Daily Archives: May 7, 2021

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Over the last year, the pandemic upended many industries, prompting businesses to pivot quickly to enable a fully virtual everything, from workplace to marketplace to nearly every aspect of life. Even the legal profession, which historically has been slow to adopt technology, is now starting to catch up to other industries by embracing digital transformation. The results in the startup world have been similar to those seemingly everywhere else. In-person meetings have been scrapped in favor of virtual meetings. Travel has been replaced by videoconferencing. Paper has been replaced by bits and bytes. While the tech industry is starting to return to normal, how much the new normal will be like the old is still an open question. At the same time, increased reliance on technology is changing the trajectory of virtual deal-making.

The rapid virtualization of many business functions has had a number of unintended consequences. On the one hand, for startups and investors, virtual deal-making has become commonplace, which has changed the dynamics of raising capital and investing. One startup CEO noticed that compared to pitching in person, virtual deal-making had a heightened focus but found that it allowed for more robust conversations and data sharing over a shorter period of time. This pattern has been common since COVID-19 pushed so many meetings into cyberspace, but it also particularly complements high-resolution fundraising, allowing startups to connect quickly with more investors than ever before.

By driving faster connections and more pitches, these virtual meetings seem to be working well for the industry. Despite the pandemic, 2020 was a banner year for venture capitalists, with a record-setting $130 billion invested in over 6000 deals.

But on the other hand, virtual deal-making has some significant drawbacks. Many people across all industries are tired of videoconferencing. We even have a genericized term for that now: Zoom fatigue. As Stanford University noted, virtual meetings face significant challenges compared to in-person meetings, specifically relating to cognitive load, a lack of movement, and too much screen time.

Where will the industry go from here? As businesses open up more and travel becomes more normalized again, in-person deal-making will probably stage a staggered return. Many people prefer them, so they will always be good fits for some. But given the changes in the past year and the benefits that many saw from faster pitch cadences, startups and investors will probably continue making deals virtually, almost certainly more than they did back in 2019 and prior, which leaves a big question about addressing the challenges of virtual meetings.

Companies have delivered annual and quarterly financial returns with a largely steady topline and bottom line benefiting from elimination of the travel and entertainment budget. With the economy returning to work, spending on travel and entertainment will return, but at what pace and in what quantum? Will cost savings be retained when growing the topline with a workforce back at full capacity?

Ill end with one possible (and admittedly speculative) solution, at least in part. For many years, dating back at least to the 1990s and the early days of stereoscopic video games, virtual reality (VR) has been touted as the next big thing. And yet, even the 3D-television craze several years ago and the rampant interest in VR headsets has not led to significant adoption. While we may see VR find a place in high-level business meetings, augmented reality (AR) appears better positioned to make significant inroads.

New augmented reality technologies that enable meeting participants to not only see each other and share documents, but immersively view, manipulate and interpret data together in an augmented, three-dimensional or phygital world, could be a game changer. For a sneak view of what an augmented reality, augmented data analytical world would look like, check out what our friends at Flow Immersiveare buildinghere, or thephygital worldsbuilt for clients ofDouble-A Labs.

AR could enable virtual meetings while also providing more natural interactions than staring at a screen would allow. Maybe bridging the gap between the virtual and real worlds would be enough to address the fatigue that so many feel with virtual meetings.

The ability to have more natural interactions with clients, business partners, investors, and lawyers without the cost (or risk) of travel could be a major deciding factor to pushing AR meetings into the mainstream. A number of companies are working on related technologies, so the question is who will make it work first. Maybe someone will come up with an entirely different and vastly superior solution. Time will tell.

Louis Lehotis anemerging growth company, venture capital and M&A lawyeratFoley & Lardner in Silicon Valley. Louis spends his time providing entrepreneurs, innovative companies, and investors with practical and commercial legal strategies and solutions at all stages of growth, from garage to global. He focuses his efforts on technology, digital health, life science and clean energy innovation. Louiss clients are public and private companies, financial sponsors, venture capitalists, investors and investment banks, and he has helped hundreds of companies at formation, obtaining financing, solving governing challenges, going public and buying and selling.Louisispraisedby clients, colleagues and industry guides for his business acumen, legal expertise and leadership in Silicon Valley.

