Category Archives: Virtual Reality

In the early days of virtual reality shooters, adding another human to the experience turns out to be an easy win. Games like Raw Data, Farpoint, and the upcoming Killing Floor: Incursion are all best with two people. But Gunheart, the first game from studio Drifter Entertainment, is the only one that also lets you blow balloons with your friends between rounds.

Gunheart is launching on all major high-end VR platforms: Oculus Rift and HTC Vive this summer, then PlayStation VR later in the year. Its designed as a full-length game for three players, with a focus on cool weapons, fast-moving combat, and cooperation. Imagine an even more frenetic version of Borderlands in VR, with greater immersion but so far a lot less character.

Although Gunheart comes from a new studio, the games core team is made up of experienced developers. Ray Davis was general manager at Epic Games, where he worked on the Gears of War series and on Robo Recall, one of the most polished VR shooters ever made. Kenneth Scott is a longtime art director who previously worked at id Software and Oculus. And Brian Murphy is a former designer and creative director at Microsoft.

The gameplay looks fun, but it needs more character

Unfortunately, like a lot of VR games, Gunheart looks generic on the surface. Its name sounds like something from a Rob Liefeld superhero generator, and its central conflict killing bug-like monsters in a rocky alien landscape is the premise of Farpoint as well. Cooperative play is a great element to add, but its also a shortcut that lets developers avoid having to create characters or compelling narratives. VR games have to be developed on an aggressive timeline to keep up with the fast-changing industry, and Gunheart looks like one of the more substantive efforts. But it doesnt feel distinctive in the way we expect from good non-VR games, even ones enjoyed mostly for their gameplay.

In Gunhearts favor, the gameplay is shaping up to be a lot of fun, based on my run through an early build of one level. It pulls together an armory based on items people already love using with motion controls, including conventional weapons, a crossbow, and a disc-throwing gun reminiscent of the science fiction frisbees in sports games RipCoil and Sparc. Players can wield one in each hand, or combine them into a unique super-weapon by holding their hands together. You could probably go it alone, but you wouldnt be able to surround enemies with other people, or have one person lay down fire with a long-range weapon while another gets up close with a shotgun.

Gunhearts teleportation system makes it possible to reach places youd never get with standard video game running or jumping. You can pop instantly around areas to find cover spots and vantage points, or rush an enemy and then blink back to revive a fallen partner. A lot of VR developers early on looked at teleport as sort of a handicap that caused less motion sickness than running, says Davis. We really embraced it as a first-class citizen, and realized it feels like a superpower. Its also apparently easier to get players to notice things above their heads in VR. It unlocks vertical spaces in a way that we always wanted to do in shooters, Murphy says.

The multiplayer lobby is a literal lobby

And although the game badly needs a fresher aesthetic, it does have one clever feature I havent found anywhere else: the standard multiplayer lobby is a literal lobby, or at least a spacious lounge. Instead of holding guns, players use a device in their hands to blow balloons, draw voxels in midair, or produce a giant foam hand to give high-fives. Will most people spend much time here? Its hard to say. And when players start games with random strangers instead of acquaintances, Drifter will also need a robust anti-harassment system, if it wants to avoid the problems other VR games have faced. But the lobby still offers a non-violent playfulness thats rare in shooters.

Gunheart still feels very much like a first-wave VR game, but its riding the tail end of that wave, learning from the early successes and failures of VR shooters. I just hope I can find enough friends with headsets to play it.

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Gunheart looks like Borderlands for virtual reality - The Verge

A virtual operating theatre is helping train up surgeons on new procedures.

Virtual reality is often touted as a way of creating fantasy universes, but it could also turn out to be an effective way of teaching skills that are hard to practice in the real world.

Take training up the doctors of tomorrow, for example. US university Case Western has already announced it plans to do away with its anatomy labs, and the cadavers that go with them, and teach medical students with Microsoft's HoloLens 'mixed reality' system instead. Aspiring doctors will be able to wear HoloLens headsets, and view the different layers of a body -- skin, muscle, blood vessels, and so on -- in 3D.

But going one step further, one UK company is trying to recreate the hands-on aspects of surgery in a VR setting, allowing students to get a sense of how the human body feels in using haptic feedback.

Fundamental VR, based in London and Guildford, has added a haptics element to virtual reality to allow medics to train without having to test out their nascent skills on an actual patient.

