Using Virtual Humans with Personality for Medical Training

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benjamin-lokOn today’s episode, I talk with Dr. Benjamin Lok from the University of Florida about how they’re using Virtual Humans as patients to train medical students. He talks about the key components for creating a plausible training scenario which include both accurate medical symptom information, but also more importantly a robust personality and specific worldview. Humans hardly ever just transmit factual data, and so whether the patient says too much or not enough, the students have to be able to navigate a wide range of personalities in order to get the required information to help diagnose and treat the patient.

NextVR to Broadcast Over 20 Live NBA Games This Season, Coverage Starts Tonight

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image courtesy NBA

NextVR, the leader in live VR sports broadcasting, today released their full schedule for their live NBA coverage, including 25 games featuring 30 teams throughout the 2016-2017 season. Make sure to have your phone battery charged, your Gear VR lenses cleaned and ready to go tonight though, because the first VR live coverage starts tonight at 10:30 p.m. ET (local time) with San Antonio Spurs vs. Sacramento Kings.

Watch: Square Enix’s ‘Project Hikari’ Melds Manga and VR

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By now, there have been many attempts at storytelling in VR that have been inspired by various traditional forms of entertainment, such as film or animation, but with Project Hikari the Square Enix Advanced Technology Division is pioneering the concept of what it would be like to adapt existing manga into immersive VR experiences. I was able to try an early demo of it at Oculus Connect 3 using Oculus Touch.

Oculus Story Studio Creative Director on ‘Quill’, an Immersive Storytelling Tool

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saschka-unseldOculus Story Studio has been exploring VR storytelling through a series of short narrative experiences starting with Lost and Henry, but they wanted to push the envelope of immersive storytelling with their next short titled Dear Angelica. They developed a new content creation tool called Quill that enables artists using Touch to create immersive illustrations and animated stories entirely while being enveiled in VR. It was announced that it was going to be released sometime at the end of January when Dear Angelica premieres at Sundance.

‘Alice VR’ Review

Virtual reality is a fitting medium for adventure games. When the atmosphere is right and the scene is set, you start to think about the world in a way that taps deep into your reptilian brain, the same one that thinks “I exist here. Everything here is important to me.” When done right, you’re just there. This is where I took issue with Alice VR. At moments I easily snapped into the game’s mysterious adaptation of Alice in Wonderland with all the requisite futuristic set pieces of any sci-fi adventure worth its salt, and at other times felt stuck inside of a conventional PC game that didn’t respect me as a VR player.

HTC to Roll Out Hundreds of Official ‘Vive VR Cafes’ in China Next Year

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Image courtesy HTC

HTC opened their third officially branded ‘Vive VR Cafe’ last week, this time in Shenzhen, China, the country’s Silicon Valley of hardware. In an interview with Haptical, HTC China’s President of Vive Alvin Wang Graylin confirms the company will be rolling out hundreds of these Shenzhen-style Vive cafes in 2016 and 2017 in China.

Microsoft Reveals VR Headsets Coming From Top Manufacturers, Starting at $299

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image courtesy of MSpoweruser

The number of big-name manufacturers getting into VR is going to increase substantially with the entry of Microsoft VR hardware partners, revealed on stage today at Microsoft’s hardware-focused event.

Ubisoft Pushes ‘Star Trek: Bridge Crew’ Release to March 2017

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Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Ubisoft’s upcoming collaborative space adventure, sadly won’t be here for the November 29th launch date as promised, so if you wanted to give that special someone a Trek-themed Christmas present, you may need to rethink your options. The game is now slated to release on March 14th, 2017.

SteamVR Tracking Courses Begin, Already Completed by 50 Developers

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Valve opened up their SteamVR tracking technology for third-party development in August, and since then, 50 developers have completed the mandatory training course provided by Synapse, the first company to enter the field.

The VR Version of ‘Obduction’ is Coming to Rift on Halloween

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Image courtesy Cyan

Obduction, the highly rated first-person adventure game from Cyan, the makers of Riven (1997) and Myst (1993), has been available on traditional monitors for quite some time now, but what virtual reality enthusiasts have been salivating over is the pre-release VR version we got our hands on back in late August. Now you can rest easy, because Cyan has just announced on their Kickstarter page that the Oculus Rift version of the game is coming on the 31st of October, the 19th anniversary of the release of Riven.

Xiaomi Unveils Low-Cost, Low-Latency VR Headset with Controller

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Xiaomi today unveiled a low-cost VR headset alongside their Mi Note 2 smartphone at the company’s Mi Product Launch Event in Beijing. Much like Samsung Gear VR, Mi VR features a built-in dedicated motion sensor for low latency head-tracking and only works with a select number of the company’s phones.

Google Acquires Eye-tracking Company Eyefluence, Reportedly Building VR Headset With Tech

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Just what Google has brewing in their skunkworks, we can’t say for sure, but with their most recent acquisition of Eyefluence, a company that builds eye-tracking technology for VR headsets, it seems Google is getting ever deeper into what’s largely considered ‘the next generation’ of dedicated VR hardware.

VR Analytics for Playtesting & Optimization with Cognitive VR

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Cognitive VR is an VR analytics platform that has an impressive system for visualizing a player’s movements and gaze within a 3D representation of a VR experience. Their SceneExplorer tool translates the 3D geometry from a Unity or Unreal experience into a WebGL mesh that can be shared within a web browser. It allows VR developers to quickly and intuitively visualize how players are moving around and what they’re looking at, but also helps to identify performance bottlenecks based upon a wide range of different hardware configurations.

‘ABE VR’ Creators Are Making Survival Horror Game ‘Syren’ – Teaser Trailer Here

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Hammerhead VR, the creators of the splendidly creepy ABE VR, a short VR film that puts you at the mercy of a robot gone awry, today revealed a first-person horror game called Syren.

Meet Drew Carey, Reggie Watts, Janeane Garofalo, and Many More This Week in AltspaceVR

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Getting into a live show with your favorite celebrity isn’t that tough if you live in the entertainment epicenters of L.A. or New York, but this week AltspaceVRthe social VR platform, is bringing the entertainers to you. Like all AltspaceVR performances and meetups, you’ll be able to join with Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and traditional monitors using PC or Mac.

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