasure Coast patients who require urologic surgery now have the benefit of receiving their care locallyprovided by an expert surgery team operating Martin Health Systems da Vinci robot.

Robotic surgery is the standard surgical approach for many procedures in urology today, said Dr. Adam Mues, one of Martin Healths urologic surgeons.

Robotics, Mues noted, is especially helpful in surgeries that occur in small areas of the body, such as the pelvis, that are challenging to reach with hands or to see with the naked eye.

Our main concern is patient outcomes, and robotic surgery has improved many of these outcomes, said Mues, who joined Martin Health System in early 2015 after working as an assistant professor at New York University.

Outcomes have improved because of the minimally invasive approach, combined with the robots ability to perform difficult surgeries in an elegant manner, explained Mues.

We are able to perform very sophisticated surgery in small, tight spaces that are difficult to access otherwise, he said.

The surgeries are conducted through small keyhole-like incisions that produce less pain, lessblood loss, and a reduced risk of infection and wound-related complications. Patients generally have shorter hospitalizations and experience faster recovery time and a faster return to normal activities.

Another advantage of the da Vinci robot is an improved ability for surgeons to identify and treat complex conditions such as prostate cancer, kidney cancer and bladder cancer, Mues said.The system has an integrated fluorescence imaging capability called Firefly. Firefly provides the surgeon with real-time, image-guided identification of key anatomical landmarks during cancer surgery.

The robot includes a number of other features helpful to the surgeon. These include enhanced high-definition 3-D imaging for a high level of precision and control, a camera with a light at the end, and a pedal- and finger-controlled console where all robotic instruments and the camera can be manipulated by the surgeon with ease. The instruments have a wristed component with little joints that move, similar to a small hand.

Its a little bit like playing a video game, Mues explained.

For that reason, the majority of robotic surgeries are being performed by a new generation of surgeons more comfortable with technology than their predecessors.

It takes some getting used to, Mues said.You cant feel the patients tissues, which is a major part of all open surgery. The dissection is done with visual cues only, using the tiny instruments manipulated from the control panel rather than your hand.You have to become very skilled and comfortable with learning how to feel the tissues with your eyes.

Mastering robotic surgery involves extensive training. Mues completed his residency in urology at Ohio State University, which pioneered the early use of robotic surgery in urology, followed by a two-year fellowship in robotics at Columbia University in New York City.

Robotic surgery is a great passion of mine, he said. Its very gratifying to be able to treat these conditions in such a precise manner and to give the patient the best chance for an excellent outcome.

Dr. Adam Mues, a urologic surgeon with Martin Health System, performs robotic surgery using the da Vinci robot.(Photo: CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

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SRNS jump starts robotics programs in two Aiken County schools – The Augusta Chronicle

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Savannah River Nuclear Solutions boosted its financial support to area schools last week, by adding a $9,000 donation to support robotics programs in Aiken County Schools.

SRNS has a sincere passion for supporting education outreach initiatives, year-round, throughout the CSRA, said SRNS Education Outreach Program Coordinator Kim Mitchell. Its at the primary and secondary levels of education within area school systems that our future leaders and the Savannah River Sites future employees are nurtured, shaped and prepared for life as an adult.

The new funding adds to the annual $20,000 SRNS gives to Public Education Partners. Mitchell said the additional $9,000 in funding is being used by PEP to assist science, technology, engineering, arts and math, or STEM/STEAM magnet schools Jackson Middle and New Ellenton Middle schools in Aiken County. The new funding is directed at helping jump start the student robotics programs.

Robotics programs have been springing up at a number of area schools, including the North Augusta High School team that travelled to the state competition in its first year.

Mitchell believes a cost effective method to deepen students interest in STEM-based courses is to intrigue them with robots. She said working in teams to build, program and compete with robots greatly increases student interest and participation in math, engineering and the sciences.

Ive always been interested in computers and programming, said Logan Hopson, an eighth grade student at Jackson Middle School. Working with robots gives us hands-on experience and hands-on building. Its a completely different perspective related to learning.

STEM and STEAM programs work, said New Ellenton Middle School Principal Shunte Dugar. The impact STEAM-based curriculum has had on our faculty and students have been nothing short of amazing. It is revolutionizing current educational theory, while evolving into a new questioning, tactile method of learning based on collaboration and discovery. We could not be more pleased with the results.

Jackson Middle School recently earned national accreditation for our STEM program, one of only 54 in the world today, said Kishni Neville, JMS STEM Coordinator. I believe a lot of the credit for this incredible accomplishment goes to SRNS for their long-time support, both financially and through their employees who regularly volunteer to help us.

Reach Thomas Gardiner at (706) 823-3339 or thomas.gardiner@augustachronicle.com.

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SRNS jump starts robotics programs in two Aiken County schools - The Augusta Chronicle

West Lafayette robotics teams show off their hard work – WTHITV.com

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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) Indiana high school robotics teams are showing what six weeks of hard work and preparation produces.

Teams from West Lafayette, Harrison, McCutcheon and Jeff high schools showcased their robots Sunday afternoon inside West Lafayettes gym.

The event was put on by student organization Purdue FIRST Programs.

Mentors from Purdue help the high school teams build 120-pound robots to complete specific tasks.

Students will use their robots to compete at FIRST robotics competitions, which take place globally every year.

One participant says he loves the idea of building something out of nothing.

I love robotics because its really amazing to take just things that are scrap metal or a computer with no code and build something amazing that you can that you can compete against other people, Harrison High School student Carl Landskorn said.

Local teams will compete against one another at Harrison High School March 3-5. They will have the opportunity to qualify for future competitions.

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West Lafayette robotics teams show off their hard work - WTHITV.com

Massena school board approves robotics trip to Montreal – North Country Now

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MASSENA -- The Massena Central school board on Thursday approved a robotics field trip to Montreal in March.

The team will participate in an international event March 22-25 where they will build a robot that will compete against other schools creations and possibly win awards, high school Principal Sarah Boyce said.

The more that these students can compete, the better they get, she told the board.

They voted 7-0 to allow the trip. They are required to vote on any overnight school events or journeys outside the country.

Boyce also notified the board of a second upcoming robotics event and a music field trip.

The robotics team will attend the New York Tech Valley Regional robotics competition at RPI near Albany in March.

To help pay for their trips, the robotics team has been selling 3d printed keychains. They have also received donations from local businesses and people.

The music department is planning a trip later in the year to see Wicked on broadway and sightsee in Manhattan. They raised more than $10,000 from cookie dough sales earlier in the school year, Boyce said. They will still have to pay $514 per students.

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Massena school board approves robotics trip to Montreal - North Country Now

PLYMOUTH BUSINESS EXPANSION: MycomPETibility.com goes nationwide – Wicked Local Kingston

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Ryan Vayo couldnt say no.

Ryan Vayo couldnt say no.

The beautiful, gentlepitbull was jittery and scared.

Shed been shuttled from one shelter to another and she needed a home.

Badly.

Hazel found her home with Vayo, and her years suffering neglect and cruelty were finally over.

Her bowed legs and hacked ears speak of a horrific past, but Hazel bears no other remnants of it. She bows her head in the sun and slumps gratefully to the ground next to Vayo, closing her eyes with a sigh as she welcomes the attention of the visitor with a gentle nudge.

Vayo is on a mission to make this scenario happen everywhere dogs and cats rescued from inhumanity by humans who love them. Its all about finding the right match the pet that fits the profile.

Thats what MycomPETibility.com is all about.

The company, which began under a different name, was launched a year ago with tremendous results. Today, MycomPETibility.com has gone from a Southeastern Massachusetts reach to a nationwide one.

Carefully vetted animal shelters post their pets for adoption on the site.

As of today we have 350 registered shelters, and the bank of shelters weve been marketing to on the eastern seaboard covers 6,000, Vayo said. As of tomorrow, were adding 4,000 to that. Within two or three weeks the number of registered shelters will be over 500. We are shooting to have 1,000 registered during the first half of 2017.

