Daily Archives: February 20, 2020

Empathic Workplace's workshops give learners the opportunity to practice essential skills to bring empathy to difficult conversations

Empathic Workplace has beencreated to help organizations implement and maintain empathic workplace culture. Empathic Workplacehas partnered with Mursion to design and deliver immersive and scalable simulations for executives, managers, and employees to gain valuable knowledge of the foundational principles that promoteempathy, understanding, and better communication.

Empathic Workplace provides an innovative approach to facecontemporary issues in today's workplace. The organization's multi-faceted workshops give learners the opportunity to discover and practice essential skills to bring empathy to difficult conversations, employee interviews, and workplace communications. The partnership with Mursion adds virtual reality simulations to this dynamic method of learning more compassionate behaviors.

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Mursion, powered by a blend of artificial and human intelligence, delivers real-time simulations that call for learners to be fully present in the moment. This realism offers atailored experience for companies that want to enable and exercise skills such as the empathy-driven practices designed by the Empathic Workplace and transform them into daily behaviors. Simulations engage emotional, cognitive, and behavioral faculties for transformative, ongoing learning that is also scalable, consistent, and cost-effective.

"Emphasizing empathy in the workplace and empowering employees to learn essential skills are at the core of what we do," says Mursion CEOMark Atkinson. "Our partnership with Empathic Workplace is a continuation of our mission to provide high-impact learning tools and techniques and presents us with another purposeful platform to extend our reach."

Empathic Workplace's workshops are rooted in the expertise of Founder, Angela Nino, Chief Executive Officerand Certified Forensic Interviewer, as well as the improvisational training techniques ofLisa Bany, a veteran instructor at The Second City inChicagoand Founding Director of the Improv Therapy Group, Empathic Workplace's sister company. Combined with Mursion's VR simulations that are specially designed for the modern workplace, empathic skills and capabilities are cultivated and sustained.

"We believe a workplace culture is built in everyday moments and tested during the difficult ones," says Nino. "The Empathic Workplace approach will be further enhanced by introducing Mursion's virtual reality simulations to give learners opportunities to immerse themselves in this emotional intelligence training for iterative practice and long-term results."

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Empathic Workplace And Mursion Combinedly Create Custom Virtual Reality Platform - HR Technologist

February 20, 2020 -Healthcare providers and payers in eight states and the District of Columbia will soon be able to prescribe VR therapy through a telehealth clinic, giving patients an opportunity to use the digital health technology at home for remote patient care.

XRHealth, an Israeli company offering virtual reality treatments with an office in Massachusetts, will launch the line of VR clinics in March. The clinics arent actual brick-and-mortar locations, but online platforms where patients can receive personalized VR therapy under the guidance of VR telehealth clinicians employed by XRHealth.

Company CEO Eran Orr says the clinics represent a new effort by XRHealth to collaborate with care providers and payers who see the value in VR therapy, which has been used to help patients with a variety of concerns including pain management, behavioral health issues like stress and anxiety, cognitive function issues related to traumatic brain injury and stroke, and neurological disorders and neck, shoulder and spinal cord injuries.

We are bringing something new to the table (that care providers) havent seen before, he says.

Up until recently, VR, AR (augmented reality) and MR (mixed reality) treatments have been used in health systems like Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai and primarily focused on inpatient settings. But with the commercial availability of VR glasses and gaming platforms marketed by Samsung, Dell, Oculus and HTC, providers are beginning to look beyond the hospital setting to remote patient monitoring.

Last December, XRHealth unveiled the connected health platform that underpins its new VR clinics.

With the roll out of 5G throughout the globe, the new technology implications for the telehealth industry are enormous, Orr said in a press release as the company unveiled its service at Qualcomms Snapdragon conference in Hawaii. Patients will be able to use high bandwidth technology like virtual reality or augmented reality anywhere they are located whether in a rural or urban area. Healthcare will become much more affordable and accessible to anyone while innovation will be endless.

And in January, the University of California at San Francisco announced a partnership with AppliedVR one of XRHealths chief competitors in the AR/VR healthcare space to launch a business accelerator aimed at expanding the digital therapeutic platform to address issues of access to care for underserved populations.

The unique ability of virtual reality to create an immersive and interactive environment has the potential to be a cost-effective strategy to deliver pain management for diverse patients, in the time and place of their choosing,Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine at UCSF and co-founder of the universitys S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech program, said in a press release.

Now come the clinics, which give payers and healthcare providers from large health systems to small and solo practices the leeway to prescribe VR treatment at home and use RPM platforms to monitor their patients progress.

