Daily Archives: May 30, 2017

Forbes

Virtual Reality -- The Future Of Media Or Just A Passing Trend? Forbes After the splash made by the arrival of virtual reality headsets a couple of years ago, VR has drawn a lot of attention. The features of the systems seem limitless and there's strong interest from people across industries. But accessibility remains a ...

Read this article:

Virtual Reality -- The Future Of Media Or Just A Passing Trend? - Forbes

The U.S. Navy has a new tool to recruit potential cadetsa virtual reality video game.

The service showcased its latest recruitment technique over Memorial Day weekend in Long Island, N.Y. with a tractor trailer equipped with eight VR pods that can accommodate about 60 people, according to USA Today. The simulation uses Oculus Rift technology to give users a glimpse of what it's like to be in the Navy.

"Im on a covert Navy mission driving a special operation craft on a secluded river," USA Today 's Ed Baig writes. "I'm charged with helping to extract a SEAL team pinned down by enemy fire. The boat is outfitted with extreme firepower, but it is left to my fellow crewmen to fire the guns, launch the grenades and provide cover for other sailors while I navigate the waterway."

While the Navy and other branches of the U.S. military have used VR for training purposes in recent years, this simulationwhich launched in Octoberis the first time the Navy has used virtual reality to attract prospective sailors. A Navy spokesperson told Baig that engagements of potential recruits has more than doubled among those who have tried the simulated mission.

If it seems like the experience could be too intense, Baig wrote that the game "seemed less violent or graphic than some other video games Ive played" and suggested that the innocuous simulation could be intentional to avoid scaring off recruits.

The tractor trailer carrying the VR pods is currently being driven around the country to schools and special events, but the Navy believes users will someday be able to download their own VR missions to play from anywhere, according to the report. The idea is to attract students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs to segue into the 60 career paths offered in the Navy.

More here:

Navy Recruitment: Virtual Reality Attracts Potential Sailors | Fortune ... - Fortune

Mure VR, an Icelandic startup, hopes to cure the workplace doldrums using the power of fake nature.CreditCOURTESY BREAKROOM

The British writer Charles Lamb was no stranger to workplace-induced despair. In 1792, to make ends meet, he took a job as a bookkeeper at the East India Company, a position that he would hold for the next three decades. Looking back after retirement, Lamb wrote, No prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul. Writers have long shared the sense that the aesthetic shortcomings of the office somehow mirror the disappointments of the professional world. Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener, published in 1853, famously starts in a room that looks out onto a blackened brick wall. Richard Yatess novel Revolutionary Road, from 1961, describes a midtown Manhattan office as a great silent insectarium. Scientists, meanwhile, have found that open-office workers rank worst in health and job satisfaction, that a windowless office elicits more anxiety than a sun-filled one, and that proximity to potted plants boosts employees productivity and decreases the amount of sick leave they take. Short of turning the insectarium into a conservatory, though, how can we make our workplaces more appealing?

Mure VR, a tech startup based in Reykjavk, is one of a few companies hoping to answer that question using virtual reality. The firms C.E.O., Dirik Steinsson, envisions a future in which office workers escape the glare of cost-saving fluorescents and the distractions of colleagues chatter by donning headsets and sealing themselves off inside virtual realms. Big I.T. companies, he pointed out to me recently, have begun building rest areas and gardens into their campuses, in recognition of their employees need for what psychologists call fascinationthe cognitive renewal that comes from looking at organic patterns, such as a rivers churning currents or leaves against sky. Our idea is that you could actually just sit at your desk and you could get this feeling, this psychological restoration, without having to leave the workstation, Steinsson said. The companys app, which is called Breakroom, allows users to perform their usual tasks while immersed in a computer-rendered world of their choosing. They might do data entry while standing on the virtual banks of Japans Tokachi River, say, or edit a memo while aboard a space station overlooking a supernova.