MycomPetibility has already vetted 10,000 shelters and even has a user name for each one. All that needs to happen is that some of these need to begin posting pets.

In an effort to make things easier, we went through a research base and pre-approved 10,000 nationwide, he said. If youre pre-approved, you already have a user name, you just need to start uploading your animals.

Vayo could not contain his excitement Monday as he announced the good news the nationwide reach will mean more and more shelter pets will find loving homes, and that makes him feel wonderful.

What got him on this crusade wasnt just his understanding of the dire need these beautiful animals have for love and a roof; it was the return rate at shelters.

One of the saddest scenarios hes observed is seeing a soulful and kind dog returned to a shelter because it just wasnt the right fit for the prospective owner. Vayo knew he could solve this problem.

He founded MycomPETibility.com, which employs an algorithm that uses a combination of statistical analysis of shelter animals as well as weighted personality trait correlations generated by a team of trainers and behaviorists. Members fill out questionnaires, noting the breed, size restrictions, cost and activity level theyre looking for. That includes those all-important questions: Is the dog or cat good around children, or other dogs and cats?

While some applicants want a specific breed, Vayo said some of the best matches only involve the qualities of the dog or cat. Keeping an open mind can lead to a match made in heaven, he said.

These are dogs and cats that have been abandoned, he said, and they are begging for love and a good home. The sadness and longing in their eyes tell the story of how anyone with a heart and a roof can save a life and bring so much joy to their own.

Many may know Vayo as the son of Rick Vayo of MEGRYCO, the company that owns the 36-unit Cranberry Court apartment complex at 12-18 Tremont St. in Kingston and transformed the former Plymouth Armory into an upscale condominium complex, and who is also involved in similar projects. The Vayos are all outspoken against animal cruelty, and Ryan said he grew up with rescue pets he adored.

Vayos company also has a nonprofit branch, The ComPETibility Fund, which raises money for philanthropic causes that benefit animals, like sponsoring an ex-military service dog.

For Vayo, every single dog and cat deserves to be adored and cherished; no one should be left out in the cold, or languishing at an animal shelter.

For more information, visit MycomPETibility.com. The site also offers training and care resources as well as information on how anyone can join him in the crusade, from helping a feral cat in the neighborhood to volunteering.

Adopt, dont shop, Vayo said.

Follow Emily Clark on Twitter @emilyOCM.

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PLYMOUTH BUSINESS EXPANSION: MycomPETibility.com goes nationwide - Wicked Local Kingston

Virtual reality is making surgery simpler – Deniz Ergurel (subscription) (blog)

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Surgeons and their patients are finding that virtual reality can relieve the pain and stress of operationsand its safer and cheaper than sedatives.

By Joe Marchant

Ana Maria has never been to Machu Picchu. The 61-year-old always wanted to visit the mountain ruins but she suffers from hypertension, and doctors warned that the extreme altitude could cause her blood pressure to rise dangerously high. Today, dressed in a white gown and hairnet, she will explore its ancient walls and pyramids for the first time.

Shes in a private medical clinic in Mexico City, and laughs nervously as shes wheeled into a windowless operating room. The surgeon takes a Sharpie and draws a large circle on her left thigh, paints on several layers of iodine, then injects a local anaesthetic into the skin. Inside the circle is a fatty lump, a lipoma around 6 cm across, which he is about to remove.

Ana will be awake for the operation, and shes feeling scared. As the surgeon readies his scalpel, her blood pressure is 183/93, even higher than usual. Patients undergoing procedures like this often have to be sedated to cope with the pain and anxiety of being under the knife, but not today. Instead, Jos Luis Mosso Vazquez, who is supervising the operation, fits a sleek, black headset over Annas eyes and adjusts the Velcro straps.

The surgeon makes his first cut and the blood spills in a crimson stream down Anas leg. Shes surrounded by medical equipmentstools, trolleys, swabs, syringes, with super-bright surgical lamps suspended above the bed and her vital signs displayed on monitors just behind.

But Ana is oblivious. Shes immersed in a three-dimensional re-creation of Machu Picchu. She begins her journey with a breathtaking aerial view of the ancient city clinging to the mountainside, before swooping down to explore the details of stepped terraces, moss-covered walls and tiny stone huts.

Mosso watches her carefully. A 54-year-old surgeon at Panamerican University in Mexico City, hes on a mission to bring virtual reality into the operating room, using the high-tech distraction technique to carry out surgeries that would normally require powerful painkillers and sedatives, with nothing more than local anaesthetic.

But today, hes not sure if his headset is going to be enough. He hopes the virtual reality will help Ana to avoid unnecessary medication, but if she becomes anxious during the surgery, her already-high vital signs might spike. He has prepared an intravenous line, ready to administer emergency medication if required.

The surgeon pulls a large, pearly glob of tissue from Anas thigh, his fingers easing under her skin as he carefully snips it free. Then he mops the blood and stitches the wound. The procedure has taken just 20 minutes, and there are smiles all round as Ana thanks the team. Because of the virtual reality, she says, she barely noticed the scalpel slicing her flesh: I was transported. Normally Im very stressed, but now I feel so, so relaxed.

The monitors back up her story. Throughout the surgery, her blood pressure actually fell.

In 2004, Mosso bought a Spider-Man game for his eldest son, and his life and career path changed. The game involved images projected onto a head-mounted displayan early form of virtual reality (VR). Mosso was struck by how immersed his son became in the game.

Mosso began using the game during upper gastrointestinal endoscopies, in which a flexible tube with a camera on the end is fed through a patients throat into their stomach. The experience can be unpleasant and distressing. Patients often require sedation but Mosso encouraged them to play the Spider-Man game instead, to distract themselves.

He asked the patients to score their pain and anxiety during the procedure and in 2006 presented his results at the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference in California. The idea of using VR to reduce the distress of medical procedures was pioneered at the University of Seattle, Washington, where cognitive psychologist Hunter Hoffman and colleagues have developed a VR game called SnowWorld, to help patients endure wound care for severe burns.

The researchers hoped that the illusion of being physically immersed in a three-dimensional computer-generated scene would move patients attention away from their real-world pain. It worked: Hoffmans team has since shown in trials that SnowWorld reduces patients pain during wound-care sessions by up to 50 per cent, as well as reducing pain-related brain activity.

But there has been relatively little work in other medical contexts. At the 2006 conference, Mosso met Albert Skip Rizzo, a psychologist (and now director of medical VR) at the University of Southern California, who had been doing similar research with endoscopies. He presented 10 cases, says Mosso. I presented 200. Rizzo showed Mosso the expensive, state-of-the-art head-mounted displays he was using. It was another world, says Mosso. But then Rizzo revealed the equipment with which he had begunit was the exact same Spider-Man game.

In this moment my life changed, says Mosso. Skip saved me. Impressed by Mossos work, Rizzo donated a headset to him and persuaded a colleague, Brenda Wiederhold of the Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego, to let Mosso use some virtual worlds she had developed specifically for pain relief.

He used a virtual scenario developed by Wiederhold called Enchanted Forest, in which users can explore rivers, lakes, trees and mountains. (The virtual world has to be relaxing, notes Mosso. A shoot-em-up game, no matter how distracting, might increase the risk of uncontrolled bleeding if the excitement raised patients blood pressure.)

VR is now being studied by teams around the world to relieve pain in medical situations such as wound care and dentistry, as well as in chronic conditions such as phantom limb pain. But Mosso is still the only researcher to have published results on the use of VR during surgery. In one study of 140 patients he found that those using VR reported 24 per cent less pain and anxiety during surgery than a control group. He got similar results in a smaller randomised trial.

That represents an important cost saving for the clinics in which Mosso works; sedative drugs such as fentanyl and midazolam are very, very expensive, he says.

