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It’s called the “Immersive Cocoon” but it’s really more like a residential-scale Holodeck, where you can work, exercise, watch movies, play games, or visit the aquarium. Designer Tino Schaedler and design-and-ad firm NAU incorporated everything a 3D virtual reality consumer could want, including motion capture cameras, motion-sensing floor panels, 3D surround sound, 360-degrees of interior display space and even air conditioning. Dvice has a gallery of cool ideas for the Immersive Cocoon.
Treadmills are more than just a device to make music video go viral. Sometimes, they're useful for exercisin' and other stuff too. For example:
We're one step closer to the Holodeck, folks! Here's the Omni-Directional treadmill that allows a user to walk or jog in any direction of travel in a large-scale virtual environment.
The approach above by Virtual Space Devices (here's another clip) seems to me to be faster than the CirculaFloor moving tiles or the Virtual Reality Roller Shoes, just as fun as the VirtuSphere's giant human hamster ball, though not as good as the fake room/moving floor you've all seen in Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity music video.
If you have a diabolical mind, the first thing that probably came to mind is that it will make an excellent trap: how do you get off a functional omni-directional treadmill?
Pixelated Geek blog posed an intriguing question: if you could live in a Virtual Reality world, would you be better off than living in the real one?
He was under the opinion that a VR (Virtual Reality) world would be far better than an actual world. We talked under the conditions that in the VR world: you would be medically fine and taken care of, you had enough information about the world to shape it as you wished, you
had potentially unlimited amount of time to be in the VR world.His argument was that he could do anything he wanted to, So why not live in that space? You could learn in this space via online classes, which are popular for the busy and the reclusive. You could go on adventures like in your favorite video games. You could also be a god to some measure, with the space around you bending to your will.
Sounds like a solid gig. You could be who you want, do what you want, and be with who you wanted to.
Researchers led by Tajuki Narumi at the University of Tokyo created a cookie-eating simulator that allows users to believe that they’re tasting different flavors, when they’re really only tasting one:
To create the effect, the team branded a plain cookie with a distinct logo that the headset tracks via a built-in camera. An air pump sprays out the smell of the chosen cookie, increasing its concentration as the system “sees” the cookie approaching the wearer’s nose.
Meanwhile, a visual display in the headset shows an image of the chosen cookie, suggesting the correct texture for that flavour.
The combination of smell and visual texture combine to fool the user’s sense of taste into thinking they are eating a flavoured cookie instead of the plain one.
Air-Hair, developed by the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is a virtual reality haircut simulator. The user trims hair that s/he can only see on a screen. A motor in the pair of scissors creates resistance when the barber slices into hair and the screen shows hair falling away as the barber progresses. You can view another video at the link.
via CrunchGear
The online clothing store Tobi lets you upload a picture of yourself and then try on different outfits superimposed on that image. In Fast Company, Kit Eaton writes:
It has been redubbed Fashionista (much better than the original Webcam Social Shopper) and it works pretty much how you’d think it would: When you’ve chosen an item of clothing you like the look of, you print out a special AR barcode-like tag and hold it up in front of you while you stand before your Webcam. Zugara’s software then displays an image of the clothing you’re interested in superimposed on your body. By maneuvering the AR tag around you can position the apparel exactly how you want it to match your body–so you get to see a rough image of what you’d look like wearing the actual garment.
It doesn’t stop there: You can take a snapshot of what you look like, and the system includes motion-capture so you can make gestures and selections by waving your arms, much as you do when using Sony’s Eye toy on the PlayStation. You can also give the clothes a thumbs up or thumbs down so it can recommend more for you–something a bit like a physical version of Amazon’s “you might also like” service (or a live personal shopper). And, of course, you can buy the items you select. Not content with using one hot-topic technology, Zugara has also given Fashionista a dash of social media interactivity–you can post the snapshots you take onto Facebook, presumably to garner the opinion of your friends. Or you can add them to your profile on the site where your shopper friends can comment.
Company Website via Fast Company
A metaphor for life, I guess. Jeremy Hsu writes in Popular Science that Hiroo Iwata of the University of Tsukuba in Japan has developed robotic tiles that sense what direction a user is going in and move ahead to provide a place to step. With further development, it could be used in virtual reality simulators in order to imitate movement over distance:
The robot tiles emerged as the brainchild of Hiroo Iwata, a virtual reality researcher at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. A touch-sensitive conductive fabric covers each robot and gauges the pressure applied by a walking person’s foot, which goes toward predicting the next step.
Ultrasonic sensors also help relay position and orientation of each tile back to a central computer that acts as the conductor. It’s an oddly serene robotic ballet, even when two tiles have queued up to move down the line.
Video at the link.
Image: DigInfo Video News
University of Tsukuba researchers in Japan have developed a device that is designed to enhance the Virtual Reality experience by simulating motion in a static environment:
"One of the big problems facing VR is the issue of mobility — how do you allow users unrestricted movement in virtual reality, while keeping them relatively static in real reality?
Omni-directional treadmills have been tried in the past, and now researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have developed something called CirculaFloor. The system uses four robotic tiles that constantly shift position, ensuring that there’s always a tile in the direction you’re headed.
Additionally, the entire assembly moves slowly backwards, giving one the impression of movement while they’re actually standing relatively still. The tiles also incorporate lifts, for simulating staircases and the like."
– via engadget
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
Tuttuki Bako (or Tuttuki Box) is a toy unlike any other.
Made by Bandai Japan (who else but the Japanese would make such a wonderfully silly thing?), the box is a clock … until you insert your index finger into the hole on its side. Then, it’s game on: you’ll see a digital replica of your finger and you can explore a virtual world like tickling a Panda, or playing with a squishy slime ball.
Link – via sleepinginmyhead | Here’s the video clip of the Tuttuki Bako in action