According to Orr, payers and providers can recommend that a patient buy a VR headset (a rental option is in the works) and download a prescribed mHealth app. Once the app is installed, the patient schedules a video call with an XRHealth clinician, who teaches the patient how to use the headset and then guides the patient through that and subsequent treatments, adjusting the treatment based on feedback from the platform. Detailed reports are sent back to the patients primary care provider each week.

Beginning in March, the clinic will be available to residents of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, California, Delaware, New York, North Carolina and Washington DC, and officials hope to be able to expand to every state by the end of 2020. In addition, the treatments are covered by Medicare and many large health plans.

The payers have been the first ones to jump in, Orr says. They realize the potential.

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New Clinics Use Telehealth to Bring VR Treatments to the Patient's Home - mHealthIntelligence.com

An expert team from Camosun Colleges applied research centre was sent to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg on Feb. 17 to scan The Witness Blanket, a large-scale art installation by local artist and University of Victoria professor Carey Newman, whose traditional name is Hayalthkingeme.

The results of the project will be a point-cloud rendering of the original artwork, which will be used to create a virtual reality experience, allowing the audience to fully immerse themselves in the narratives that are embedded into the objects of the blanket.

Members of the team include Matt Zeleny, applied research technologist, and Louise Black, visual arts student and member of the Tsawout First Nation. Camosun College has planned the project for more than a year, collaborating with Newman, Media One and the museum.

Its an enormous project, and comes with great honour and great weight. It is important to reach an understanding of present and future, through an understanding of the past, Black said.

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The Witness Blanket is 12 metres long, made from more than 800 items reclaimed from residential schools, churches, government buildings, friendship centres, treatment centres and post secondary institutions across the country. The blanket has become a national monument that recognizes and acknowledges the trauma of the residential school era that took place from 1870 to 1996.

By harnessing the power of virtual reality, more people than ever before can interact with the Witness Blanket and learn about the dark legacy of residential schools and the restorative power of reconciliation, said Richard Gale, director of Camosun Innovates.

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Newmans dream for his art installation was to bring it back to every community where materials for his art originated from. After four years of touring, the installation has not reached every location from where its materials originated. By creating an accessible, virtual model, it is hoped more locations can be reached.

sarah.schuchard@saanichnews.com

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Camosun College team working to turn Indigenous art into virtual reality - Goldstream News Gazette

Alion Science and Technology announces that it is selected to demonstrate its Virtual Sandbox technology at the USAF Future of Wargaming Showcase in Las Vegas, Nevada from February 25 26, 2020. Alion was one of 24 companies selected to participate from 78 submissions. Demonstrations will be presented to AFWERX, U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Joint Forces.

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Alion will demonstrate its Virtual Sandbox a mixed-reality (MR) tactical wargaming system. This product, along with the Navy Continuous Training Environment (NCTE), managed and operated by Alion, will support development of the cloud-based, DevSecOps driven, wargaming Novel Distributed Integrated Concept Environment (NoDICE). The Alion solution creates live virtual simulations for wargaming by integrating with numerous data sets, including: Radio Frequency (RF); Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); Full Motion Video (FMV); and Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC). The team has integrated Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enable real world experiences from the users/operators as well as real time model development. The architecture enables rapid integration of commercially developed capabilities.

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Alions solution for wargaming aligns to the DoDs DevSecOps Reference Design while pulling in lessons learned from the DoDs Big Data Platform (BDP) and the Navy Continuous Training Environment (NCTE), said Alion Senior Vice President of Cyber Network Solutions Katie Selbe. Alion pairs off-the-shelf technology from the government and commercial sectors with Open Source Software (OSS) to take advantage of innovations and best practices for wargaming. This has allowed the team to rapidly create 2D, 3D, AR, VR, and other solutions for wargaming and training.

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Alion Selected As A Participant In The USAF Future Of Wargaming Showcase In Las Vegas - AiThority

Ford Motor Co., in partnership with automotive supplier Robert Bosch, will use virtual reality to teach service technicians at dealerships how to work on the upcoming Mustang Mach-E electric crossover.

Through the use of a VR headset, techs can learn how to service the crossover's battery pack and how to remove and install the main battery. Bosch said it's working on updates that would allow techs to virtually enter the vehicle.

Ford is the first automaker to pilot the application in its service technician powertrain repair course, the company said. The automaker confirmed the technology will be used in both the United States and Canada.