He estimates that this reduced the cost of surgery by around 25 per cent, although he hasnt yet crunched the data to give an exact figure. Cutting drug doses should also reduce complication risks and recovery times for patients.

Mosso is planning further trials to test this, but in general, he says, patients can go home an hour after surgery if they receive only local anaesthetic, whereas those who are sedated often need a whole day to recover.

It cuts down on the cost, on the recovery time, and on the complications, says Wiederhold. Its incredible. We still have not done that here in the US. Gregorio Obrador, dean of medicine at Panamerican University, is impressed too. At first, I thought it was a little goofy, he admits.

Overall, Mosso has now carried out more than 350 surgeries using VR, and says hed love to see it used as a routine component of pain relief in operating rooms. Offered alongside medication, he thinks the technology could transform how patients are treated during a wide range of procedures. But he has a bigger vision.

What if VR could be more than an alternative to sedation during hospital surgeries? Could it help him to bring surgery to patients where sedation isnt possible, where there are no hospitals at all?

Mossos Jeep Cherokee is full to bursting. Tents, plastic food boxes, surgical equipment, medication, sanitary products and bags filled with clothes, sweaters and shoes are squeezed into every available space inside and tied precariously to the roof. On the back seat are Mossos wife, Veronicaa gynaecologisttheir youngest son, Olivier, and, to keep the nine-year-old entertained, two baby iguanas recently captured from the forest near Acapulco, confined for the journey in a green net bag.

Theres a long drive ahead. We are going to El Tepeyac, an isolated village hundreds of kilometres away in the mountains of Guerrero state. Its home to an indigenous Mephaa community (often called Tlapaneco by outsiders), one of Mexicos poorest. They have been forgotten, says Mosso. They live with cold, on top of the mountain. They dont have hospitals, clinics, nothing.

As the high-rise blocks of Mexico City give way to sprawling shanty towns and then forested mountains, Mosso tells me about his father, Victorio. He was born close to El Tepeyac but left when he was 13, eventually becoming a teacher near Acapulco. He returned briefly to his childhood home after getting married, but never visited again until Mosso took him 40 years later. They found Victorios youngest brother, Faustino. At first, neither brother recognised the other. They said You look too old! recalls Mosso. Then they were hugging, crying, a lot of emotions. It was the first time I saw my father cry.

Mosso was shocked by the poverty he saw, with dwellings that he felt could barely be described as houses. The villagers asked him to examine a patient, an old woman with a fever who was lying in a puddle on the floor (there had been a recent flood, and it was the only place close to the fire). She had pneumonia; Mosso told them there was nothing he could do. She was my aunt, he says. It was the last time I saw her. She died a few weeks later. He pauses, eyes fixed on the road. Thats why I go back. Because of my aunt.

In 2000, Mosso and Veronica began to travel to El Tepeyac every few months. They helped the villagers to build and stock a basic medical clinic, and carried out simple surgeries. But a few years ago their trips stopped, due to a sharp rise in violence from the countrys drug cartels. These organised criminal groups have been active across Mexico since the 1990s, producing heroin from poppies grown in the mountains here and exporting it to the US and Europe. Any violence was traditionally directed mostly at the authorities and each other, but since 2009 the cartels have increasingly targeted the general population with extortion and kidnappings.

The threat of violence is now routine for many Mexicans; the news here is filled with beheadings, mutilations and disappearances. On the freeway in the outskirts of Mexico City the day before, we had passed a group of four men, calmly crossing on foot between the busy traffic. One of them carried a young woman over his shoulder, either dead or unconscious, her dark hair spilling down past his hips. Mosso shrugged; for him the sight was nothing unusual. He works weekends at a hospital in this area and says he once had to order his surgical team to flee the operating room when a gunman entered the building, intent on killing their patient.

But the security situation is particularly bad in Guerrero, which is the countrys most violent state, with one of the highest murder rates in the world.

According to a 2015 report by anthropologist Chris Kyle of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, illegal roadblocks, carjackings and kidnappings are routine here. The police have lost control, Kyle says, and there is near complete impunity for the perpetrators. In 2009, Mosso and Veronica reluctantly decided that it was too dangerous to travel. We were coming to El Tepeyac four times a year, he says. When the narc began, no more.

But hes desperate to see his family, and worried about the health of the villagers. So although the security situation hasnt improved, he is now attempting the trip again. The obvious route from Mexico City is to take the highway via Guerreros capital, Chilpancingo, to Tlapa de Comonfort, the nearest town to El Tepeyac.

But the road from Chilpancingo to Tlapathe main route for transporting opium out of the regionis hell, Mosso says, with many shootings and kidnappings. Instead we take a roundabout route through the states of Morelos and Puebla. We travel by daylight and eat on the move, making just one brief stop, in a deserted lay-by, during the nine-hour drive.

His caution pays off; the only sign of trouble is three cars travelling in convoyWhen you see vehicles driving together like that, its the narc, Mosso notes as we passand once we reach the steep streets of Tlapa, he visibly relaxes. In this largely indigenous area, self-organised community police groups have been relatively successful in limiting the violence of the cartels. From Tlapa, the road gets higher and rougher as the sun sets, eventually becoming a narrow, winding track of mud and stones.

We arrive to find El Tepeyac in darkness; the only power line was recently blown down by a storm. The villagers line up to meet us with flashlights, wide eyes and smiles looming out of the black. The welcome is a little awkwardmany of them dont speak Spanish, and Mosso doesnt speak Mephaauntil they direct us to a long, plastic table beneath a high shelter and feed us chicken soup and tortillas, freshly cooked over a fire, with steaming lemon tea.

The sun rises to reveal the centre of El Tepeyac as a handful of brightly painted concrete buildings surrounding a covered basketball court, where communal meals and functions are held. Around 150 people live here, their homes scattered across the mountainside, each with space for vegetables, chickens and cows, and a large rain butt for fresh water.

Theres a breathtaking view over slopes forested with pine and eucalyptus trees, with maize plants squeezed into every available space. (The terrain is also perfect for growing poppies, and although we dont see evidence of it in El Tepeyac, most communities in this region supplement their income in this way.) Mosso points out neighbouring villageswhile most inhabitants of El Tepeyac are Mephaa, the people in the next village belong to another indigenous group, the Mixteco, while the ones beyond that are Nahuatl, descendants of the Aztecs. Theres no cell or TV signal here and these communities have limited contact with the outside world; instead, they communicate with each other by two-way radio and closed-circuit television, all in local dialects.

Straight after breakfast, Mosso visits another of his aunts. Shes small and squat with missing teeth and lives with her son and daughter-in-law in a mud-brick house with a roof made of corrugated iron. She holds her nephew and weeps. Her husband, Victorios brother, has passed away since Mossos last visit. Of ten siblings, only one is still alive.

Then its time for work. We walk down a muddy track to a single-storey building with two rooms, bare concrete floors and shelves stacked with pills. We say its a clinic, says Mosso, but its just a house. Would-be patientssome are from El Tepeyac, others have walked from neighbouring villageswait in an open porch while Mosso and Veronica set up tables and chairs inside. This morning, the two doctors will each hold an open clinic.

Mossos first patient of the day is a young mother. Her seven-month-old baby, Hector, has a flattened forehead and plaintive cry. Mosso diagnoses microcephaly: the babys brain hasnt developed properly. The Zika virus is causing cases of microcephaly across Central and South America, but Mosso doesnt think thats the case here; the mosquitoes that carry the virus dont usually live at this altitude (2,300 metres), and the woman says she hasnt visited the coast.

She shows no emotion as he explains her babys condition, then she thanks him and leaves.

He gets through around 20 patients during the morning. One anxious man has red tracks on his thighs from the claws of a tarantula that crawled into his trousers while he was working in the fields. He has since developed sensitive skin and back pain, which he fears is due to the spiders poison. Mosso prescribes antibiotics for cases of parasitosis and kidney infection, and diagnoses tooth decay in almost everyone; there is little education here about oral hygiene. Diabetes is common, too, as the villagers routinely consume sugary drinks instead of water. Mosso lectures one patient after another: No Coca-Cola, he says. Only one tortilla, not five.

