Daily Archives: June 7, 2017

Johnson has been challenging the rules of consumer VR from the beginning -- when virtual reality hit the mainstream last year, he spent 24 hours immersed in a mix of Rift, Vive and Gear VR experiences, setting an unofficial record for longest time in virtual reality. This year, he doubled that effort, recruiting Sarah Jones from Coventry University to join him in two days of extreme VR immersion -- breaking for only five minutes each hour to record vlogs and use the facilities.

The experiment was designed to question the arbitrary limits of VR-use time and help expose virtual reality to a wider consumer audience, but it wasn't a PR stunt for any specific headset manufacturer. "In fact, it was quite the opposite," he says. Every company he invited to participate in the project turned him down. "Mostly because they thought we'd die," he joked.

The fears of the likes of Oculus VR and HTC weren't completely unfounded. Johnson didn't just spend two days watching movies and playing games in virtual reality -- he wore VR goggles while driving go-karts, getting tattoos and walking across the wings of an airplane in-flight. "We wanted it to be as physical as possible," he says. "How extreme do you need to get with the physical additions to VR to make it feel real?" It sounds almost like a silly question, but when you're wearing a headset that partially blinds you to your environment, the influence of your mixed reality could have unexpected results.

Johnson and Jones' wind-walking adventure, for instance, was seen through a GearVR's pass-through camera -- but despite the physical exertion of fighting the wind on the wing of a plane, the experience wasn't completely real. "It still didn't feel real to us with what we were seeing," he says, "but the movement -- the buffeting and forcing yourself against the wind, they were the things that physically added the extra dimension." They just couldn't see well enough through the GearVR to get the full experience. Johnson thinks it might have been better if the headset had been displaying a VR dragon ride. "If everything you were seeing felt real, that would all be amazing."

Go-karting fared a little better -- the limited view of the GearVR's pass-through camera gave the drivers' vision a lower framerate and letterboxing but didn't seem to hamper the experience in the same way. "It's amazing that our brains just corrected and we got used to seeing that view," Johnson says. "We were going pretty quickly around the go-karting track, not hitting anything -- though with really reduced visibility."

These spectacle events are novel, but some of the more interesting results came from the smaller experiments. Johnson wore a VR headset to a tattoo parlor to see if the distraction of a false reality could dull the pain of being branded with a nerdy Apple tattoo in the real world. It did.

After briefly removing the headset to measure his pain threshold in the real world, Johnson spent the rest of his tattoo session playing Gunjack. "If the headset off was my 10 benchmark," he said, giving the pain a number, "It came down to like a six or a seven. It really did seem to have some effect." According to his Apple Watch, his heart rate dropped in VR too, averaging at 74 beats per minute in the headset to 103 without.

Living in VR drastically changed mundane everyday life, too. Having a face-to-face conversation with anybody meant logging into Facebook Spaces or another social-VR app, and sleeping was an altogether different kind of experience.

"When you wake up in VR, you just believe everything," he explains. Normally, virtual reality is a conscious choice, but if you wake up in a simulation, surrounded by dinosaurs and spaceships, you don't' have time to question your reality as you regain consciousness. "It's kind of like waking up in an unfamiliar hotel room. You may not know where you are or what the timezone is, but you just believe you're in a hotel room. Why would you not?"

Despite breaking every VR health-and-safety guideline imaginable, Johnson and Jones walked away from the experiment relatively unscathed. They learned, at worst, that watching a 360-degree movie in a car is a nauseating experience -- but that doesn't mean their extended time in VR didn't have consequences.

Johnson admits his vision without glasses was slightly more blurry for a few days after the experience, but it was the physical pain that bothered him most. "The bridge of my nose got bruised," he said, "And Sarah's cheeks have kind of permanent red marks on them." If the health and safety warnings were right, it wasn't because of the risk of experiencing altered-reality for long periods -- it was because the headsets were never designed to be worn indefinitely. "I think we're just physically glad to be out," he concluded. "If you had done anything for two straight days, you'd just be glad to be out."

Originally posted here:

Two people spent 48 hours in nonstop virtual reality - Engadget

A virtual reality headset. Patients are shown computer-generated images of naked children and measured for signs of arousal. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

In a maximum security mental health facility in Montreal is a cave-like virtual reality vault thats used to show images of child sexual abuse to sex offenders. Patients sit inside the vault with devices placed around their penises to measure signs of arousal as they are shown computer-generated animations of naked children.