"Technicians will be immersed in a simulated and gamified world, meaning they won't need to rely on actual Mustang Mach-E vehicles to learn about its components, including the electric SUV's new high-voltage system," Dave Johnson, director of Ford service engineering operations, said in a statement Friday. "This new virtual reality training tool allows technicians to understand the components and steps required to service these high-voltage systems, then confidently perform diagnosis and maintenance."

The Mach-E, due this year as a 2021 model, is Ford's first battery-electric crossover. Ford told its dealers that if they want to sell the vehicle, they'll have to get recertified to be able to service EVs. Officials have said the brand has 9,500 trained EV technicians and 2,000 dealerships certified to work on EVs.

Ford says the VR system allows service techs to learn skills without a physical vehicle. It hopes the technology can attract new workers to the profession.

The system uses the Oculus Quest virtual reality headset from Facebook. Ford has dabbled with virtual and augmented reality in other areas of its business, including product development and vehicle design, previously testing devices such as Microsoft's HoloLens.

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How Ford and Bosch use VR technology to train service techs on Mach-E - Automotive News Canada

With explosions taking place virtually, how much harder will it be for weapons scientists to confront the destructive power of their work and its ethical implications?

By: Sherry Turkle

Thirty years ago, designers and scientists talked about simulations as though they faced a choice about using them. These days there is no pretense of choice. Theories are tested in simulation; the design of research laboratories takes shape around simulation and visualization technologies. This is true of all fields, but the case of nuclear weapons design is dramatic because here scientists are actually prohibited from testing weapons in the physical realm.

In 1992, the United States instituted a ban on nuclear testing. In the years before the ban, frequent physical tests, first above ground and then underground at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, provided weapons designers with a place to do basic research. Through tests they developed their scientific intuitions even as they reassured themselves that their weapons worked. More than this, the tests compelled a respect for the awesome power of nuclear detonations. Many testified to the transformative power of such witnessing.

In the years after the 1992 ban, newcomers to the field of nuclear weapons design would see explosions only on computer screens and in virtual reality chambers. At Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories, some of the most powerful computer systems in the world are used to simulate nuclear explosions. Until recently, these simulations took place in two dimensions; now, simulations are moving into three dimensions. In a virtual reality chamber at Los Alamos known as a CAVE (an acronym for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment), one stands inside a nuclear explosion wearing 3D goggles, in order to observe it, one is tempted to say, peacefully. The CAVE simulation is there to demo an explosion; those who work there become accustomed to experiencing in the virtual what could never be survived in the real.

One senior scientist is concerned about the moral effects of moving nuclear weapons research to virtual space, but he and his colleagues are also troubled about the effects of virtuality on their science itself.

When nuclear testing moved underground, it became easier for weapons designers to distance themselves from the potential consequences of their art. Hidden, the bomb became more abstract. But even underground testing left craters and seismic convulsions. It scarred the landscape. Now, with explosions taking place on hard drives and in virtual reality chambers, how much harder will it be for weapons scientists to confront the destructive power of their work and its ethical implications? One weapons designer at Livermore laments that he has only once experienced physical verification after a nuclear test, he told me in 2003 at a workshop on simulation and visualization. He had paced off the crater produced by the blast. It changed him forever. His younger colleagues will not have that.

This senior scientist is concerned about the moral effects of moving nuclear weapons research to virtual space, but he and his colleagues are also troubled about the effects of virtuality on their science itself. They argue that physical intuition is a skill you want to keep, as one told me, and worry that the enthusiastic reactions of young designers to new, flashy virtual reality demonstrations are nave. One says: The young designers look at anything new and they say, This is so much better than what we had before. We can throw out everything we did before! Senior scientists at the national laboratories describe young designers immersed in simulation as drunk drivers. Within simulation, the happily inebriated show less judgment but think they are doing fine.

Dr. Adam Luft, a senior weapons designer at Los Alamos, shows sympathy for the young designers: The new rules compel them to fly blindly. They cannot test their weapons because they must work in the virtual and they are given computer systems whose underlying programs are hard to access. Luft himself feels confident only if he is able to access underlying code. He is frustrated by the increasingly opaque simulations of his work environment. When something goes wrong in a simulation, he wants to dig in and test aspects of the system against others. Only a transparent system lets [me] wander around the guts of [a] simulation. He is wary of making any change to a weapon without personally writing its code. Luft worries that when scientists no longer understand the inner workings of their tools, they have lost the basis for trust in their scientific findings, a concern that mirrors those of MIT designers and scientists of 30 years before.

The young designers look at anything new and they say, This is so much better than what we had before. We can throw out everything we did before!