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The future of virtual deal-making and the return to work - VentureBeat

A new study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology suggests that virtual reality (VR) technology may serve as a useful intervention tool for patients with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). A VR experience effectively revealed a bias toward negative interpretations of ambiguous social scenes among individuals with BDD.

People with body dysmorphia persistently fixate on one or more aspects of their appearance, perceiving it to be flawed. This fixation leads them to engage in compulsive behaviors to hide their appearance even though the flaw is often imagined or remains unnoticed by others.

Study authors Berta J. Summers and her team say that a key characteristic of BDD is a bias that leads sufferers to interpret ambiguous social situations as negative or threatening for example, interpreting a neutral facial expression as angry. Scholars have studied this bias by asking individuals with BDD to interpret hypothetical ambiguous situations. But Summers and her colleagues devised an experiment to capture these processes in a more real-world setting.

The researchers designed a virtual reality experiment among a sample of 50 subjects. The participants were 25 patients with BDD and 25 individuals with no psychiatric diagnoses. While wearing a VR headset, each participant experienced 13 scenarios that contained ambiguous social cues. For example, in one scenario, a stranger does a double take at the participant and then apologizes.

Each subject was then offered two explanations for the scene one was benign (e.g., She thought we may have known each other) and the other was appearance-related (e.g., She apologized for staring at me because of how I look). The subject rated how likely they would be to make each interpretation.

Compared to the control subjects, participants with BDD were much more likely to endorse an appearance-related explanation for the scenarios. The control group, on the other hand, selected more of the benign explanations for the scenes compared to the BDD group. When the researchers looked at within-group differences, they found that the BDD group was equally likely to interpret a scene with a threatening explanation as with a benign explanation. The control group was more likely to choose a benign explanation over a threatening one.

The subjects also completed two self-report measures that assessed their disposition toward threat biases. The overall responses followed a similar pattern as the responses to the VR scenes, with the BDD group choosing more negative interpretations of ambiguous scenarios compared to the control group. When faced with these same scenarios, the control group chose more benign interpretations. The researchers say this suggests that the VR paradigm was successful in eliciting the threat interpretation biases characteristic of BDD.

The authors note that with the dispositional assessments, the BDD group chose more threatening interpretations than benign ones. This was not the case in the VR scenarios, where the BDD group was equally likely to choose either interpretation. The researchers propose that during real-life scenarios, people with BDD are open to more than one interpretation of a scene. Perhaps there is a brief window of opportunity in which individuals with BDD have flexibility in their thinking that is not there when they are removed either hypothetically or temporally from a situation (in which case, they may be more likely to resolve ambiguity with negative/threat-related explanations), Summers and her team suggest.

The study participants largely rated the VR situation as acceptable, engaging, and akin to scenarios they experience in real life. Summers and her colleagues conclude that their findings suggest that VR technology may provide a realistic setting for measuring moment to moment threat interpretation biases among people with BDD.

The study, A Virtual Reality Study of Cognitive Biases in Body Dysmorphic Disorder, was authored by Berta J. Summers, Anna C. Schwartzberg, and Sabine Wilhelm.

Continued here:

Virtual reality experiment captures threat interpretation bias among people with body dysmorphic disorder - PsyPost

Changes are happening at the Empire Mall in western Sioux Falls.

While the mall was closed for a while during the pandemic in 2020, foot traffic has increased since stores have opened back up. New stores, kiosks and attractions are lining the inside of the building as well.

Take a look at the newest additions to the Empire Mall within the past six months:

More: Camille's expands to Empire Mall food court this summer

Animal World(Photo: Empire Mall)

One of the newest kiosks at the Empire Mall is for children and the young at heart. People can rentanimal carts, motorcycles and scooters and ride them down hallways at the Empire Mall. The rides like giraffes, zebras and unicorns can hold up to 300 pounds and vary by size. The kiosk opened March 1.

Brandy's Soap Boutique(Photo: Empire Mall)

The kiosk, which opened on April 1, sells natural soaps, bath bombs and lotions made by hand. The products are blended with shea butter, olive oil and more.