I first tried a prototype of Breakroom last year, at Mures headquarters, east of downtown Reykjavk. When I arrived, it was immediately clear that Steinsson and his team see the value of a better workplace in their own lives: though small, the companys one-room office has pitched ceilings, a skylight, and a green shag carpet. (Since then, according to Steinsson, they haveupgraded to an even better space, with wide views of Mt. Esja.) Employees leave their shoes by the door. Steinsson himself, who wore a gray hoodie and jeans, installed me at a workstation and handed me an HTC Vive headset. A moment later, I was in a cartoonishly prismatic ice cave with a luminous fire pit in the distance and an Excel spreadsheet hovering up close. It was a curious experience, like being transported into the background photo on someones computer desktop, but, given that Breakroom was in an early stage of development, there wasnt too much to see.

In a second, more recent test, I stayed within Breakrooms worlds for nearly an hour. The apps Japanese garden was particularly inviting, with its rain-slicked stone path, a main hall surrounded by latticed railings, and a crop of maple trees in the distance obscured by fog. Toggling over to Bora Bora led to more good thingsa tranquil beach beneath a toothpaste-blue sky, a palm tree extending up above, its underside lit orange-gold with pseudo-sunlight. Breakroom is still in development, and Mure has some problems to resolve: the app crashed several times as I began adding browser windows, and the edges of leaves and other intricate details shimmered and convulsed during any head movements. The effect was subtle but enough to distract. Over all, though, Breakroom seemed to offer just enough escape. Even though strangers talked and laughed near me in the real world, their words felt irrelevantthe way a dinner partys hubbub might seem to a child playing alone upstairs.

When Steinsson and his colleagues set out to develop Breakroom, they consulted with Pall Jakob Lindal, an environmental psychologist who studies peoples reactions to both real and virtual worlds. Lindals task was to help Mure insure that users would feel ensconced, but not overwhelmed, by the apps locations. Much of his advice drew on attention-restoration theory, the same idea that Steinsson cited. For instance, Lindal told Breakrooms developers that increasing urban architectural diversity was desirable: gazing at faades full of detailslike the shoji panels and latticework of the dwelling in Breakrooms Japanese gardenis more restorative than looking at minimalist surfaces. And of course greenery, he said, is another important feature. (Clare Cooper Marcus, the author of Therapeutic Landscapes: An Evidence-Based Approach to Designing Healing Gardens and Restorative Outdoor Spaces, has found that the optimal ratio of vegetation to hardscape is about seven to three.)

The apps design aligns well with other theorists work, too. The Swedish behavioral scientist Roger Ulrich, for example, who studies the effects of hospital architecture on medical outcomes, has suggested that the most relaxing environments are ones that people feel protect them from the sorts of primal threats that Homo sapiens evolved to avoid. Such settings, like the autumnal lake environment in Breakroom, might have ample vegetation (evidence of food and water). Or, like the apps glacier world, they offer clear lines of sight (good for spotting predators). Other researchers have assessed environments according to their affordancesthe range of potential behaviors that they seem to allow. In a study published in 2015 in the journal Environment and Behavior, subjects judged a room to be more spacious when the positioning of its chairs and cabinets appeared to invite visitors to sit down and open drawers. The same room seemed smaller when the furnishings were rearranged so that they couldnt be used. Notably, the results in real-world rooms were similar to those in computer-rendered simulations.

Kerry L. Marsh, one of the authors of that study, has yet to try Breakroom or any of its competitors. But the apps possible benefits, she speculated, could extend beyond its putatively restorative nature. Marsh suggested that users, by choosing their virtual surroundings, might gain a positive sense of territorial control, or that they might come to associate a particular V.R. location with better productivity. Still, she underscored the fact that apps like Breakroom risk exhausting users with subtle perceptual delays. Slow frame-refresh rates, for example, are known to worsen V.R. sickness. Marshs co-author, Benjamin Meagher, noted other possible limitations. We know that people dislike and even feel stressed in environments where their behaviors are limited in some way, he told me in an e-mail. My suspicion is that people are unlikely to feel fully relaxed, even in the most aesthetically pleasing environment, if they feel constrained. His point underscored one of the limitations of Breakroom: ultimately, youre still sitting at your desk.