Across professions, successful simulation gives the sense that digital objects are ready-to-hand. Some users find these interfaces satisfying. Others, like Luft, focused on transparency, are not so happy. They look askance at younger designers who are not concerned about whether they wrote or have even seen underlying code. One of Lufts colleagues at Los Alamos describes his fear of young designers: [They are] good at using these codes, but they know the guts a lot less than they should. The older generation all did write a code from scratch. The younger generation didnt write their code. They grabbed it from somebody else and they made some modifications, but they didnt understand every piece of the code. He speaks with respect of legacy codes, the old programs on which the new programs are built. You cant throw away things too early, he says. There is something you can get from [the legacy codes] that will help you understand the new codes.

At Livermore, in 2005, a legendary senior weapons designer Seymour Sack was preparing to retire. At an MIT workshop, his colleagues discussed this retirement and referred to it as a blow. They were anxious about more than the loss of one mans ability to make individual scientific contributions. He had irreplaceable knowledge about the programming that supported current practice, one weapons designer told anthropologist Hugh Gusterson, who published a paper on the topic of scientific involution across three generations of nuclear science. His colleagues fretted: He has such a great memory that he hasnt written down lots of important stuff. How will people know it?

The response to this scientists imminent retirement was a movement to videotape him and all the other scientists who were about to leave service. This was no ordinary oral history. It was infused with anxiety. Those who know only the top layer of programs feel powerful because they can do amazing things. But they are dependent on those who can go deeper. So those who feel most powerful also feel most vulnerable.

Nuclear weapons design is divided by dramatic generational markers: Some designers grew up with routine underground testing, some glimpsed it, some have only experienced virtual explosions.

Nuclear weapons design is divided by dramatic generational markers: Some designers grew up with routine underground testing, some glimpsed it, some have only experienced virtual explosions. Some designers were trained to program their own simulations, some simply grab code from other people and are unfazed by the opaque. Yet when Luft sums up attitudes toward simulation in his field, he makes it clear that the wide range of opinion does not reduce to simple generational criteria. The cultures of weapons laboratories are also in play. For example, at Livermore, older weapons scientists who were very hostile to simulation became far more positive when the laboratory adopted a new metaphor for weapons design. Livermore began to liken weapons design to bridge building. According to this way of thinking, engineers do not need to test a bridge before building it: One is confident in its design algorithms and how they can be represented in the virtual.

At Livermore, the change of metaphor made simulation seem a reasonable venue for weapons testing. And at Los Alamos, there are younger scientists who find themselves eloquent critics of immersive virtual reality displays. One says: I was so attuned to making plots on my computer screen. I was surprised at how little new I learned from [the RAVE]. (The RAVE is the nickname for Los Alamoss virtual CAVE technology.) This designer complains about not being able to work analytically in the RAVE; others say that it gives them a feeling of disorientation that they cannot shake. In the RAVE, scientists work in a closed world with rigorous internal consistency, where it is not always easy to determine what is most relevant to the real. For some younger scientists, even those who grew up in the world of immersive video games, the RAVE seems too much its own reality.

Across fields, scientists, engineers, and designers have described the gains that simulation has offered from buildings that would never have been dared to drugs that would never have been developed. And they also describe the anxiety of reality blur, that breaking point where the observer loses a sense of moorings, bereft of real-world referents and precedents. And the very complexity of simulations can make it nearly impossible to test their veracity: You just cant check every differential equation, says Luft. He pauses, and says again, You just cant, there are just too many. In nuclear weapons design you can make sure that you have solved equations correctly and that your system has internal consistency. In other words, you can verify. But he adds, validation is the hard part. That is, are you solving the right equations? In the end, says Luft, Proof is not an option.

NOTE: All participants in the several studies that led to Simulation and Its Discontents, from which this article is excerpted, are granted anonymity, usually by simply identifying them as professor or student, or as a practicing scientist, engineer, or designer. When particular individuals take ongoing roles in my narrative, I provide them with pseudonyms for clarity.

Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauz Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author and editor of several books, including Reclaiming Conversation, Alone Together, Evocative Objects, and Simulation and Its Discontents, from which this article is adapted.

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Virtual Nuclear Weapons Design and the Blur of Reality - The MIT Press Reader

Bugatti recently unveiled three limited-edition, multi-million-dollar Chiron derivatives in less than a year, a Herculean task for such a small company. Achim Anscheidt, the head of the firm's design department, told Autoblog maintaining this pace wouldn't have been possible without the use of virtual reality technology.