Dragon Eyes Virtual Reality(Photo: Empire Mall)

Dragon's Eyes is a virtual reality arcade kiosk that offers a variety of interactive games to play. Customers can play for up to an hour. The kiosk opened April 19.

The furniture store openedMarch 1 and offers a variety of home furniture, including zero-gravity recliners, massage chairs, lift chairs, beds and more.

The beauty supply store opened on March 1 and offers a variety of specialty hair products, lace wigs and hair extensions. The shop specializes in hair braiding, but also offers other hair designs.

Malligan's Mini Golf(Photo: Empire Mall)

The Empire Mall started offering indoor mini golf on March 15. Malligan's Mini Golf is a nine-hole miniature golf course with obstacles such as a lighthouse, windmill and more.

Liv Cooney, 17, poses for photos at the Selfie Station at the Merle Hay Mall Wednesday, July 8, 2020.(Photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register)

Selfie Wrld opened in December 2020, inviting guests to pose and take pictures in over a dozen "Instagrammable" booths. Most customers use the professionally lit and designed sets to post photos on Instagram or Tiktok, owners said.

The Original Corn Pie(Photo: Empire Mall)

The kiosk specializes in corn bread pieces, which can be bought by the half or full pie. The shop opened April 15.

The shop, which opened on April 15, sells a variety of children's plush toys.

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Mini golf, virtual reality and selfies: Here are the 9 newest shops at the Empire Mall - Argus Leader

Social media giant Facebook has acquired popular virtual reality game developer Downpour Interactive which is behind the hit multi-player military simulator Onwards. "Onward" is Dante and Downpour Interactive's first game, a multiplayer masterpiece full of challenges, tactics, and teamwork.

As part of the Facebook's Oculus Studios team, Downpour Interactive will expand upon its ethos of creating stand-out games.

"We've seen great success with Onward on the Oculus platform for several years -- first on Rift and more recently on Quest," Mike Verdu, Facebook's VP of AR/VR content, said in a blog post.

"Becoming part of the Oculus Studios family will give Downpour Interactive the opportunity to cultivate both the Onward community with the full support of Oculus Studios resources, and, in the future, pursue other projects," he said on Friday.

Dante Buckley, founder and CEO of Downpour Interactive, said that the Oculus studio plans to "accelerate the speed of our development".

In 2019, Facebook acquired Beat Saber developer Beat Games and in 2020 bought Asgard's Wrath maker Sanzaru Games.

"We've seen great success with Onward on the Oculus platform for several years-first on Rift and more recently on Quest," Facebook said.

The entire Downpour Interactive team will join the Oculus Studios team in some capacity.

Downpour Interactive has exciting plans for future Onward updates and future projects. We hope to bring those experiences to as many people as possible. Onward will continue to be supported on all its current platforms.

"We're exploring many ways to accelerate VR, including investments in third-party content, AAA IP, hardware, and more, and we have awesome and innovative plans for the next few years of gaming," Facebook said.

*Edited from an IANS report

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Facebook acquires the developers behind the virtual reality game Onward - Indulgexpress

On Tuesday, Patently Apple posted a granted patent report titled "Apple wins Patent for a unique lighting system designed to assist a user's eyes adjust from a bright environment to a dark VR Headset" and vice versa. The original title of the patent was " Electronic device with adaptive lighting system." The image below is from Apple's granted patent.

Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that relates to adaptive displays for head-mounted devices, that shares the same foundation as the patent granted to Apple on Tuesday. The title of this patent is close but different: " Electronic Device with Adaptive Display." The focus in this patent is on the adaptive display and not necessarily the lighting system.

Apple's introduction of the patent is the same presented in the granted patent as follows:

"Head-mounted devices such as virtual reality glasses and augmented reality glasses use displays to generate images to a user.

If care is not taken, a head-mounted device may be cumbersome and tiring to wear. The images on the display may appear too dark and washed out when the user first puts the head-mounted device on his or her head. The user may experience dazzle or discomfort when transitioning out of a virtual reality viewing experience. The dynamic range of a head-mounted display may be perceived as insufficient depending on the adaptation state of the user's eyes."