The system combines the HoloLens headset and the company's software with a stylus connected to a standard-issue mechanical arm.

The stylus appears as a syringe in the VR world the wearer sees, with one button to empty the syringe, and another to refill it.

Moving the stylus in the real world moves the syringe in the simulation, and when the virtual needle meets the virtual skin, flesh, or bone, the varying resistance of the material is transmitted through the stylus to the user, giving them a powerful facsimile of a real-live body.

The idea is that encountering different elements of the body -- like fat or bone -- should feel very different.

The first system, set up to resemble a total knee arthroscopy, was custom-built for the drug company Pacera to teach clinicians how to do a procedure using one of its products, an anaesthetic called Exparel.

Unlike traditional most anaesthetics, where a larger dose is injected in one go and spreads out widely from the injection site, Exparel is injected in several doses and stays largely where it's put. For some surgeons, the change in procedure was difficult to grasp, and so the VR teaching tool was born.

The imagery for the system was created by taking a series of photos of a knee to build up its 3D counterpart. Off-the-shelf haptic hardware is used to stand in for the syringe in the Pacera system, but could equally act as any medical tool that's needed.

Surgeons weigh in

Building a system that could faithfully recreate the experience of surgery required a mixture of human and technological smarts. In order to build the VR setup for knee replacement surgery, the company canvassed the opinions of orthopaedic surgeons on the steps that make up each procedure.

"Surgery is about science, but also about art, and where there's art, there's opinion. Getting to a common standard where people agree what's the right way to do that and on best practice, that took some time. Once we had got that, we were ready to start embracing some of the challenges of texture and tissue types and how those change throughout the procedure," Richard Vincent, cofounder of Fundamental VR, told ZDNet.

Next the surgeons were enlisted to help convert the real-life experience of surgery into a virtual version, with the company's haptics development engine the bridging the real and VR world.

"We built a calibration tool: it's the core of our software that allows us to quickly translate what are quite difficult things to communicate into numbers... we started with people saying 'it's like sticking a needle into an orange' or 'it's like chicken', then you can basically adjust it in real time until they agree it's how they feel and average that out," Vincent said.

Dr Stan Dysart, an orthopaedic surgeon that specialises in joint replacements at Georgia-based Pinnacle Orthopaedics, was among the surgeons that contributed their first-person perspective of knee operations to help the system recreate the authentic feel of surgery, assigning each element of the human body a number that corresponds to a certain texture.

"The haptic device has a scoring system, and I helped them decide what a needle feels like in capsule, what it feels like in muscle, in fat, in periosteum, and what it feels like on bone," he said. Fat, for example, is extremely forgiving, while the capsule has a fibrous, plastic-like texture.

"The capsule has a certain resistance, and when you go through the capsule, resistance releases, so you can score that -- you can score that [level of haptic] feedback, and score a different feedback for every part of the knee. You give it a number, and computers understand numbers -- the higher the number, the greater the resistance the surgeon will feel," Dysart said.

Once the surgeons have agreed on the haptic-feedback rating for each layer of the body, from muscle to bone, the haptics system can translate that back into the level of feedback the VR wearer will feel when they apply the virtual syringe -- a matter of balancing the amount of processing that the scenario needs with the abilities of the GPU underpinning the system to produce a smooth experience for the user.

The total knee arthroscopy-related system is already being used by surgeons in centres across the US, and it's helping surgeons refine their techniques, according to Dysart.

"Surgeons love it. They enjoy the experience, they enjoy practicing without potentially damaging a live patient. That's where it's important. Everything we do in live surgery has a consequence -- how deep do you cut? where do you cut? where do you inject? -- because there are nerves and arteries all about the knee.

"In virtual reality, if you plunge the needle too deeply, nothing is injured. You realise you've done it incorrectly, and you can do it over and over until you have the right technique. That's the beauty of this," he said.

Alongside the total knee arthroscopy, Fundamental VR has three more custom setups in the pipeline including a soft tissue and a spine procedure that it expects will go live at some point this summer.

Teaching tool

Fundamental VR is already talking to educational institutions about how haptics-based systems could be used to teach students to improve their skills or help established doctors learn new procedures before they try them out on the wards. For now, Fundamental VR is concentrating on the US market, though it has had conversations with teaching facilities both in London and abroad.