"We have the feeling we don't need clay anymore. With VR, we can do everything on the spot. We can sit next to each other and talk about the car, we can change the wheels, change the color, and sometimes make modifications on the spot," he explained. In comparison, using clay has several disadvantages. It's more difficult to tell how sunlight reflects off the body, for example. It's also more expensive and far more time consuming.

"It's only through [VR] that we had the chance to develop the Divo, the La Voiture Noireand the Centodieci in such a rapid amount of time," he affirmed. The team in charge of designing the EB110-inspired Centodieci notably began the project about six months before the car made its public debut at the 2019 edition of the ritzy, champagne-soaked Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance held on California's picturesque Pacific coast.

While VR isn't new, the technology wasn't advanced enough to replace clay in a styling studio until about 2016. Anscheidt hasn't looked back; going all-digital reduced the amount of time it takes to design a car by about 40%. This isn't a case of robots replacing humans, either. Bugatti still needs talented designers, and the number of people it assigns to each project hasn't drastically changed, but they now work differently than in the past.

And, the widespread use of VR in Bugatti's design department doesn't mean its cars are no longer drawn by hand. Anscheidt explained every project still starts with a series of sketches that allow designers to explore different directions and identify the one they want to take the car-to-be in. Here again, digitalization plays a substantial role. Early sketches are sometimes done on a tablet rather than on a piece of paper. "Of course, when [deputy design director] Frank Heyl and I go to lunch, we still sketch on napkins," he said with a smile.

Knowing how to use 3D-modeling and VR is only one of the skills Anscheidt looks for when hiring new designers. Being able to draw a car that fits Bugatti's image while moving it forward is a necessity, but aspiring stylists also need to fully comprehend what's under the sheet metal, and how it affects the car's shape and proportions.

"All of my designers need to have a profound knowledge of performance vehicles. If they don't understand how downforce works, what's important in weight distribution ... if they don't have a feeling, or an insight, or an interest in that, they cannot be part of the Bugatti team. This is not just styling work," he summed up.

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Out with the clay, in with the VR: Bugatti's design studio is all digital - Autoblog

Ford is set to start using a VR solution developed by Bosch to train technicians on the new Mustang Mach-E.

Technicians will be able to see how the new all-electric vehicle works, and what they need to know about it, without even having a physical model in front of them.

The new training solution, developed by Bosch, uses virtual reality that is similar to playing video games. It isdesigned to teach technicians repair procedures using gamification to evaluate the effectiveness of learning.

Technicians will be immersed in a simulated and gamified world, meaning they wont need to rely on actual Mustang Mach-E vehicles to learn about its components, including the electric SUVs new high-voltage system, said Dave Johnson, director of Ford service engineering operations.

This new virtual reality training tool allows technicians to understand the components and steps required to service these high-voltage systems, then confidently perform diagnostics and maintenance.

Technicians will learn how to diagnose and perform service related to the vehicles high-voltage system wearing the virtual reality headset. This includes tasks such as removal and installation of the main battery as well as service and maintenance on the battery pack itself.

Bosch also is developing future extensions where the technicians utilize VR to enter the vehicle and navigate through modules as if they were walking through rooms to learn the system. Navigating between modules enables the technicians to determine the issue to repair the vehicle.

The virtual reality training solution is about new technology that builds efficiency, said Geoff Mee, director of operations for Bosch. By improving the diagnostic process, technicians are able to perform maintenance and make repairs faster and more easily.

This new virtual reality system can be used as an ongoing training tool, allowing technicians to learn niche skills in the Ford technical training program. Virtual reality training has the potential to attract new hires to the automotive repair world, rightly framing the profession as a high-tech, forward-thinking industry in which technicians can learn more efficiently in a state-of-the-art environment. Additionally, technicians can tap into the system from any location.

Bosch developed a proof of concept in 2019 for automotive service training via virtual reality, then market tested it with instructors, technicians and college students. Ford Motor Company is the first automaker to pilot the application in its service technician powertrain repair course, specifically with the all-new Mustang Mach-E, the companys first all-electric SUV. Ford could expand the technology to train on additional vehicles in the future.

The virtual reality training solution uses an Oculus Quest virtual reality headset from Facebook. Ford and Bosch are working with Oculus for Business to manage their fleet of headsets deployed to the Ford technician training program, as well as with PIXO VR. The companys proprietary virtual reality content distribution platform enables scaling and iterating virtual reality training software and applications.