Apple's latest patent application covers control circuitry in an electronic device that may estimate a brightness adaptation state of the user that is wearing the electronic device. The control circuitry may adjust a brightness of the display based on the user's adaptation state. This may include, for example, optimizing a brightness range of the display for the current adaptation state of the user, adjusting a brightness range of the display to have a desired effect on the user's adaptation state (e.g., to help "guide" the user's current adaptation state to a different adaptation state), adjusting a brightness range at certain periods of time to boost the perceived dynamic range of the display, adjusting brightness in some regions of an image differently than in other regions of an image to account for the user's adaptation state, and/or taking other actions based on the estimated adaptation state of the user.

The control circuitry may gather ambient light information from an ambient light sensor, may gather physiological attributes of a user such as blink rate, pupil size, and eye openness from a camera, and may gather gaze position information from gaze detection circuitry. Gaze position may be combined with image data (e.g., frames of display data that are being displayed on the display) to determine the average pixel luminance at a location on the display that aligns with the user's gaze position. Based on this information, the control circuitry may determine a brightness adaptation state of the user.

When a user first turns on the display of the electronic device, the user may be bright-adapted (due to the ambient light in the room where the electronic device is located). The control circuitry may account for this adaptation state by starting at a first brightness level and gradually reducing the brightness of the display to a second brightness level. By the time the second brightness level is reached, the user may be dark-adapted.

When a video ends or a user exits a video playing mode and enters a home screen on the display, the control circuitry may increase the brightness of the display gradually to increase the user's adaptation level. This helps avoid dazzle or discomfort when the user takes off the electronic device and is greeted with a brightly lit room.

The control circuitry may also use adaptation state information to increase the perceived dynamic range of the display and to selectively adjust the brightness of portions of an image based on where the user is looking.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a diagram of an illustrative head-mounted device such as a VR Headset, though smartglasses could apply; FIG. 3 is a diagram showing how a tone mapping circuitry may use information about a user's adaptation state to implement content-luminance-to-display-luminance mappings.

Apple's patent FIG. 6 below is a graph showing how a display may temporarily be optimized for an adaptation state that is different from that of the user's to gradually increase the user's adaptation level before the user transitions out of a virtual reality experience; FIG. 7 is a graph showing how the brightness of a display may be adjusted before and after a large brightness increase to enhance the perceived dynamic range of the display.

Apple's patent FIG. 9 above is a flow chart of illustrative operations involved in using a head-mounted device with a display.

Tuesday's granted patent and today's patent application (not a continuation patent) are covering the same project from different perspectives. For instance, today's patent adds more emphasis on the display and gaze detection in five patent claims. In Apple's patent claims #2 and #3 below state the following:

(Claim #2): "The electronic device defined in claim 1 further comprising gaze detection circuitry that determines a gaze position, wherein the control circuitry is configured to adjust the brightness of the virtual reality content based on the gaze position."

(Claim #3): "The electronic device defined in claim 2 wherein the control circuitry is configured to determine an average pixel brightness at a location on the display that aligns with the gaze position."

To dig deeper into the details of today's Apple's patent application number 20210134245, click here.

Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.

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Apple invents an Adaptive Display to assist users avoid eye discomfort transitioning from a dark VR Headset to a bright environment - Patently Apple

In Virtual Reality News

May 3, 2021 SimX, a provider of a virtual reality (VR) medical simulation platform, has announced that it has landed four new contracts totaling over USD $1.5 million as it continues to expand its partnership with the US Air Force (USAF) and US Space Force (USSF) to develop training solutions for special operations forces.

According to SimX, the contracts, which are part of the USD $2.5 million Virtual Advancement of Learning and Operational Readiness (VALOR) research and development program, seek to further develop fielded capabilities for training the USAFs medical personnel with the SimX Virtual Reality Medical Simulation System.

SimX stated that the new funding is targeted primarily towards enhancing the capabilities of the system to train operational medical handoffs between roles of care, train missions involving multiple simultaneous caregiving teams, train in dynamic and realistic environments (such as night and weather operations), and provide more customizable and adaptable training capabilities. Additional funding has also been allocated to adapting VR medical simulation training for in-flight medicine during aerial and space operations with the Air Force and Space Force.