As well as building more specific one-off systems for clients in future, the company also expects to create a library of common procedures that can be accessed on a subscription basis. Long with 'standard' anatomy, the company could potentially create variants to introduce students to some of the rarer anatomical variations or conditions.

"[Removal of] the appendix is still the most performed operation, so having a better way of teaching that would be useful for lots of people, but on the flip side, there's a lot of opportunity [for doctors] to be around that and observe that," Fundamental VR's Vincent said.

"But if you go into neurology, there may be something you only see three times a year, but it's a life-and-death situation. The number of people that need that training is much less and it might be harder to make the business case, but the human case in much stronger," he continued.

While haptics system might not go over well with all surgeons -- some more senior clinicians found the simulations a bit too close to computer gaming -- the company prefers to liken it to the way pilots use flight simulators.

"We go to lots of conferences where we talk to lots of surgeons about how, say, when you face this bleed at this moment, and you've got five minutes to deal with it, it's never going to make that a less traumatic moment when it happens, but if you go through a simulator that gets you close to it a few times, that has got to be good thing," Vincent explained.

Practicing on VR, not patients

Once mixed and virtual reality become cheaper and more common, haptics and VR could be used to create models of individual patients before they undergo surgery.

"If you could create from those scans something where we could share the kidney, move it around, agree how to get in there, what's the plan, how do we make the surgery the quickest and most effective, that would be good for patient safety," Chris Scattergood, Fundamental VR's co-founder, said.

The future of medical VR, then, will be a mix of teaching students and professionals how to do high-volume, routine operations of the kind that are done hour after hour in hospitals across the world, as well as to understand niche procedures that clinicians at the highest level may only see once or twice in their lives.

Either way, while doctors are practising the skills they need to perform the procedures, they'll be learning virtually, making their mistakes away on a computer system and perfecting their techniques long before they get to use them on their patients.

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Surgery in virtual reality: How VR could give trainee doctors the feel of real patients - ZDNet

Virtual reality has emerged as a hot topic in banking with the rise of artificial intelligence, innovation labs, and the eath of the physical bank branch. Theres a way to tap into the mind of the customer through VR, but how it should fit into the business is still a mystery for most.

Venture capital funding in VR totaled $2 billion from 2015-2016, according to Digi-Capital and revenue from VR is expected to hit $162 billion or more by 2020 from $5.2 billion in 2016, according to IDC Research.

Its still early for banks interested in bringing VR into their business. And like any new technology, VR is going to face some opposition before its more widely adopted across financial services. Just because banks can use it, doesnt mean they should use it everywhere, or at all. Banks are experimenting with how to use it, when its appropriate, and who their partners will be. One thing is for certain, though: if customer like it, banks will want it.

Banking customers have rarely seen a channel or a way to interact with a bank that they didnt like, said Raja Bose, global retail banking consulting leader at Genpact. Branches, contact centers, online, mobile; banks are now letting customers interact with them via social media. The more ways you get consumers to touch their banks the better and there are always going to be some consumers that like it and wanna do it.

However, some banks have dabbled in the technology already. Below are examples of three banks brushes with VR.

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How banks are using virtual reality - Digiday

No need to attend festivals or buy expensive viewing gear to live some of the most moving virtual reality documentaries; in fact, many can be experienced from the comfort of ones living room provided you have a smartphone ideally of the latest generation and a good internet connection or data plan.

Though a headset, even a do-it-yourself cardboard one, is useful to block out your surroundings and immerse yourself more fully in the world, there is also something to be said about trying them as 360-degrees experiences. The juxtaposition between your world and the one on your device can create stirring moments. When a view of a destroyed street in Syria lines up with your hallway, it is hard not to project yourself and think of what it would feel like if you were to open your door to a war zone. It brings the story home.

Since the New York Times launched with fanfare their NYT VR app in November 2015 by sending out Google Cardboard viewers to over a million of their subscribers, several media organizations have followed suit. Many developed their own application (DiscoveryVR, LIFE VR, WSJ VR, for instance); some, like The Guardian with 6x9, built an app dedicated to a singular experience; while others, partner with existing VR companies.

But prominent members of the fourth estate are not the only ones creating compelling content. Tech companies, film studios and individuals are also using the latest innovations to share the stories that matter to them.