One old man comes in with a hernia untreated for 20 years. The nearest doctor is in Tlapa, explains Mosso, an hours drive away but a difficult journey without a car. The government does subsidise medical care for indigenous groups, he says, but even when they are able to travel they are sometimes discriminated againstput off from treatmentor they simply dont know who to see or what care is available.

Mosso writes several personal referrals to colleagues in Tlapa, which he hopes will accelerate the villagers access to the care they need. He also identifies a handful of cases suitable for surgery here in El Tepeyac. But theres a problemthe village is still without power.

After lunch at Mossos nieces house, which turns out to be perched on the mountainside up a muddy track so steep it makes the Jeeps wheels spin, the lights come back on; the surgery can go ahead after all. The clinic floor is briskly swept as Mosso and Veronica put on scrubs and lay out scalpels. A nine-year-old girl named Joanna is on a bed by the window, screaming for her mother.

Mosso is going to remove a lump of cartilage from behind her ear. She is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and has bare, dirty feet. Through the window children are playing, adults sit in chairs sharing home-brewed tequila, and the mountains stretch for miles. A fly crawls slowly over the paint-splattered floor.

Veronica fits the VR headset and the girl is immediately quiet. I see fishes, she says. I see water. Mosso has chosen for her an island world, with stone ruins and tropical fish beneath the sea. She remains still and calm until Mosso has finished stitching, then describes her experience. I have never seen the sea, she says. I liked it. I felt that the water was warm.

Then there are several lipomas to remove; these benign tumours are mostly harmless but if they cause pain, Mosso recommends surgery. He operates on a 54-year-old kindergarten teacher with two lipomas on her arm, and a man in his 20s who studied in Tlapa and has played video games before. The man is sceptical about the VR at first, but it was better than I thought it would be, he allows after the surgery.

Next is 31-year-old Oliveria, her dark, curly hair tamed in silver butterfly clips. She has four children, works as a farmer and has walked from a village one-and-a-half hours to the south. She has a lipoma deep in her back, which hurts when she moves. It is a slightly trickier case than the others but the lump is likely to keep growing, so Mosso thinks its best to remove it now.

Oliveria lies on her front in black jeans and a bra as Veronica fits the headset; shes watching the same undersea world as Joanna. Mosso injects local anaesthetic into the lump, makes a cut, and his white-gloved finger disappears to the knuckle. He feels around.

Ill have to open up the muscle, he concludes. He extends the cut and pulls open the flesh with metal brackets before reaching deeper than before. Eventually, he manages to pull the fatty ball free. Veronica holds it tight with tweezers as Mosso snips around: success. But the undersea world is suddenly replaced by an error message. The laptop wasnt plugged in, and the battery is about to fail. A few seconds later, Mosso and Veronica realise that Oliveria has lost consciousness.

Everyones moving. They turn the patient onto her back, Mosso rubbing her chest and shouting Vamos a la casa! while Veronica waves alcohol-soaked cotton wool under her nose. The pain triggered Oliverias blood pressure to drop suddenly, explains Mosso, causing her to faint. He inserts an intravenous line with fluid to restore her blood pressure. Shortly afterwards Oliveria moans, and bats away the cotton wool. Breathe slowly, instructs Veronica. Mosso swats a fly from her face.

After a few minutes, they roll Oliveria onto her side to sew up the wound. Mosso doesnt have the facilities here to sedate her, or offer her any painkillers more powerful than the local anaesthetic, so he plugs in the laptop and switches the VR back on.

Veronica keeps Oliveria talking as Mosso works. What do you see? she asks. Fishes, water, stones, comes the reply. Then they help her to her feet and walk her to a bed in the next room. Theres no stand or hook for the IV line so after some searching Oliveria ties it to an old floor lamp, which he balances on a table by the bed, next to Oliviers iguanas, happily munching lettuce on a plate.

It looks easy, but we never know at what moment we can have a surprise, says Mosso when the crisis is over. In a hospital Im relaxed, because the monitor tells me the patients heart rate, breathing, blood oxygen. Theres an anaesthesiologist, scrub nurse, other surgeons. But here, were far away from the hospital and my colleagues. With or without surprises, Im worried. What if something happens here and I dont have solutions? Tlapa is far away.

Half an hour later, Oliveria is ready to leave. I didnt know I was going to have surgery today, she tells Mosso and Veronica. Thank you. Mosso gives her paracetamol and antibiotics, and instructs her to take a taxi home. She has asked to keep the lipoma so he hands her the twisted, blood-stained lobes in a small pot of alcohol. Her hands are shaking as she takes it.

Next morning theres an impromptu farewell party on the basketball court. The village brass band accompanies a range of traditional Mexican dances, including one in which Mosso does a surprisingly athletic impression of an iguana.

He wants to leave earlytoday we will drive to Acapulco, where he plans to visit family (and release the real iguanas), before returning to Mexico City. Despite the circuitous route he has planned, it is unwise to be on the roads around Acapulco after nightfall. But theres another line of people at the clinic.

Veronica hands out the clothes and supplies from the Jeepdonations from Oliviers schoolwhile Mosso sees the patients. Theres one more case for surgery: a boy with a haemangioma (a benign tumour of blood vessels) on his head. There isnt a strong medical need to remove it, but the boy is being bullied by his friendsthey say its an insect, translates Mossoand his mother is desperate.

Mosso agrees to the surgery, but once thats done more patients arrivetheyve walked an hour to see him. Mosso says no. Its already early afternoon, we have to go. We drive seven hours without stopping, the air ever warmer as we leave the mountains and climb down towards the sea.

Hes agitated, pushing 90 miles an hour along the long, straight coastal road, but we lose the race. The sun sets and we speed towards the city in darkness. Then cars coming the other way begin to flash their headlights, and shortly afterwards were waved to a halt by a group of armed men in military attire.

Mosso knows the drill. Quickly he opens his window, flips on the interior light and calls his son into the front. Theyre looking for enemies, he says. As long as they can see were not hiding anything, they should let us through. Sure enough, the gunman looks inside and waves us on.

Once at his home in Acapulco, in a gated apartment complex, Mosso reflects on the trip. Apart from the fainting episode the patients all did well, and we travelled safely. It was successful, he says. Im happy with the results.

He has collected data on all of the surgeries he carried out, and hopes that his experiences will encourage the use of VR to help patients in other under-resourced communities around the world.

The cost of VR headsets has been prohibitive, but in the last year or two, the release of cheap devices such as the Samsung Gear VR and even the Google Cardboard, as well as the growing number of virtual worlds freely available online, have transformed access to the technology.

Although Mosso connected his headset to a laptop in El Tepeyac, he has previously shown that the technique works just as well running from a mobile phone, perfect for relieving pain in difficult locations. Theres no heavy equipment, he says. Its very easy to use.

Meanwhile he is already making plans to return to El Tepeyac. During our trip, he met with a local government representative who wants him to visit not just that village but neighbouring indigenous communities too. That would take time and money that Mosso doesnt have, but hes trying to convince some of his colleagues in Mexico City to help, and hopes that soon hell be able to return to Guerrero with a team of surgeons, perhaps in spring 2017.

Mosso is one of the most upbeat people I have met. Tonight, though, his optimism is tempered. He says his overwhelming emotion on leaving El Tepeyac was anger. Ive seen some economic development, he says. But my family are living in the same house, they are wearing the same clothes. All I gave is nothing. When I said goodbye I felt angry with myself, because I cant do anything for them.

Hes painfully aware that it will take more than VR and donated sweaters to solve the problems of the people of El Tepeyacand his country. But hes working to help them in the only way he knows.