We do develop pornography, but these images and animations are not used for the pleasure of the patient but to assess them, said Patrice Renaud, who heads up the project at the Institut Philippe-Pinel. Its a bit like using a polygraph but with other measurement techniques.

The system, combined with other psychological assessments, is used to build up a profile of the individuals sexual preferences that can be used by the court to determine the risk they pose to society and by mental health professionals to determine treatment.

Not all child molesters are pedophiles (people who are sexually attracted to children) and not all pedophiles molest children, although the terms are often wrongly used interchangeably. In many cases, those who molest children are situational offenders, which means their offense is outside of their typical sexual preference or behavior.

You can have someone who molested a child once but is not a pedophile as such they may have been intoxicated or have another mental health disorder, said Renaud, who also leads the Cyberpsychology Lab at the University of Quebec in Outaouais. We need to know if they have a preferred mode of sexual expression.

Renaud uses virtual reality for two reasons: first, because it does not involve images of real people, but digital ones, and second, because the immersive nature of the medium allows researchers to measure something closer to natural behavior.

The vault itself is a small room with screens on all sides, on to which are projected animations of naked children and adults standing in natural settings. The research team can generate synthetic characters in a range of ages and shapes and can adapt features like facial expression, genital size, and eye and hair color to correspond with the patients victims or sexual fantasies.

The patients sit on a stool inside the chamber wearing stereoscopic glasses which create the three-dimensional effect on the surrounding walls. The glasses are fitted with eye-tracking technology to ensure they arent trying to trick the system by avoiding looking at the critical content.

These guys do not like going through this assessment, said Renaud, pointing out that the results can be shocking for the patient.

Its not easy for someone to discover he is attracted to violently molesting a kid. He may have been using the internet for some masturbatory activities using non-violent images or videos of children which is not a good thing. But being tested in the lab and knowing he is also attracted to violence may be something thats very difficult to understand.

Renaud acknowledges that the use of penile plethysmography, which involves placing a cuff-shaped sensor around the genitals, is controversial. Its not only invasive but there is some disagreement in the scientific community about its reliability in measuring sexual deviancy. Consequently, Renauds team is exploring a less invasive alternative: electroencephalography. This uses a cap that reads activity in the brain related to erectile response and sexual appetites.

Its not easy for someone to discover he is attracted to violently molesting a kid

Renaud believes the same cap could be used to track the persons empathy response to expressions of pain, fear or sadness in the virtual child victim. These inhibit the sexual response of non-deviant individuals.

Some deviant individuals can be attracted to signs of emotional distress.

If we find that the guy is attracted to children and doesnt feel empathy for the fact that the child is in pain, thats good information for predicting behavior, he said.

Renaud and his team assess about 80 patients per year, including pedophiles, rapists and other sexual deviants assigned by the court for assessment.

The lab is under intense scrutiny from ethical committees and the police in Quebec. The computer-generated imagery must be encrypted and stored in a highly secure closed computer network inside the maximum security hospital so that the material doesnt fall into the wrong hands.

However, at a time when virtual reality pornography is on the rise, its not unreasonable to assume that someone will if it hasnt already happened create virtual reality child abuse images designed explicitly to arouse rather than diagnose pedophiles.

Thanks to advances in computer graphics, such experiences could be created without ever harming or exploiting children. But even if no children are harmed in the making of such imagery, would society tolerate its creation? Could the content provide an outlet to some pedophiles who dont want to offend in real life? Or would a VR experience normalize behavior and act as a gateway to physical abuse?

Jamie Sivrais, of A Voice For The Innocent, which provides community support to survivors of rape and sexual abuse, said that people have a long history of blaming technology for human problems. He pointed to VHS tapes being used to create child abuse images and predators using internet chat rooms and smartphones to meet and abuse children.

If the technology exists, there will be people who abuse it, he said.

I think this is a human problem. The same criticisms of VR could have (and have been) made about the internet and smartphones, and they are valid criticisms. So as we continue to push the envelope of technology, lets also continue to expand resources for people who are hurt by abuse.

Ethan Edwards, the co-founder of Virtuous Pedophiles, an online support group for people attracted to children but who do not want to molest them, argues virtual reality could help prevent real-life offences.

Edwards believes that, provided the imagery of children is computer-generated and doesnt involve any real victims, it should be legal, as should life-size child sex dolls and erotic stories about children.

I have a strong civil liberties streak and feel such things should be legal in the absence of very strong evidence they cause harm, he said.

Nick Devin, a pedophile and co-founder of the site, called for thorough scientific research. The answer may be different for different people. For me, doing these things wouldnt increase or reduce the risk to kids: Im not going to molest a kid whether I fantasize or not.