The biggest obstacle for Breakroom and similar apps may just be the V.R. headset. Its difficult to imagine the typical white-collar worker opting to channel Geordi La Forge in a sea of Gordon Gekkos. But workplace norms may be more malleable than they at first appear. Before eyeglass frames were invented, medieval scribes improvised ways to strap corrective lenses to their faces with ribbons and string. And, in the late nineteenth century, accountants and editors took to wearing green visors to block out the harsh glare of the eras incandescent bulbs. As goofy and odd as these accessories must have once looked, they soon became symbols of conservatism itself. So much so that, in the nineteen-nineties, the conservative philanthropist Michael S. Joyce warned his fellow right-wingers against putting on their green eyeshades and fixating on ledgers. Otherwise, he chided, we do begin to sound like crabby, small-souled bookkeepers.

See more here:

The Virtual-Reality App That Turns Your Office Into a Vacation Paradise - The New Yorker

The Rev. Kelvin Sauls believes health and faith are two sides of the same coin.

He brings yoga and Zumba classes to his church in South L.A. because he knows African Americans are particularly vulnerable to diabetes and heart disease.

We cant save peoples souls in the sanctuary and kill their bodies in the fellowship hall, Sauls likes to say.

Now hes collaborating with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to try to reduce high blood pressure in the community. The project has enrolled many of his congregants at Holman United Methodist Church and uses everything in the public health toolbox, including weekly dinners and classes, fitness trackers, nurse check-ins and even virtual reality.

African Americans suffer from high rates of hypertension, which makes them much more likely to have strokes or heart attacks.

But when theyre diagnosed with the condition, the doctor leaves the room and the patient is left wondering what to do next, said Dr. Bernice Coleman, a nurse scientist who heads the project for Cedars-Sinai. She wanted to find a way to help without focusing on cutting calories or losing weight.

Everyones been on a diet, Coleman said. The thing in the middle that nobody understands is salt.

On a recent Monday evening, people started filtering into the church for dinner curried cabbage, salad with mushrooms, and for dessert, sliced watermelon. Coleman took the stage to teach the group about genetics and the importance of recording family medical history to know your risk factors.

What happened to Grandma? What happened to Grandpa? Coleman asked. They began filling out family trees.

What are risk factors for hypertension?

Source: CDC

Each week consists of dinner and a class. Theyve learned about recommended salt intake and diabetes, and taken cooking and tai chi classes. Everyone enrolled was given a blood pressure cuff and a Fitbit fitness tracker to wear on their wrist to monitor their steps.

Sharon Jackson, 62, joined the program because she has high blood pressure. She wants to get off the medicine she takes to control her levels.

About 1 in 3 adults in the United States has high blood pressure, and the condition contributes to 1,000 deaths a day nationwide.

Jackson now checks her Fitbit to make sure shes getting enough exercise, and measures her blood pressure at home every morning and evening. Its already coming down, she said.

When someone has high blood pressure, the blood in their arteries the tubes that carry blood from the heart to other parts of the body pushes too hard against the arteries walls. Eating salt can worsen the problem, because it makes the body retain water.

Jackson said shes now cautious and seeks out nutrition information when she goes to her favorite restaurants, like IHOP and Marie Callenders. They put salt in everything! she said.

Thresa Thomas and Princess Benson, also enrolled in the program, recently went grocery shopping together and stayed away from salty foods.

Popcorn? I said heck no, Thomas said.

Across the country, doctors are using virtual reality to practice surgeries, teach families about complicated medical treatments and to distract patients from unpleasant or painful procedures.

At Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Brennan Spiegel has been fitting patients with virtual reality goggles for two years.

Weve been focused on the inpatient side, using virtual reality to transport patients outside the four walls of the hospital to fantastical destinations where they can relax or de-stress, Spiegel said .

Plus, virtual reality is such an immersive sensory experience that it prevents the brain from processing outside signals and can actually reduce the amount of pain patients feel, he said. Many studies have confirmed that virtual reality games can ease a patients pain.