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Virtual reality to take a decade as users chicken out, study shows – The Australian Financial Review

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Virtual reality is in a "chicken and egg" situation where consumers are waiting for more content before buying, and content makers are waiting for more customers.

Virtual and augmented reality might be the buzz technologies of 2017, but consumer hesitation and shortage of products could mean they won't go mainstream until next decade, new research shows.

The 102-page Australian VR & AR Market Study 2017, released Tuesday by the Australian research company Telsyte, concludes that the technology has found itself in a chicken-and-egg predicament, with consumers unwilling to buy into it until there is enough content, and content producers unwilling to buy into it until there are enough consumers.

Virtual reality technology uses headsets, often just a mobile phone with lens attached to it, that are strapped to the face so users can play video games or watch movies, completely surrounded by the device's video feed.

Augmented reality can use headsets or handheld devices, that mix computer-generated video with live images of the real world.

Neither technology has gained widespread adoption in Australia, with household penetration estimated at only 2.3 per cent at the end of 2016, according to the study.

That figure has been kept low in part because few Australians have been able to try VR or AR to see if they like it nervousness about trying on headsets has meant that only 11 per cent of Australians aged 16 years or older have actually tried a headset, Telsyte found and in part because the manufacturers been nervous about shipping too many products ahead of demand, making them hard to buy even for consumers who have tested it.

"Manufacturers are taking a measured approach to this new category of products," said Foad Fadaghi, managing director of Telsyte and author of the report.

"They still have memories of other technologies that have come and gone, like 3D TV."

With such constraints still in force for much of 2017, it could be 2018 before we know whether VR and AR will gain a proper foothold or go the way of 3D TVs, Mr Fadaghi said.

While a number of VR manufacturers have said that education will be the first sector to properly adopt the technology, Telsyte's research found that it will be video gaming and movie watching that will draw more people in.

"We do see some uses in education," said Mr Fadaghi. "A lot of educators look at VR as a big opportunity, given its ability to capture the imagination of young people with immersive experiences.

"But when we ask consumers what they want to use VR for, it's primarily for games and movies," he said. The same is true of smartphones: half of all smartphone app revenues go to the gaming industry.

Of the two complementary technologies, it will be virtual reality that has the fastest adoption, thanks to games, but it will be augmented reality that has the broadest application, because it can be used for gaming and business apps.

"It will all eventually take off," predicts said Mr Fadaghi. "It will just take a little longer before it becomes mainstream. It could be 10 years, just like smartphones."

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Virtual Reality Was a Flop in 2016. Will 2017 Be the Year It Takes Off? – Motley Fool

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Image source: Getty Images.

Consumer-level virtual reality (VR) received its first big push in 2016 with major headset launches from Facebook(NASDAQ:FB), HTC (NASDAQOTH:HTCCY), and Sony (NYSE:SNE), but uptake for the technology fell short of many analysts' expectations, and there are a range of challenges that threaten to limit future adoption.Sales for Facebook's Oculus Rift and HTC's Vive headsets dried up after their respective launches, and SuperData cut its 2016 sales estimate for Sony's PlayStation VR from 2.6 million units to 745,000 units -- potentially worrying signs for the future of head-mounted displays.

VR still has compelling prospects, but it's also clear that the technology will have to overcome certain roadblocks before it's ready for prime time. In order to better understand the potential growth trajectory for virtual reality in 2017 and beyond, let's take a look at some of the factors that are shaping the progression of the technology.

The fact that Samsung's Gear VR -- which uses compatible cellphones for its display and retails at $99 -- is the top-selling headset suggests that price will continue to be a key hurdle for higher-end virtual reality adoption. The Oculus Rift still sells for $599, while the Vive is priced at $799, and the PlayStation VR retails at $399. In addition to a growing list of compatible phones for Gear VR and Alphabet's Google Daydream platform, more headsets will hit the market in 2017 and fill in the gaps between high- and low-end experiences. Increased competition should put pressure on Facebook, HTC, and Sony to lower the prices for their devices or improve value propositions through bundling and other promotions.

Lenovo is expected to release a headset this year that delivers higher resolution than the Rift or the Vive, a lighter weight, and augmented reality (AR) capabilities -- all at a sub-$400 price. Lenovo's device will be part of Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Holographic virtual reality ecosystem, and make use of a dual-camera internal tracking system (as opposed to the external systems used by the Vive, Oculus Rift, and PS VR) that could be instrumental in the emergence of more affordable headsets. Windows Holographic headsets will reportedly start in the $300 price range and are being designed to be compatible with mid-range computers -- moves that should make virtual reality more accessible and build Microsoft's position in the space. Companies including Asus, Acer, HP, and Dell are also developing entries for the Windows Holographic virtual reality platform, though it's not clear which, if any, will launch this year.

Even with new entrants, the cost of high-end VR will likely continue to be prohibitive to mass-market adoption, but reports that Facebook is closing 200 out of 500 Oculus Rift demo stations at Best Buy locations due to low engagement suggests other obstacles to VR going mainstream this year.

While new competition means the cost of entry for mid-level and high-end virtual devices is likely to fall this year, a growing selection of headsets will contribute to the trend of fragmentation that threatens to limit the progression of VR. Early competition to establish leadership in the space and technological differences between high-end and low-end deviceshave created a situation where many software offerings are not compatible across devices. Fragmenting even exists within individual platforms, with Oculus Rift developers needing to account for segmentation created by the introduction of the device's touch-based controllers.

For now, VR hardware lacks a "killer app" to justify the cost of entry, and the dynamics of the current market present barriers to the arrival of breakthrough software. With small and fractured installed bases for VR headsets, developing big-budget virtual reality experiences still doesn't make sense for most developers, and that issue is likely to persist through 2017. Even Sony, a platform holder with wide range of video game development studios, seems to have few projects on the horizon to support its headset. Without standout software experiences to hook users and encourage engagement with the new display mediums, the high cost of entry will remain prohibitive to the mass market audience.

While early uptake for VR has been disappointing compared to initial projections, it's important to remember just how young this technology is. The overly optimistic forecasts for VR adoption in 2016 give cause for some skepticism when looking at future targets, but expectations for huge growth in the category persist, with a study from Citigroup estimating that the combined market for VR and AR will reach $2.16 trillion by 2035.

Despite initial roadblocks, the immersive potential offered by VR and AR and improvements to hardware and software make it likely that the technology will eventually achieve mass adoption. Last year marked the beginning of the consumer VR push, and, while it doesn't look like 2017 will deliver the confluence of factors needed to propel the medium into the mainstream, the long-term outlook remains very bright.

The early adopter market is mostly buying VR for video games, but the technology will eventually be bridged to online shopping and other uses, and the immersive qualities of AR and VR should open up huge advertising opportunities that help build support for the new mediums.

Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's Board of Directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Keith Noonan has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Virtual Reality Was a Flop in 2016. Will 2017 Be the Year It Takes Off? - Motley Fool

What Ubisoft learned from its first virtual reality games – VentureBeat

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Ubisoft has learned a thing or two about virtual reality.

The giant French video game publisher loves to experiment with new game platforms. Whenever a new one arrives, so do new Ubisoft games. With VR, Ubisoft has tried a number of things, and in October it launched its first VR game, Eagle Flight, a simulation game where you can fly above a future version of Paris as an eagle. After the game debuted, Ubisoft found that 73 percent of the game sessions were longer than 10 minutes, which went against the conventional wisdom about how VR was too uncomfortable for people to stay in it for very long.

Ubisoft also launched Werewolves Within, a VR version of the Werewolves tabletop game, where players try to figure out who among the villagers among them is a werewolf. And the company is working on Star Trek: Bridge Crew, where VR players take on the roles of a starships bridge crew.

David Votypka, creative director at Ubisoft Red Storm, and Chris Early, vice president of digital publishing at Ubisoft, gave a talk about the lessons the company has learned in VR at the Casual Connect Europe event in Berlin. I interviewed them after the talk about those lessons.