Its a view echoed by Canadian forensic psychologist Michael Seto. He believes that VR could provide a safer outlet for individuals with well-developed self control.

But for others, such as those who are more impulsive, prone to risk-taking, or indifferent about the effects of their actions on others, then access to virtual child pornography could have negative effects and perhaps increase their desire for contact with real children.

Its a risk that concerns Renaud, who describes VR child abuse imagery and child-shaped sex robots as a very bad idea.

Only a very small portion of pedophiles could use that kind of sexual proxy without having the urge to go outside and get the real stuff, he said.

Its not just child sex abuse experiences that are concerning to Renaud, but violent first-person sexual experiences including rape and even entirely new deviances like having sex with monsters with three penises and blue skin.

We dont know what effect these sexual experiences will have on the behavior of children and adults in the future, he said.

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Polygraph for pedophiles: how virtual reality is used to assess sex offenders - The Guardian

Engineers at UC San Diego are using soft robotics technology to make light, flexible gloves that allow users to feel tactile feedback when they interact with virtual reality environments. The researchers used the gloves to realistically simulate the tactile feeling of playing a virtual piano keyboard.

Engineers recently presented their research, which is still at the prototype stage, at the Electronic Imaging, Engineering Reality for Virtual Reality conference in Burlingame, Calif.

Currently, VR user interfaces consist of remote-like devices that vibrate when a user touches a virtual surface or object. Theyre not realistic, said Jurgen Schulze, a researcher at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego and one of the papers senior authors. You cant touch anything, or feel resistance when youre pushing a button. By contrast, we are trying to make the user feel like theyre in the actual environment from a tactile point of view.

Other research teams and industry have worked on gloves as VR interfaces. But these are bulky and made from heavy materials, such as metal. The glove the engineers developed has a soft exoskeleton equipped with soft robotic muscles that make it much lighter and easier to use.

This is a first prototype but it is surprisingly effective, said Michael Tolley, a mechanical engineering professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego and also a senior author.

One key element in the gloves design is a type of soft robotic component called a McKibben muscle, essentially latex chambers covered with braided fibers. The muscles respond like springs to apply force when the user moves their fingers. The board controls the muscles by inflating and deflating them.The system involves three main components: a Leap Motion sensor that detects the position and movement of the users hands; a custom fluidic control board that controls the gloves movements; and soft robotic components in the glove that individually inflate or deflate to mimic the forces that the user would encounter in the VR environment. The system interacts with a computer that displays a virtual piano keyboard with a river and trees in the background.

Researchers 3-D-printed a mold to make the gloves soft exoskeleton. This will make the devices easier to manufacture and suitable for mass production, they said. Researchers used silicone rubber for the exoskeleton, with Velcro straps embedded at the joints.

Engineers conducted an informal pilot study of 15 users, including two VR interface experts. All tried the demo which allowed them to play the piano in VR. They all agreed that the gloves increased the immersive experience. They described it as mesmerizing and amazing.

The engineers are working on making the glove cheaper, less bulky and more portable. They also would like to bypass the Leap Motion device altogether to make system more compact.

Our final goal is to create a device that provides a richer experience in VR, Tolley said. But you could imagine it being used for surgery and video games, among other applications.

Tolley is a faculty member in the Contextual Robotics Institute at UC San Diego. Schulze is an adjust professor in computer science, where he teaches courses on VR.

See the article here:

Play piano with this virtual reality glove - University of California

Some worker-training programs take days to imbue in new employees corporate culture and best practices.

But after just 15 minutes under the spell of a virtual-reality headset and spiffy VR program created by Northern Liberties experiential video shop Klip Collective, new hires at the Philadelphia-based Honeygrow fast-casual dining chain are already feeling the company spirit.

Theyre connecting with its HG Engine best-practices philosophy. Learning food-prep techniques. Practically tasting the dishes. So theyre instantly energized, eager to dive into the work themselves, said company executives.

Our goal was to provide a consistent yet unique on-boarding and initial training experience for all employees, regardless of geographic location or who the individual performing the training would be, Justin Rosenberg, Honeygrows founder and CEO, said Wednesday. Klip has really impressed us with taking our ideas and exceeding our expectations by making them a reality.

Back in the early, local-only days of his salad and stir-fry emporiums the first location on 16th Street between Sansom and Chestnut opened exactly five years ago this Thursday Rosenberg could afford to be very hands-on. He would personally welcome all new employees and immerse them in the ways of Honeygrow an upscale fast-food alternative obsessed with personalized orders, fresh ingredients, fast turnaround, and hospitable treatment of guests.