The project at Holman United Methodist Church gave Spiegel an opportunity to see how virtual reality might work in healthcare outside the hospital.

He designed a virtual reality smartphone app with the company-applied VR that each participant can watch by clipping a glasses-like device onto their smartphones.

When they launch the app, it appears theyre in the middle of the kitchen, with different foods sitting on a counter: black beans, salmon, gumbo, lasagna, fruit smoothies. Each dishs sodium content pops up above it.

Look down, and theyre transported to a 3-D rendering of the inside of a human body, where they can see how a pumping heart deteriorates with years of high blood pressure.

Youre sitting there, all of a sudden in your own chest, watching your heart beat, Spiegel said. The whole idea is to just hijack the brain into rethinking the role of food, and in this case salt and health, and were testing this now to see how people experience it and if its helpful to them.

Spiegel said he was surprised by how much some people struggled to use the app or even just their smartphones.

It was amazing how difficult it was, he said. We have to really think about, if were going to scale these technologies, what it actually takes to do it.

The app also offers a way to alleviate stress, which can contribute to high blood pressure. In the app, users can sit on a virtual beach at sunrise and listen to chirping birds, the sound of the ocean and Sauls, the church pastor, reciting a calming meditation.

I want to get the real one, said Jackson, 62. Her son has virtual reality goggles, and she wants more apps that can help her relax.

Benson, 51, said the app revealed the sodium in raw chicken and shellfish.

You wouldnt ever think of it, that foods already have salt, she said.

Recently, Benson noticed a packet of noodles her son was about to prepare for his child had 1,200 milligrams of sodium. She warned him against cooking them.

African Americans tend to develop high blood pressure more often and younger than other groups. One out of three African Americans in L.A. County said theyd been diagnosed with high blood pressure, compared with 1 out of 4 whites and 1 out of 5 Latinos and Asians, according to the most recent county health survey in 2015.

And that is those who know. Many people with hypertension arent diagnosed because the condition doesnt always have symptoms its often called the silent killer.

Dr. Paul Simon, chief science officer at the L.A. County Department of Public Health, said its an important but difficult problem to address because its affected by what people eat at home and in restaurants, how much they exercise and their stress levels, which are in turn influenced by their lifestyles and where they live.

Even if you have the best intentions, its very difficult, for example, if you want to be physically active, but where in your neighborhood is there a park? he said. If you want to eat more healthfully, there may not be a lot of food options in your neighborhood that are more affordable.

Juanita Cannon, 71, loves Southern cooking. But now when she cooks, she pours a little salt into her hand and sprinkles it over the pan, instead of shaking it in directly, she said.

Because the program has her paying attention to exercise and eating, shes also started doing water aerobics regularly. She set an hourly alarm on her phone to remind her to stand up usually from quilting, her favorite hobby now that shes retired and walk around a bit.

Ive even lost 10 pounds, which Ive been trying to do for 50 years, she said, laughing.

soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com

Twitter: @skarlamangla

ALSO

The amputation rate for diabetics in poor areas is high. This Boyle Heights clinic is trying to change that

You know CPR. Now firefighters want you to treat shooting and bombing victims

Doctors turn to the power of peer groups to help diabetics

Visit link:

Can virtual reality reduce high blood pressure at a church in South LA? - Los Angeles Times

The Navy is using VR to recruit prospective recruits. Ed Baig dons the headset and chest strap to check it all out.(Photo: Robert Deutsch, USAT)

USA TODAY's Ed Baig rescues a SEAL team using the Navy's new recruiting tool, VR USA TODAY

NEW YORK Im on a covert Navy mission driving a special operation craft on a secluded river. I'm charged with helping to extract a SEAL team pinned down by enemy fire. The boat is outfitted with extreme firepower, but it is left to my fellow crewmen to fire the guns, launch the grenades and provide cover for other sailors while I navigate the waterway. As daylight turns to night we switch to night goggles. We are thrust into action.

Now the reality. I didnt enlist in the Navy. Instead, I donned Oculus Rift headgear and wore a percussive sub-pack inside a tractor trailer temporarily stationed over the Memorial Day weekend on Long Islands Jones Beach, all to experience how the Navy is using virtual reality to attract potential recruits.