Heres an edited transcript of our talk.

Above: David Votypka (left) and Chris Early of Ubisoft at Casual Connect Europe.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Chris Early: The theme of the talk is things weve expected about VR in the early days, in three categories. One was locomotion. VR makes people sick, so you cant do fast motion. Second was time in the headset. Weve heard a lot of things from headset makers, like seven minutes is what we should be designing for. The third is that VR is antisocial.

What weve discovered is the opposite is true in all three of these cases, in a lot of ways. For locomotion, Eagle Flight is the example. You fly at high speeds, turning, fast motion. The vast majority of people are very comfortable with it. A lot of it comes down to the techniques they use, like closing off peripheral vision. Since our peripheral vision is designed to detect things here, if you sense something whizzing by it triggers motion sickness. When the game detects that, it closes that off, and its a very effective technique.

GB: The research must have taken you a lot of time. When did you discover that?

David Votypka: The work was done at Ubisoft Montreal. They had the idea for a flying game because they were experimenting with Paris from the Assassins Creed universe. They started noticing that some things worked and some things didnt. One element that was bothersome was how fast things were going by.

Some of the research Olivia Palmieri did shes the producer on it was in the concept of horse blinders, or what happens when race drivers go really fast. They get that tunnel vision effect, which allows them to focus. Instead of creating a small hole you look through, they do it dynamically. When its displaying fast motion on the screen, it trims down the field of view, and then opens it back up again when theres nothing close by. You still have this wide vista, a panoramic field of view, until you get close to something. People dont even notice it.

Early: Thats the surprising part for me. When I first saw it, I was watching a monitor of someone playing. I assumed people would see it right away. But then I tried it in the headset and I wasnt even thinking about the effect. I didnt notice it at all.

GB: It sounds a bit like this foveated rendering technology theyre saying could reduce a lot of the graphics computing requirements.

Early: We could do that with foveated, probably, by just blurring it instead of blacking it out. It might be enough.

Votypka: To be fair, theyre still calculating the full screen. Its not a savings for us yet, because theyre trying to figure out where theres too much motion. Theyve already had to figure out that theres motion in that section, and then they black it out.

Early: Right. But rendering performancethis part doesnt have to be as high-res as that part. Back to time in the headset, seven minutes is what they were saying you should design for in the early days.

Votypka: With Eagle Flight, 73 percent of our session times are more than 10 minutes. Eagle Flight is a short-sequence thing. You go in and do a bit of a flight. The missions are maybe a minute or two at the most. But people stay in for a long time. A lot longer than we expected.

Above: Eagle Flight from Ubisoft Montreal.

Image Credit: Ubisoft

Early: In the social VR stuff weve seen about a third of our players playing for an hour to three hours. Very long sessions, longer than we expected, especially compared to that estimate of just seven minutes. Thats been really cool to see.

The third part is this idea that when you look at somebody in VR in their living room, it looks very antisocial. But when you get people in a shared environment together, when your physical traits and voice are networked, you get this social presence. Wow, Im here with other human beings. It becomes extremely social. Werewolves has been out for a little over two months and weve seen some amazing stories, from strangers playing together to how long people spend in the headset to how many friends they add. All sorts of very interesting things from what was, in a lot of ways, a social experiment. Its a multiplayer-only game. It requires VOIP to play. Its almost totally personality-driven. The gameplay systems are pretty simple. So much of it is just the players personalities.

All of these things were huge questions around shipping a game like that. For the players that are aware of it, weve had super positive feedback on all those aspects, which has been somewhatwe hoped, but we werent sure.

GB: Did you set out trying to ignore conventional wisdom?

Early: Social and VR were two things you just didnt think about together a few years ago. For me, VR goes back to the 90s. All the time Ive thought about it, I never thought about the social side until around 2014, when Michael Abrash from Oculus was at Carnegie Mellon giving a speech. He said, Theres a lot of open questions about VR. But one thing Im sure of is itll be the most social medium ever. Thats a pretty bold statement.

We had some multiplayer prototypes in Unity. When we got our DK2s we put on the headsets and got it running quickly. We sat across this table from each other where previously wed been sitting with a mouse and keyboard and monitor. We looked at each other across this warehouse environment and we could see each others head movements and so on. I thought, Okay, I feel like Im actually there with this person, not just looking at an avatar. That moment, it felt like there was something to this something thats not obvious, but once you try it, its evident how tightly connected people can be in VR. Its you, as opposed to just a pre-animated avatar.

Once that was proven, we started thinking about what kind of social games we could make. Werewolves was obviously our version of the original Mafia game. Theres been a lot of derivatives of that card game. We put in our own unique VR mechanics and gameplay rules. We went that direction because we wanted to focus on the social aspect, improving that with a well-known gameplay model. Social deduction is an interesting gameplay format for getting together around a table together.

GB: It seems like certain genres fit will here. The board game genre in genre matches well with social VR.

Early: Right. But you look at Star Trek Bridge Crew, which we still consider a social VR gameI call Werewolves an around-the-table format, while Star Trek is a crew experience. In that case youre all looking in different directions, seated in different places, more separated around the bridge. The around-the-table social connection isnt there. Weve designed it into the stations so you can work with each other. You still discuss with each other. But theres another action component to the game, going on missions and fighting Klingons as a crew. Its different gameplay from Werewolves, but its still social. A lot of different types of games can work in this social VR genre.

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What Ubisoft learned from its first virtual reality games - VentureBeat

50 Years Frozen: Cryonics Today – Paste Magazine

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On January 12, 1967, psychology professor James Bedford died due to cancer-related natural causes. Within hours, a team of scientists filled his veins with antifreeze. They packed his body in a container full of dry ice, and in so doing made Bedford the first man ever frozen alive in the name ofwell, if not science, something that aspired to be science one day: cryonics.

On December 23rd, 2009, at 4 a.m., I listened to my neighbors play Forever Young for the fortieth time in a row. Either the partygoers had either left or the DJ had died, and any attendees were either passed out or too blitzed to notice. The song played on repeat:

Forever young, I want to be Forever young.

I aged 10 years that night, while Bedfordtucked away in a fresh liquid nitrogen bath that came complementary with his 1991 inspectionremained immortal.

What is Cryonics, for Crying out Loud? Fifty years have passed since Bedford volunteered to become the first cryogenically frozen man. And while cultural depictions sporadically crop upthink Austin Powers, Futurama and yes, Mel Gibsonin Forever Youngcryonics is often thought to belong more to the realm of science fiction than science, and to put an even finer point on it, an escapist fiction that eludes actionable reality.

Yet cryonics offers grounds just as fertile for ethics as they do the imagination. Just think: people wage fierce wars about when life begins. Cryonics twists, turns and flips that argument around to become a deeper meditation on the moment that life ends.

So when does it?

When a Body Becomes a Patient The Alcor Life Extension Foundation which preserved Bedford describes cryonics as an effort to save lives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by todays medicine can be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health. The Foundation tellingly describes its members as patientsnot bodies. The dewars are not coffins, they are the temporary resting place for people who will one day wake up.

Michael Hendrix, neuroscientist and assistant professor of biology at McGill University, describes how the future of cryonics rests upon the promise of new technologies in neuroscience, particularly recent work in connectomicsa field that maps the connections between neurons a detailed map of neural connections could be enough to restore a persons mind, memories and personality by uploading it into a computer simulation.

In other words, cryonics claims that a cryogenically frozen person is not dead. He or she is merely on pause, similar to the way a video game character wont age while the player fiddles through the menu screen. The cycle of life rests upon the ability of scientistsand technologyto catch up to an idea born centuries before its time.

And as far as the science of resuscitation, cryonics does not actually rely upon the preservation of the entire body (as the choice of some people to have just their heads frozen, notably MLB player Ted Williams, testifies to), but upon the ability to map out the neurological connections between the brain, lift that map and recreate it in another bodypossibly a robot, possibly something scientists and dreamers havent yet conceived.