Here are a few of the most recent productions that have caught our attention.

Under the Cracked Sky by The New York Times On the edge of the world, at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, a group of researchers monitor life under the ice. Their job involves diving through a small hole into in frigid waters, the clearest in the world. Two of them, Rob Robbins and Steven Rupp, invite you to join them thanks to VR.

To give the impression that youre swimming with them rather than being carried by them, the New York Times team provided them with a customized underwater rig strapped to a nine feet pole. This way the diver handling it would recede in the background and, thus make way for majestic and unparalleled views of frozen seawater stalactites, ice caves and rocky black seabed. We told them: essentially youre swimming with a persons head down there, so act accordingly: avoid sudden movements, twisting and turning, or changing speed too quickly, explains Graham Roberts, one of the producers.

They recorded several dives over the course of one week, which were then edited into one mesmerizing and illuminating experience. Much of the time is spent gazing upwards, marveling at the light streaming through the ice while also considering how dangerous such a dive is the way in is also the only way out , and looking for the cheeky seals whose calls you can distinctly hear around you. It checked all the boxes for a VR project," adds Robert. It takes people somewhere they couldnt otherwise go to, it deals with an important topic, climate change, and it provided us with the opportunity to record unique imagery.

Time: 9 minutes App: NYT VR

The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers Shoes by National Geographic The numbers associated with elephant poaching are staggering. The Great Elephant Census recorded a population drop of 30% between 2007 and 2014 to just over 350,000 beasts. The decline is mostly due to poaching, which claims a life every 15 minutes. Simply put, at this rate, the large mammal could be extinct within the next 12 years.

To stop the massacre, park rangers risk their lives. In Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, nineteen of them have been killed in action over the past decade. These men are unassuming heroes and we wanted to tell their stories in a way that is multifaceted. As you journey into the savannah, youre also journeying deeper and deeper into their minds and psyches, says Imraan Ismail, who worked with Oscar-winning film director Kathryn Bigelow on this project.

Embedded with these wildlife watchmen, he filmed their daily lives from their time at home with loved ones, to their swift training and the tense patrols. He asked them about their relationship to the animals, to each other, and to their most often invisible enemies. The immersive experience, which at times was filmed by the rangers themselves as they trail elephants and go after poachers, gives you a sense of how unnerving it is to move through the bush when danger lurks all around.

Time: 8 minutes App: Within

Capturing Everest by LIFE VR Many have tried to convey what it is like to climb Mount Everest, the highest peak on earth. Adventurer Jon Krakauer described it in words in Into Thin Air, blind mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer had his ascent filmed for Farther than the Eye Can See, Liam Neeson narrated an IMAX documentary, and the list goes on. It was a matter of time before people took VR cameras to the top of the world. So, it comes as no surprise that the LIFE VR team, in association with Sports Illustrated, would try their hands at it too.

While the footage was already shot when it fell into their hands, theyre the ones who turned it into a mini-series that follows the adventure of Jeff Glasbrenner, who lost his leg in a tractor accident as a child, and Lisa Thompson, who was recovering from cancer. There was a lot to communicate: the inspiring journeys of Jeff and Lisa, the dangers associated with the climb, the long periods of waiting for the conditions to be favorable, the life at basecamp, the importance of the Sherpas, etc.," says Mia Tramz, Managing Editor at LIFE VR [LIFE VR is a Time Inc. company] . "Its a story about climbing Everest, but its also one about human nature."

Each of the four chapters focuses on a different challenge: getting ready, making it to basecamp, navigating the treacherous Khumbu Icefall and reaching the top. Everyone wants to see what its like to get to the summit," says Glasbrenner. "But, to me, the most representative scenes are those in the tents. You have to stay motivated while waiting for the conditions to allow you to continue. You miss your family and the comforts of home while also battling self-doubt." Though it helped his family and friends better understand exactly how much of a feat it was to reach the peak, he also acknowledges that some experiences are impossible to capture, especially how the lack of oxygen makes everything so much more difficult, even putting your shoes on is an effort.

