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The military's newest digital training system is gonna open a can of whoop-ass on new recruits. And maybe a sonic blaster, too. More »
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University of Amsterdam students Daniel Karavolos, Sicco van Sas, and Maarten van der Velden hacked an Xbox Kinect to create this Superman virtual reality game. The player's body movements control Superman onscreen — stretching one's arms causes Superman to fly faster, and tapping the sides of the VR goggles activate his heat vision and frost breath. There's also a famous boss who appears pretty imposing, but he's deceptively easy to kill. More »
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Rutgers University law professor Greg Lastowka has directed us to a free PDF copy of his new book, Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds. The book covers the increasingly bizarre legal framework that's encompassing virtual worlds like Warcraft. More »
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When we interviewed Bear McCreary about his upcoming soundtrack to Zipper Interactive's SOCOM 4, we also had the opportunity to speak with Ed Byrne, creative director at Zipper. The following lively discussion precipitated from a single question: "Are videogames art?" More »
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If fear is the mind killer, as Muad'dib explained, the routes for banishing those fears are equally devastating — it usually means confronting them. But a new Spanish study, using virtual roaches, might unlock a less grody path. More »
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Have you ever been chatting online and gotten all sad and distant and wish your chat buddy could hug you? Or wanted to feel someone's heart race with rage via the internet? Well, intrepid science guinea pigs, wish no further. More »
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Computer-generated simulations of people start getting out of control in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's World On A Wire, which anticipated The Matrix 26 years early. This film has only showed in the U.S. once, but it's coming to New York. More »
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The weird and outright inappropriate inventions at Japan's Digital Contents Expo include a fembot who doesn't just visit the uncanny valley, she owns it. Plus a helmet that yanks on your ears to guide you, and a bad-breath game. More »
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Melinda Snodgrass is best known for writing the Star Trek episode where Data's personhood gets put on trial. But in the mid-1990s, she created Star Command, which took Trek's holodeck much, much further. Just check out this holo-torture sequence. Edgy! More »
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Virtuality is a reality-TV space opera and the newest television idea from Ron Moore, co-creator of the recent Battlestar Galactica reboot. But the show may never make it past the pilot that airs tonight. Is that really a loss? More »
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So far, virtual reality has mostly been a colossal disappointment. But VR has had its share of breakthroughs and innovative applications. Here are seven VR technologies that work, and that may yet point the way to truly successful virtual reality. More »
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Ronald D. Moore's long-awaited Virtuality airs June 26, and we've got exclusive concept art showing the inner workings of the deep-space probe Phaeton and its various modules — including a super-detailed diagram explaining the physics of the ship. More »
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There was a time when people were calling home virtual reality the wave of the future. Now most people just call it goofy and expensive. Here are 7 virtual reality technologies that didn't work, and never will. More »
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How convincing is virtual reality? To our conscious mind, not at all (Seriously, have you seen Second Life?), but to our subconsciousnesses? Well, it depends how real everyone else thinks it is, apparently. More »
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Second Life! It's not just for cybersex anymore... or, at least, that's what Linden Labs is trying to tell the various corporations of the world, as they try to reposition their virtual domain as the latest and greatest way to commute virtually to the office. More »
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Ron Moore's awesome virtual-reality thriller, Virtuality, may be the freshest, most challenging work he's ever come up with. Fox has been sitting on the two-hour pilot for months, but it looks like it'll finally air. More »
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Since science fiction was invented, the real world has followed in its footsteps, whether it's language or replicating fictional moral dilemmas. But there's one area where the real world is sadly lacking: science-fictional sextoys. More »
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I still can't decide whether the U.S. Life On Mars ending was awesome or horrible. Please help me make up my mind! (Spoilers ahead.) More »
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Cross Reality, Dual Reality, X-Reality: all of these terms describe the recent work of an MIT Media Lab team to bring the virtual into the real and vice versa. So far, the X-Reality group has focused their attentions on Second Life; last year, its Shadow Lab project allowed the game's users to virtually check out real-life activity inside the Media Lab building in Cambridge. Later this month, the next X-Reality project goes live — and they've got big, wormhole-tunneling, reality-crossing plans for it. More »
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Let's be honest: Aerial acrobatics are about as badass as it gets. Unfortunately, they're not too accessible for the average person without the thousands of dollars and years of training it takes to get a pilot's license in a high-performance plane. But New Zealand company Air Sports Ltd. envisions a world where we'll all get to duke it out on our computers with actual pilots — and those pilots will be flying real planes in the open air. In the first test flight of Air Sports Ltd.'s Sky Challenge, gamer Ernest Artigas sat on the ground and faced off against two airborne flyboys, completing a virtual obstacle course that was projected into their cockpits. Check out this video footage, and get ready for online air sports that are half-virtual, half-reality. More »
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The biggest challenge of the 21st century won't be global warming, or colonizing Mars. Rather, most reputable futurists agree, it'll be having sex with the vastly different alien species we'll make contact with. When we finally meet extraterrestrial sentients, it will take some ingenuity to have something resembling sexual congress with them. What are you doing to prepare for this challenge? More »
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Virtual worlds are driving people to suicide — and making them fall in love. A new documentary, opening this weekend, follows seven people who are devoted to virtual worlds, and finds them struggling with addiction and discovering romance. Second Skin, which debuts at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, showcases players' devotion to worlds like Second Life, and soon the science fiction wonderment addiction that is Starcraft 2). Click through to view the trailer. More »
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If ideas from William Gibson and Cory Doctorow got mashed up, and the resulting technology was stolen by the music industry in a desperate attempt to reinvigorate their bottom line, then you'd end up with U23D, the 3D concert movie of the future. io9 took a look at U23D this week, and the experience was flashbaked into our brain matter. Find out why. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=343130&view=rss&microfeed=true Child hackers living in a semi-virtual future looking to discover why children are being kidnapped into a virtual reality world? Not just proof that Japanese kids really get much more exciting television than American children, but the plot of anime Dennō Coil, which completed its run in Japan last month and is available for curious westerners right now via fan-translation on YouTube. More »
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It's been 12 years since the Los Angeles Times speculated that we'd have robo-bailiffs, floating cameras, virtual reality goggles, computerized judges, and some kind of weird red vs. blue lightsaber battle in our courtrooms, but we're no closer to having this than we are the flying car. Hell, we'd commit a minor crime just to check all this stuff out if it existed. Robo-bailiff, FTW! Just wait until the Judge 044227 comes on Court TV, too. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=340426&view=rss&microfeed=true Mara dies in a fire while inside a virtual reality program she wrote called "Dreamworlds." After her death, she discovers that God is a hot computer program who wants Mara to heal the world — with VR sex. Thus begins Cyberella: Forbidden Passions, the weirdest scifi story ever used as an excuse for some R-rated sexy action [clip is work-safe]. More »
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