The Grounds for Debate Arguments against cryonics often hinge upon two main points. The first is that at best, the ethical implications of the procedure show a Labradors level of devotion to the promise of science. At worst, they play upon the emotions (and pocketbooks) of the bereaved survivors, who hold out false hope for the resuscitation of their loved one, possibly derailing and even deranging the cycles of the grieving process. The second rawand undeniablefact is that the technology for making a frozen person reenter society as a whole, living human being simply does not exist.

As for arguments for it? The most simple, powerful argument of all: immortality.

In 2014, the total count of cyropreserved bodies reached 250. An estimated 1,500 people total had made arrangements for cryopreservation after their legal death. The New York Times cites nonreligious white males as the main partakers, outdoing females by a ratio of three to one. As the worlds first volunteer, Bedford received a freebie, but most cyropreservation costs at least $80,000. A Russian company, KioRus, boasts the steal at $12,000 a headliterally speaking. But costs all but disappear in the face of a successful experiment. Say someone pays $80,000 now to rejoin the living 200 years later? Forget about calculating inflation differences.

No matter what side of cryonics one comes down uponand science offers arguments for botha central idea remains, both chilling and mesmerizing, depending upon the way its turned. A successful cyropreservation would entail rebirthbut into a world wholly different than the one left behind. If James Bedford came back tomorrow, could he handle the emotionalnot to mention mentaltribulations of adjusting to a world that moved on without him? Would the forever young experience drone on like the song on that December night, an individual sentenced to the eternal return of the same song, Existence?

After my own encounter with Forever YoungI certainly hope not.

Elisia Guerena is a Brooklyn based writer, who writes about tech, travel, feminism, and anything related to inner or outer space.

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50 Years Frozen: Cryonics Today - Paste Magazine

Cryonics This Scottish author pays 50 pounds a month to preserve his brain after death – Zee News

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New Delhi: Of late, the science of cryonics seems to have captivated the hearts of scientists and the public alike with some people now opting for cryopreservation after their deaths.

Cryonics is the practice or technique of deep-freezing the bodies of those who have died of a disease, in the hope of a future cure.

In a latest, an author from Scotland has started paying a research institute to preserve his brain cryogenically after his death.

As per reports, DJ MacLennan has been paying 50 pounds ( appriximately Rs 4,000) a month for the past decade to Alcor Institute in Arizona, USA, to preserve his brain in the hope that he can one day be brought back to life.

MacLennan, who lives on the Isle of Skye, has told the institute that when he dies he wants the team of volunteers to fill his body with anti-freezing liquid before plunging it into ice water. His body will then be wrapped in a polyethylene, submerged in alcohol and lowered into ice before being shipped to Arizona. The head will then be removed and frozen in liquid nitrogen before being stored.

According to MacLennan, if organs can be donated and aren't wasted anymore, brains should definitely not be wasted, instead it's the important part to store.

While the full-body procedure costs 75,000 pounds, the author from Skye, has opted for the 40,000 pounds brain freeze.

In November last year, a 14-year old girl who died of cancer became the first child to be cryogenically frozen after death in the UK.

The procedure was carried out after winning a landmark court case shortly before her death. She had written a heartbreaking letter to a judge explaining that she wanted a chance to live longer after suffering from a rare form of deadly cancer.

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No limit to how long we could extend our lives, say researchers – EWN – Eyewitness News

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More & more scientists are coming to the conclusion that aging is a disease and, as such, could be treated.

Picture: Freeimages.com

THE STREHLER-MILDVAN CORRELATRION

The scientific team of biotech company Gero recently published a study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology that debunks a long-held misconception regarding two parameters of the Gompertz mortality law - a mortality model that represents human death as the sum of two components that exponentially increases with age. The Gero team studied whats called the Strehler-Mildvan (SM) correlation and found no real biological reasoning behind it, despite having been held true for more than a half a century now.

The SM correlation, derived from the Strehler-Mildvan general theory of aging and mortality, is a mechanism-based explanation of Gompertz law. Specifically, the SM correlation uses two Gompertz coefficients called the Mortality Rate Doubling Time (MRDT) and Initial Mortality Rate (IMR). Popularised in the 1960s in a paper published in Science, the SM correlation suggests that reducing mortality rate through any intervention at a young age could lower the MRDT, thus accelerating aging. As such, the hypothesis disrupts the development of any anti-aging therapy, effectively making optimal aging treatments impossible.

The Gero team, however, realised that the SM correlation is a flawed assumption. Instead of using machine learning techniques for anti-aging therapy design, the researchers relied on an evidence-based science approach. Peter Fedichev and his team tried to determine the physical processes behind the SM correlation. In doing so, they realised the fundamental discrepancy between analytical considerations and the possibility of SM correlation.

We worked through the entire life histories of thousands of C. elegans that were genetically identical, and the results showed that this correlation was indeed a pure fitting artifact, Fedichev said in a press release.

HUMAN LIFE EXTENSION

Other studies have questioned the validity of the SM correlation, but in their published study, Fedichev and his team were able to show how the SM correlation arises naturally as a degenerate manifold of Gompertz fit. This suggests that, instead of understanding SM correlation as a biological fact, it is really an artifactual property of the fit.

This discovery is particularly relevant now as more and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that aging is a disease and, as such, could be treated. They are working hard to find ways to extend human life, and many of these anti-aging studies are yielding curious developments.

Elimination of SM correlation from theories of aging is good news, because if it was not just negative correlation between Gompertz parameters, but the real dependence, it would have banned optimal anti-aging interventions and limited human possibilities to life extension, Fedichev explained. In order words, human life extension has no definitive limit.

This article was republished courtesy of World Economic Forum.

Written by Dom Galeon, writer, Futurism.

Kristin Houser, writer, Futurism.

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John Killebrew: Honoring a life of service – Delta Farm Press

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One of the rewards in life is crossing paths with a lot of good folks those whose enthusiasm, dedication, good works, and a genuine concern for community and their fellow man make them outstanding citizens and unforgettable.

In my 40-odd years with Farm Press, Ive found that agriculture has such people in abundance.One of them I first encountered a half-century ago. John Killebrew was serving as county Extension agent at Winona, Miss., when I arrived there to become editor of the local newspaper. Almost every weekly newspaper in Mississippi carried a column by the county agent, and in that era before e-mail and fax, John delivered his in person. His smile and enthusiasm were contagious, his energy and determination boundless. And we became friends.

Mississippi Extension could not have asked for a better example of what a county agent should be. Regardless of the project whether Extension related, school related, church related, community related, if John took it on, it was done right and on time.

In the process, he accumulated awards and honors galore, including, in 1973, the highest award bestowed by the USDA, the Superior Service Award, which was presented to him by Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in a Washington, D.C., ceremony.

John has been retired from Extension for almost 34 years, just a tad longer than the 32 years and three months he served the organization. But, he says, retirement just opened the opportunity for other development stages of my life Ive never been bored, Ive been blessed with good health, and it has been rewarding to continue to be involved in the activities and the progress of the community where Ive spent most of my adult life.

On Feb. 4, John was honored with a 90th birthday party, and for two hours people streamed through the Winona First United Methodist Church Family Life Center to honor John and his wife, Martha, who has been his strong support for the almost 63 years theyve been married. There was a lot of food, a lot of fun, a lot of renewing ties by those long-moved-away, and the warm, heartfelt appreciation of a community for two people whove given so much of themselves for more than half a century.

My purpose on this earth has been to be Gods hands to do His work, John says in the autobiography he wrote for his children and grandchildren. I have been happy in my journey with the people I learned to serve.