Time: 4 episodes of approximately 9 minutes each App: LIFE VR

Step to the Line by Ricardo Laganaro with VR for Good Inside a California maximum-security prison, inmate and volunteers face one another. A facilitator from Defy Ventures, a training program for currently and formerly incarcerated Americans, asks those who relate to the statements she read to move forward. I heard gunshots in my neighborhood growing up: most prisoners take a step. Ive earned a four-year college degree: the tables turn. Ive done criminal things for which I could have been arrested, but did not get arrested: most of the people present step to the line and shake hands. The 360-degrees camera is set in the middle of the two rows putting you in the middle of this social experience.

This sets the stage for us to meet Trebian Tre Ward, one of the convicts. As Ricardo Laganaro, who took part in Oculus VR for Good initiative that paired filmmakers with non-profit organizations to explore immersive technologies promise to foster empathy, was developing the project, he realized that there are a lot of misconceptions regarding what it is like to be in prison. We think we know what its like because of all the movies," says the Brazilian artist. "But you dont, actually. Especially the cell, its really different from what you see in films that portray it as an empty space. In VR you can look around and see the wardrobe, the cabinet, and the belongings of the two inmates that share it. Theres a lot in there. My main goal was to provoke a transformation of the viewers opinion. I want him to move from being scared of the guy, to understanding a little bit of his past and current struggle, to cheering for him and thinking about the future, not what he did anymore. Mission accomplished.

Time: 11 minutes App: Facebook

Peoples House by Flix & Paul For all those who miss seeing Barack Obama in the White House, your prayers have been answered. Thanks to the Peoples House, a project by the Montreal-studio Flix & Paul, you can visit Americas most famous home with the 44th President and First Lady as your guides.

Thanks to a custom-designed robotic platform, it feels as if youre moving seamlessly through the different spaces as your prestigious docent share historical tidbits and personal anecdotes about 23 of the rooms.

Filmed over five days at the end of Obamas tenure, the immersive experience is an opportunity for the former First Family to reflect on their time at 1600 Pennsylvannia Avenue. You learn that Obamas first impression of the Oval Office was that it wasnt as big as I imagined it on television, while it took Michelle months to feel like she was at home rather than in a museum.

Time: 22 minutes App: GearVR and YouTube

Laurence Butet-Roch is a freelance writer, photo editor and photographer based in Toronto, Canada. She is a member of the Boreal Collective .

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The 5 Virtual Reality Experiences to Try on Your Phone - TIME

Safely decommissioning any nuclear reactor is a challenge. However, how do you decommission a Cold War-era production nuclear reactor thats more than 60 years old? This is the problem that engineers are facing at the Savannah River Site (SRS), a 310 square mile Department of Energy site in rural South Carolina constructed in 1952 to help the U.S. produce nuclear weapons. The five reactors at SRS known as R, P, K, L, and C were once used to produce plutonium and tritium. When the Cold War ended, their products were no longer needed, and the last of them was operational in 1992. But the story doesnt end there. Closing nuclear reactors is a huge job that must be done properly, and this is the mission of the DOE Environmental Management Office. The work continues with planning for decommissioning of C Reactor.

What lies inside?

The P and R reactors were decommissioned simultaneously. The process included the removal of millions of gallons of water and the pouring of over 200,000 cubic yards of grout. To assist in the planning of this process, engineers and designers at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) reviewed thousands of construction drawings for the buildings and key pieces of equipment. The team quickly realized it was difficult to fully understand what was inside the reactors because the drawings were a guide for construction, organized by phase of construction and craft. This meant that there was no real map for what was inside the building, as there was no single drawing that could provide all of the relevant information for any given room.

To help provide the decommissioning team with a sense of space inside the reactors, the SRNL team created 3D CAD models and 3D printed models of the building structures and key equipment. Once completed, the printed models helped the team understand the building better because it presented the layers of data in a way that humans normally process datain three dimensions. Even engineers with years of experience need to interpret two dimensional drawings into a 3D image. When the information is spread across as many drawings, interpreting the data becomes a serious challenge.

The 3D printed models also improved the safety of the decommission teams on the ground. Every entry of workers into the facilities exposed them to various dangers; tripping hazards, heat stress, and radiation exposure. Having models available for review offsite reduced the number of walkdowns required in the actual buildings and allowed the teams to plan movements more effectively before entering the facilities.

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Virtual Reality for Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors - R & D Magazine

Forbes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are risk factors for hypertension?

Source: CDC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Popcorn? I said heck no, Thomas said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

soumya.karlamangla@latimes.com

Twitter: @skarlamangla

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