For more than a decade, the Navy, along with other branches of the military, has employed VR for training purposes. It was only in October, however, that the Navy began using VR for recruitment. The tractor trailer, called the Nimitz,is driven around the country to schools, Fleet Weeks, and special events, including the air show that took place this past weekend at Jones Beach.

The Navy says the VR efforts are indeed generating "leads" among potential recruits. At the Winter X Games in Aspen, CO., where the Nimitz was stationed, the Navy saw a 48% increase in leads; at the Army/Navy football game in Baltimore, the Navy saw a 126% increase in leads. In the first two months after the Navy's VR efforts began, leads of potential recruits havemore than doubled compared to the previous two years combined.

People come up and just want to know`whats it really like to be in the Navy, said Travis Simmons, the Naval Public Affairs Officer who led me through myexperience.

While VR recruiting is a first for the Navy, other arms of the military have ventured into the space. The U.S. Air Force, for example, has sent out free VR viewers that lets people get immersed inside360-degree Special Ops experiences. Over in the U.K. the British Army has also used an Oculus Rift during recruiting efforts.

As part of my Jones Beach experience, I first had to register at a kiosk set up in a tent. I entered my first name, first initial of my last name, Zip code, age group and so on. I then was asked to check off boxes to indicate myinterest in joining the Navy, either for full-time active duty or as a part-time reserve. If you click yes (and are of the right age), youll potentially be contacted by a recruiter. If you click no as I did, you can still go through the VR exercise, which start to finish lasts about 15 minutes.

In fact, the Navy says that20% of all VR participants who originally check the box expressing they are not interested in the Navy, change their minds to interested after going through the experience.

The trailer has eight VR pods, allowingthe Navy to accommodate about 60 people per hour. Since its launch more than 25,000 people have taken the mission.

Upon registering, I was issued an RFID dog tag that I scanned in front of another screen so that my mission briefing could begin. The Navy usedreal training footage captured from Fort Knox, Ky.to create the simulations shown during thebriefing and once you've started your VR mission. You hear recorded voices from members of the Navy's Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen Training or SWCC (pronounced swik) for short.

With the Rift and sub-pack in place, and my hands on the steering wheel and throttle, I was all gung-ho.

The 37-foot long, 9-foot wide boat I drove during my SWCC mission can cruise at a speed of 40 knots. At times though I was instructed to pull back on the throttle and slow down so as not to alert the enemy of our approach.

I felt the 360-degree Oculus experience was very much like being part of an engaging high quality video game, with the vibrations of the sub-pac lending an extra dose of realism. A helicopter was above me, another boat to the side and rear. I could look all around the see my brethren, the guys manning the guns. Oddly though, the game seemed less violent or graphic than some other video games Ive played.

Perhaps this isintentional, so recruiters candownplay the very real dangers and risks that members of the armed forces face?

This is all based off modern game systemswith a Navy flair, Simmons says.

According to Simmons, the Navy plans to come up with other VR missions, maybe ones that take you to the high seas or beneath the surface inside a submarine.

The Navy would like to attract recruits schooled in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education, which Simmons says ties into many of the 60 career fields that the Navy offers.

Eventually, Simmons believes youll be able to download your own Navy VR experiences and not have to rely on being near an event where Navy happens to bringits tractor trailer.

In the end, youre supposed to be scored on how well you performed during your missionalas, I never got my score.And while I had a enjoyabletime participating, I wouldnt have minded just a tad more suspense.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2seWvIL

Read more from the original source:

The Navy wants to recruit you with Virtual Reality - USA TODAY

Android Central

RaveVR lets you watch YouTube with friends in virtual reality Android Central It originated as a social viewing app for Android and iOS, and now there's a separate virtual reality component for those who are equipped with a Daydream View or Gear VR. RaveVR enables you to watch video in tandem with people you know and with ...

See original here:

RaveVR lets you watch YouTube with friends in virtual reality - Android Central