Well done, John! Now, on to 100

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Kentucky Main Street Program Communities Contributed $110M to State Economy in 2016 – WMKY

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The Kentucky Main Street Program (KYMS) announced this week that39 participating communities reported cumulative investment of $109,741,515 in their commercial downtown districts in 2016, a number that includes $75,070,029 of private investment matched by $30,920,494 in public improvements. This total was up significantly from the $76 million of cumulative investment reported by 44 communities in 2015.

Administered by the Kentucky Heritage Council/State Historic Preservation Office (KHC), Kentucky Main Street is the oldest statewide downtown economic revitalization program in the nation, based on the National Main Street Center (NMSC) Four-Point Approach emphasizing organization, promotion, design and economic vitality. Since the programs inception in 1979, KYMS can document more than $3.9 billion of public-private investment throughout the Commonwealth.

The revitalization statistics were announced during the KYMS Winter Meeting in Frankfort, which began Wednesday with an advocacy day at the Capitol, where local directors displayed exhibits about their programs and met with legislators. The day concluded with both House and Senate floor resolutions, introduced by Rep. Chad McCoy of Bardstown and Sen. Robin Webb of Grayson, respectively, which were adopted in each chamber by voice vote.

According to the resolutions, Kentucky Main Street is at its core a self-help program, locally administered and funded through private investment partnered with public support, which achieves success by addressing a variety of issues that face traditional business districts and re-establishing downtown as the communitys focal point and center of activity.

In addition to statewide investment numbers, the resolutions also noted that in 2016, Kentucky Main Street communities reported:

1,452 new jobs created in Main Street districts 234 new businesses created 81 new housing units in downtowns 198 building rehabilitation projects completed $51,433,241 invested in historic building rehabilitation

Directors met at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet building to hear program updates and special guest speakers, including presentations on bicycle and pedestrian projects and Tax Increment Financing.

Also on Thursday, KYMS Administrator Kitty Dougoud announced that 29 communities have achieved accreditation for 2017 as certified by both Kentucky Main Street and the National Main Street Center. These areBardstown, Bellevue, Cadiz, Campbellsville, Carrollton, Covington, Cynthiana, Danville, Dawson Springs, Frankfort, Guthrie, Harrodsburg, Henderson, LaGrange, London, Maysville, Morehead, Murray, New Castle, Paducah, Perryville, Pikeville, Pineville, Princeton, Shelbyville, Springfield, Taylorsville, WilliamsburgandWinchester. Accredited programs have met all of the 10 performance standards set forth by NMSC.

Affiliate programs have met at least five of the 10 accreditation standards, and Network programs are those in the beginning phases of the program or in some form of transition. Those earning Affiliate status areMarion, Paintsville, Scottsville,and theTri-Citiesprogram includingBenham, CumberlandandLynch; and Network programs areDayton, Middlesboro, NicholasvilleandWayland.

Annual reinvestment statistics are collected from all participating Accredited, Affiliate and Network communities.

Kentucky Main Streets mission is to prioritize the preservation and adaptive reuse of historic buildings as the framework supporting downtown revitalization and economic development strategies. Participation requires local commitment and financial support, with a Main Street director to administer the program in partnership with a volunteer board. In turn, KHC provides technical and design assistance, training and educational opportunities, on-site visits, a resource center, national consultants and grant funding, when available.

The economic and community impact of the Kentucky Main Street Program has been particularly dramatic in rural and small towns across the Commonwealth, said Regina Stivers, Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet of Tourism, Arts and Heritage. By helping preserve historic resources unique to each community, focusing on small businesses, and creating a halo effect that encourages additional investment, the program supports the cabinets mission of improving quality of life and enhancing opportunities for heritage tourism.

For more about Kentucky Main Street, visitwww.heritage.ky.gov/mainstreetor contactKitty Dougoud, 502-564-7005, ext. 127.

Story provided by: Kentucky.org

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Kentucky Main Street Program Communities Contributed $110M to State Economy in 2016 - WMKY

Ben Wray: Why both the right to work and the right not to work can set us free – CommonSpace

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Ben Wray: Why both the right to work and the right not to work can set us free
CommonSpace
In a world where the idea of robots taking over our jobs is no longer in the realm is sci-fi, basic income is usually proposed as an alternative to the guarantee of employment. The logic of this is simple: the guarantee of an income replaces the ...

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Ben Wray: Why both the right to work and the right not to work can set us free - CommonSpace

The art of balancing workplace automation – Retail Customer Experience (blog)

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Feb. 20, 2017

Photo source: istock.com

By Ashish Gambhir, co-founder and president, MomentSnap

On the front line, efficiency is the name of the game. Enhancing workplace flow is an easy way to notch up the bottom line, and companies dedicate tremendous bandwidth to working out operational kinks.

Increasingly, the result of these self-audits is a move toward automation.

The buzz about bots is on the rise. No, not the all-knowing Isaac Asimov supercomputers the 1-800-number variety that never seems to detect any urgency in the phrase "I'd like to speak to a person."

The bots we encounter in our everyday lives are still rudimentary, but McKinsey estimates automated processes will eventually be able to replace 45 percent of current workplace activities. As the benefits of automation cost reduction, more efficiency with human capital become clearer and clearer, the development of self-governing systems and our reliance on them will accelerate.

Many corners of the industry have already embraced automation as a cornerstone of the future: Between Tesla's autonomous Model-S vehicle, Amazon's flirting with self-guided drone delivery and fully automated stores, and Japanese companies deploying customer service robots on sales floors, the process has been set in motion.

This raises a pressing question for industry: how much is too much?

There is no categorical imperative for when and where automation is appropriate; the most forward-thinking companies will continuously push the boundaries to see how much they can get away with.

Intrinsic to automation, though, is the capacity to severely disengage employees and customers alike. It's crucial to recognize certain circumstances in which automation should be leveraged with extreme caution. Some are intuitive others less so.

1. Employee recognition. As one of the cornerstones of employee engagement, recognizing great work is sacred. The dilemma, of course, is that in 90 percent of hourly workplaces, managers readily admit that they don't recognize employees enough as it is. That's why top-notch engagement platforms are incorporating automated recognition systems that sync with performance data to push achievements and badges to workers who are excelling, with no managerial onus good work never goes unrecognized. The flip side to such systems is that recognition can easily begin to feel canned and hollow, as if the company is just checking a box. The happy medium here is that there must always be a method of giving authentic, organic recognition that's hand-crafted rather than triggered by an algorithm: whether it's a function built into an engagement platform or it requires a manager to actively seek out the top five weekly performers and give them a hearty kudos. This way automation can play a role in recognition maintenance while not eclipsing the human element of acknowledgement.

2. Fielding customer feedback. There's a reason the clueless phone bot has become a television trope: whether a customer wants to congratulate a brand for good work or mount a complaint, the worst way to make them feel as if their thoughts are being heard is to herald them with a voice recording. Some customers particularly younger generations are open-minded when it comes to dealing with voice bots, and certainly there is a place for them in routine practices like checking account balances or processing a simple refund. For many customers, though, bots only serve as an initial source of frustration that makes life more difficult for human customer service specialists at the end of the phone chain. Bots should be programmed to pass sensitive call topics directly to a person, and further, should respond to basic commands like "I want to speak to a representative."

3. Guest interaction. The caveat to the McKinsey statistic: although 45 percent of work activity can be automated, the impact on the overall number of occupations will be negligible. This means most jobs will remain human, with varying percentages of the tasks that are currently handled by people being taken over by machines. For retail workers, McKinsey estimates around 55 percent of tasks could be automated: things like folding and hanging clothing, counting inventory, and maybe even greeting guests. Some frontiers are currently outside of robots' reach, though. Stylistic advice at a fashion outlet, for example, requires a human sense of intuition. The same goes for the majority of specialty retail stores, from cooking and furniture to music and entertainment. Unless we achieve perfect artificial intelligence, machines will lack the crucial ingredient that is passion and that's what makes retail employees shine when dealing with customers.

Topics: Customer Experience, Customer Service, Technology

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