But all thats getting harder to do as the privately owned chain expands. Seventeen Honeygrow locations now stretch south to Washington, D.C., and north to Brooklyn. More are coming to Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Manhattan the latter our first, smaller-footprint Minigrow, said Rosenberg. By the end of the year, well be up to 25 locations.

Enter the VR training solution, as executed by Klip Collective. Its an idea (just dubbed brilliant by Entrepreneur magazine) that first started brewing when Rosenberg got a Google Cardboard with my Sunday Times and I thought, What can I do with this? The answer: a VR experience that allows Rosenberg and team to warm up new trainees virtually, with much better focus than reading a written manual would have, and with more consistency than a local manager would, if having a bad day. The VR experience also is being used for recruitment, to interest potential job applicants. And it impresses our guests, when they walk in and see employees doing it.

Said Klip Collective co-founder Ricardo Rivera: When a new hire puts on the VR headset and presses the start button on the remote, Justin materializes in our virtual-3D Honeygrow restaurant to share welcoming remarks and philosophy how Honeygrow is all about thinking differently, bringing people together over high-quality, wholesome, simple foods.

Then we offer an interactive tour of a Honeygrow that gives a good feel for how and why things are done, with a casual video game at the end thats meant to be both fun and instructive, Rivera said.

No stranger to integrating tech into the operation as new hires (virtually) discover Honeygrow locations also feature a custom variation on the classic split-flap railroad-station sign that communicates the news when customer orders are done.

Restaurant touch screens take a page from the Wawa customer ordering system, though Honeygrow dresses its models with special screen savers still images and videos of neighborhood locations that are a love letter to every market we go into, said Jen Dennis, chief brand officer.

In that game component of the VR experience, participants learn-by-doing how food is best stored on refrigerator shelves for health safety (fish on top, beef below, then pork and chicken on the bottom shelves).

Were finding this gamification really helps people grasp and retain information, said Dennis.

So more will be built into the next phase, Honeygrow VR 2.0, said Kevin Ritchie, a post-production wizard at Klip Collectives sister company, Monogram. Given the ever-improving state of the technology, anything you do in VR is a work-in-progress. When we first got started on the project, we thought it would run on Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Gear VR glasses. Then the Google Daydream-ready phones and companion goggles came out and were so much better in terms of screen resolution and processing power. The new Google Pixel phones dont overheat, as was happening with the Galaxys.

How about mixing VR with AR, augmented reality, which would allow trainees to do hands-on food prep with a superimposed timer and graphic arrows pointing them in the right directions? A nice idea, but the tech is not there yet.

For the sake of future-proofing, Klip Collective lights its sets (in this case, the Honeygrow restaurant in Cherry Hill) like a Hollywood film production, shoots VR with an ultra-high definition $55,000 Nokia VR camera, and processes the footage on a server system so powerful it could run an automated car factory.

If you want to convince VR viewers theyre really in the moment, you cant afford to cut corners, said Ritchie.

Published: June 7, 2017 4:29 PM EDT | Updated: June 7, 2017 4:30 PM EDT

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Excerpt from:

Virtual reality helps Honeygrow worker-bees acclimate - Philly.com

Computer-generated images are used (Picture: Shutterstock)

Suspected paedophiles at a maximum security mental health facility are shown virtual reality images of child abuse and pornography.

The controversial practice is used to determine the individuals arousal when viewing the material, and researchers claim it can predict whether they are threats to the public.

People admitted to the Institut Philippe-Pinel hospital in Montreal, Canada, sit with devices placed on their penises to measure arousal, and wear glasses that simulate virtual reality.

Patients rapists, paedophiles and sexual deviants are shown computer-generated images of naked children, and an eye-tracking device means they cannot look away.

Patrice Renaud, who leads the project, told The Guardian: We do develop pornography, but these images and animations are not used for the pleasure of the patient but to assess them.

The project determines the patients sexual preference, which is then used by a court to rule whether they pose a risk to the public or not.

Mr Renaud said: You can have someone who molested a child once but is not a paedophile as such they may have been intoxicated or have another mental health disorder.

If we find that the guy is attracted to children and doesnt feel empathy for the fact that the child is in pain, thats good information for predicting behaviour.

The experiment takes place and the material created must be encrypted and stored in a secure computer network minimising the chance it could spread outside the hospital.

It is also under intense scrutiny from ethical committees and the police.