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Ford to train on the new Mustang using Bosch VR tech - Auto Service World

The Witcher has not aged well, especially compared to the second entry in the series, but this isn't stopping modder from coming up with new ways to experience the game that brought Geralt of Rivia into the spotlight.

A few days ago, The Witcher Virtual Reality project has been revealed by its creator Patryk Loan on Nexus Mods. The project aims to recreate the whole game made by CD Projekt Red in the Unreal Engine 4 so that it can be played with VR headsets. As of now, the project supports Oculus, HTC, and WMR and it features a single map, the iconic Kaer Morhen.

The Witcher 3 Nintendo Switch Can Hit Consistent 30 FPS Thanks to New Update, Analysis Confirms

The mod is a revision of the game The Witcher 1 on the Unreal Engine 4. At that moment you can only take a walk in Kaer Morhen. But with new updates, I can add new maps. Also, I have a plan to make a fully playable plot, like a Prologue, or maybe something mine. In general, we will have a lot of time to discuss all this.

The Witcher has been released in 2007, getting an Enhanced Edition the following year. The game is rather different from the rest of the series, featuring a unique combat system, and a great atmosphere. As already mentioned, The Witcher hasn't aged well, but fans of the series will appreciate it nonetheless.

The Witcher is a role-playing game set in a dark fantasy world where moral ambiguity reigns. Shattering the line between good and evil, the game emphasizes story and character development, while incorporating a tactically-deep, real-time combat system.

Become The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, and get caught in a web of intrigue woven by forces vying for control of the world. Make difficult decisions and live with the consequences in a game that will immerse you in an extraordinary tale like no other.

The Witcher is now available on PC.

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The Witcher Virtual Reality Project Aims to Make Whole Game Playable in VR; Kaer Morhen Map Released - Wccftech

As I soak in the breathtaking beauty of undersea life with its coral habitats and schools of multi-hued fishes, a gurgle of sorts seem to echo from afar. Soon, a sea of light-emitting jellyfishes swim into the picture and swarm around me as they make their way across the ethereal waters. But mistake not that Im actually standing on the ocean floor, as instead of swimming goggles and scuba tank, what I have on is a Virtual Reality (VR) headset with a pair of earphones attached.

The Virtual Reality Lab, flagged off recently at Keltron House, Vellayambalam, opens doors for a hands-on experience in the fast-emerging technologies of virtual reality, augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality that simulate real-life impressions. With four consoles in operation now, the lab offers a peek into the immersive world of 360 degrees VR simulation through demo apps.

The objective is to introduce the public to advancements in 3D design through the state-of-the-art technology of Virtual Reality, which holds a lot of promise for entertainment and infontainment. It shows how technology is advancing beyond the 3D. One highlight of the lab is the Mixed Reality experience, which blends VR and AR to make it more interactive, says Ajayakumar CP, manager of Keltrons Knowledge Services Group under which the facility has been set up.

The interface uses a VR headset and a pair of motion controllers with tracking sensors that enables the user to navigate through the display projected inside the headset. Immersive demo simulations on offer include undersea life, space adventure, anatomy and health, first-person games and more.

Those looking to go on a sortie on the edge of space get to be an astronaut aboard the International Space Station with a voice narration for accompaniment. But theres a mission: manoeuvre your way outside the space shuttle and fix a faulty solar panel. The bonus is a stunning view of a haloed earth, as seen so far from the terrestrial world. Another simulation, a roller-coaster ride, is perhaps not for the faint-hearted.

If astronomy is your interest, get wired in for an interplanetary experience of the Solar System that lets you learn about the planets and the universe. Another demo features a dizzying, birds eye view of a futuristic city, resembling scenes right out of some sci-fi flick. The health module lets you zoom in on the human anatomy with brilliant microscopic, 360 degrees visualisations of various organs, inside and outside. Then theres a simulation of the Italian capital city of Rome that virtually serves as a guided city tour. Those into video games can go on a do-or-die adventure through the first-person game Superhot VR.

Anandhu JS, a VR lab instructor, says the simulations are downloadable apps, which are then customised for the users convenience, even as the lab plans to add more simulations from various fields. The lab has been set up in partnership with real-time development platform Unity, with infrastructure support from HP, explains Ajayakumar, adding that the facility is open for those aged 13 and above.

The VR lab currently offers three packages spanning 15 minutes each for visitors to experience.

The Virtual Reality Lab is open from Monday to Saturday. Contact: 9188665545 or log on to ksg.keltron.in

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This Virtual Reality Lab in Kerala capital gives you a sneak-peek into the fast-emerging technology - The Hindu