As a result of the partnerships, special operations medical personnel of the 24th Special Operations Wing, will be able to train through simulated medical scenarios based on real-world experience and reinforce learning on the relevant medical techniques, tactics and protocols. The overall objective is to enable the wings Special Tactics operators including pararescuemen and combat controllers, as well as their unit medics and Special Operations Surgical Teams, to train how they fight.

SimX noted that the capabilities of its platform include a broad array of situations, including Tactical Combat Casualty Care-based scenarios as well as routine medical care. All newly developed capabilities will be fielded for operational testing and evaluation at the existing SimX deployments at installations across the US, as well as USAF installations in Europe and Asia.

The USAF and USSFs continued investment in the VALOR program will enable us to continue to push the envelope of VR medical training by ensuring that we can train for these critical interactions, said Karthik V. Sarma, VALOR Principal Investigator and Chief Technology Officer at SimX.

Col. John R. Dorsch, who heads the effort for the US Air Force, also commented: The VALOR program is helping to increase overall medical capability and has the potential to improve survival rates in combat casualties. Expanding and innovating capabilities is critical for ensuring the highest level of combat trauma and austere medical care is provided by our special operators and medical personnel.

In addition to the distribution to the 24th SOWs units stationed around the country, the new capabilities will also be fielded at the new Special Operations Center for Medical Integration and Development (SOCMID), a collaboration between the USAF and the University of Alabama-Birmingham designed to provide the next generation of standardized training to Special Operations Surgical Team members, pararescuemen and independent duty medical technicians.

The projects are made possible through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, in collaboration with AFWERX, a team of innovation specialists within the USAF, and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). AFRL and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research process in an attempt to speed up the experience, broaden the pool of potential applicants and decrease bureaucratic overhead. Beginning in SBIR 18.2, the Air Force has begun offering Special SBIR topics that are faster, leaner and open to a broader range of innovations.

For more information on SimX and its virtual reality medical simulation platform, visit the companys website.

Image credit: SimX / US Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Sandra Welch

About the author

Sam Sprigg

Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he covers news articles on both the AR and VR industries. He also has an interest in human augmentation technology as a whole, and does not just limit his learning specifically to the visual experience side of things.

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SimX receives new US Air Force contracts totaling over $1.5 million to advance Virtual Reality training programs - Auganix

Before he taught his spring semester classOceania: Indigenous Sovereignty and Settler Colonialism,Assistant Professor of Anthropology Willi Lempert wanted to find a way to convey to his students the enormity of the giant heads of Easter Island.

The sculpturesknown asMoaiby the Rapa Nui people who carved the figures from volcanic rock between1100 and 1680 CEare massive. The biggest one is more than thirty feet high. But it's hard to assess their impressive scale without actually visiting the island in person.

When Thais Carrillo 23 and Cobra Curtis 23 heard about Lempert's dilemma,they volunteered for the challenge. Both have experience working with virtual reality (VR): Carrillo has made a VR version of the Giant's Stairs on Bailey Island, and Curtis has been helping build a VR version of the Bowdoin Scientific Station on Kent Island.

(This project, to be precise, uses augmented reality, which is when digital information is superimposed on the real world through a viewfinder of some kind.)

The two students first selected one among the many sculptures on the island to work witha manageable thirteen-foot-high head. That's also the average size of the figuresof which there are nearly 900 located around the island. Basing it on an existing Moai head model, they rendered the digital head in 3D with a software program called Blender.

After they were satisfied with their life-like depiction, they deployed remote-sensing technologyor LiDAR, which is activated in newer phones and iPadsto enable users of their tool to bring up the head on their device (an iPhone or iPad) and place it anywhere they like.

So students can call up and anchor the towering head in their dorm room, in Thorne Dining Hall, outside on the Quadany space they can quickly scan with their gadget's camera. Then they can compare the head with objects and landmarks they know firsthand.

(Additionally, the tool allows users to minimize the head, so if you would like to pretend you had a paperweight Easter Island head for your desk, you can make it very small.)

"Through this augmented reality program, students were able to place Moai from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) into the world around them. Using their LiDAR-equipped iPads, they were able to walk around and approach these iconic statues to get a sense of their scale and the incredible amount of ingenuity that it took to create them." Professor Willi Lempert

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What's That on Campus Over There? Oh, Just a Giant Head - Bowdoin News