Continued here:

Virtual reality is being used to show naked images to paedophiles - Metro

If youve ever played a virtual reality game, youre probably used to dying at least digitally. But not like this.

Scientists are using VR headsets to create out-of-body experiences that may be able to reduce the fear of death, according to a recently published study. According to Mel Slater, one of the studys authors and a research professor at the University of Barcelona:

My lab has been working for many years on the influence of changing someones body in virtual reality on their attitudes, perceptions, behavior and cognition. For example, placing White people in a Black virtual body reduces their implicit racial bias, while putting adults into a child body changes their perceptions and self-identification.

Here we wanted to see what the effects were of establishing a strong feeling of ownership over a virtual body, and then moving people out of it, so simulating an out-of-body experience. According to the literature, out-of-body experiences are typically associated with changes of attitudes about death, so we wanted to see if this would happen with a virtual out-of-body experience.

The study, published in PLOS One, uses an Oculus Rift headset and a virtual reality simulation known as the full body ownership illusion. In it, researchers created a virtual human body designed to be the participants own. Once the participant assimilated to the illusion, the view shifted from first-person to third-person, creating an experience similar to how some describeout-of-body incidents.

So far, the study has only attempted the simulation on 32 women, 16 of which experienced the out-of-body incident, and 16 more in a control group who didnt experience this phenomena.

After the study, participants in the main group reported lower anxiety about death than the control group, althoughresearchers admit the studyis still in the preliminary stages. Limited as it may be, it should surprise no one that a virtual reality simulation could help overcome fears even the fear of death. It is, after all, being studied in multiple other scientific disciplines as a way to do just that.

A Virtual Out-of-Body Experience Reduces Fear of Death on PLOS

Read next: Alien mystery solved: It was just gas

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Study: This virtual reality simulation could reduce fear of death - TNW

A recoveringcocaine addict walks into a room where the party is in full swing: drinks are flowing, music is pulsing and drugs are being passed around. A person approaches, offering coke.

It's a situation loaded with triggers for the addict, which is exactly the point.

It's also a situation that this time doesn't exist in any real way.

The room, the party and the cocaine are all simulated,and theperson offering the drugs anavatar. All have beencreated by a team of virtual reality specialists tasked with building a worst casescenario for the addict as a way to gauge whethertreatment is in fact working.

Virtual reality is a computer generated, three-dimensional environment that is projected inside a headset. It's supposed be an immersive experience that mimics reality. (Shutterstock / Wayne0216)

Inthe next two months, 60 students enrolled at Surrey's John Volken Academy, a long-term residential addictions treatment centre, will be strapping on VR headsets and immersing themselves in virtual situations that have been tailor-made for their personal experiences and addiction issues.

The cutting edge program is being led by SFU professorFaranakFarzan, chair in technology innovations for youth addiction recovery.

"They clients come to the [John VolkenAcademy] to recover from their bad habits but after twoyears they have to go back and live their lives," said Farzan.

"We're hoping to use virtual reality to slowly introduce environmental cues that they were exposed to back home, but in a very safe environmentto assess where they are in terms of relapse or giving into their impulses."

The project is still in the start-up phase withresearchers interviewing the students to gather information to create apersonalized VR environment.

"If someone is taking opioids for pain management for instance, my guess is the environment they're using in is much different than someone who is using cocaine. We don't want to put them in the same context, it wouldn'tmake sense,"saidFarzan.

"Weneed to...find out what they are prone to. Itcould be a party for someone, but it could be a school yard for someoneelse. And it could be at home in the back yard for another individual."

Virtual reality has long been talked about as potentially useful in addictions therapy, but the technology has only recently become "real feeling" enoughto be considered a serious tool.

And because the area of study is so new, researchers still need to answer what Farzan describes as the "million dollar question" in VR application: willan addict's behaviour in the virtual world transfer to real life?

"This is what we are trying to understand," she said. "Right now we're designing what makes intuitive sense and rolling that out. But at the end of the day we need also to run randomized controlled trials."

60 recovering drug and alcohol addicts from the John Volken Academy in Surrey will participate in the virtual reality project. (CBC)

John Volkenhas made a five-year commitment to the research, and hopes to expand the VR program to his two addiction treatment centres in the United States.

"The students are excited about it because they feel they're gettingsome real professional help," he said.

"The key part here is that we're working with people who have lived through addiction," said Farzan. "We're not sitting in our research labs trying to design something based just on what we think."

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Can virtual reality help drug addicts recover? Researchers from SFU aim to find out - CBC.ca