Rick LaBrode has worked at NASA for 37 years, but he says the American quest to return to the Moon is by far the crowning moment of his career.
Space Exploration
Aug 15, 2022
0
494
Imagine a future where your hometown gets destroyed by some calamity. In the aftermath, how easily could you locate your home after your neighborhood has been transformed into a giant maze of rubble, leaving only minimal ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Aug 03, 2022
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40
As Meta (formerly Facebook) expands access to its virtual reality (VR) platform, disturbing accounts of women being sexually assaulted and harassed in its metaverse are also racking up.
Social Sciences
Jul 22, 2022
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38
A small international team of researchers has found that it is possible to test navigation skills in chimpanzees using virtual reality technology. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers ...
For centuries, scientists relied on a pen or pencil and trusty lab notebook to make sure their experiments could be understood and replicated by colleagues. Now, as experiments may involve dozens of steps and hundreds of ...
Biotechnology
Jun 24, 2022
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39
A virtual reality simulation designed by a University of Oregon (UO) professor could help spur people to environmental action.
Plants & Animals
Jun 22, 2022
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157
Swirling disks of gas and dust, the stuff that could one day form planets, surround young stars. Through NASA's Disk Detective program, citizen scientists—volunteers from the public—collaborate with professional scientists ...
Astronomy
Jun 15, 2022
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51
Compact and lightweight metasurfaces—which use specifically designed and patterned nanostructures on a flat surface to focus, shape and control light—are a promising technology for wearable applications, especially virtual ...
Optics & Photonics
May 17, 2022
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196
A recent study finds that realism is a key factor in determining whether viewers engage with virtual reality (VR) videos—and that engagement is itself a key factor in determining whether viewers are interested in watching ...
Social Sciences
May 12, 2022
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10
Francis Yoshimoto, assistant professor in the UTSA College of Sciences' Department of Chemistry, is introducing his Biochemistry II laboratory students to a new way of learning—using virtual reality headsets to observe ...
Education
May 10, 2022
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3
Virtual reality (VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment, whether that environment is a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world. Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special or stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones. Some advanced, haptic systems now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback, in medical and gaming applications. Users can interact with a virtual environment or a virtual artifact (VA) either through the use of standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, or through multimodal devices such as a wired glove, the Polhemus boom arm, and omnidirectional treadmill. The simulated environment can be similar to the real world, for example, simulations for pilot or combat training, or it can differ significantly from reality, as in VR games. In practice, it is currently very difficult to create a high-fidelity virtual reality experience, due largely to technical limitations on processing power, image resolution and communication bandwidth. However, those limitations are expected to eventually be overcome as processor, imaging and data communication technologies become more powerful and cost-effective over time.
Virtual Reality is often used to describe a wide variety of applications, commonly associated with its immersive, highly visual, 3D environments. The development of CAD software, graphics hardware acceleration, head mounted displays, database gloves and miniaturization have helped popularize the notion. In the book The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Michael Heim identifies seven different concepts of Virtual Reality: simulation, interaction, artificiality, immersion, telepresence, full-body immersion, and network communication. The definition still has a certain futuristic romanticism attached. People often identify VR with Head Mounted Displays and Data Suits.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
