Category Archives: virtual reality

Bruce Sterling: what if VR/AR are like science fiction novels?

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A bit late, I had a busy week in the newsroom, but here is futurist, cyberpunk author, design-specialist, journalist Bruce Sterling at the closing of SXSW 2017: [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/312762034″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] What does he say about virtual reality and augmented reality? I quote (9:30): I totally adore… Continue reading →

Are VR arcades here to stay?

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My fellow journalist Dorien Luyckx visited VR Arcades in Belgium. She made a video, interviewing Quinten Horemans, founder of BeVirtual in Ghent. The interview is in Dutch – Quinten explains that an arcade enables people to try VR, together with friends and family. The advantage is the social dimension. For… Continue reading →

Sansar about to launch in open beta

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Sansar, the virtual reality worlds platform of Linden Lab (the company behind Second Life) will be in open beta this Spring. Keywords are “social” and “collaborative creation”. The video shows fascinating worlds – Sansar seems to be not one virtual world, but a platform where one can create interconnected worlds… Continue reading →

HTC brings physical objects into a virtual world

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Physical reality, virtual reality and mixed reality: it’s a matter of gradations, not of hard oppositions. The Wall Street Journal shows this from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – a tracking system by HTC Vive allowing to incorporate physical objects into a virtual environment: Then again, I don’t mean… Continue reading →

Philip Rosedale and Fred Ehrsam discuss blockchain in a virtual salon

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It seems the virtual world High Fidelity is hosting interesting events, like this salon about blockchain with Philip Rosedale (High Fideltiy, founding father of Second Life) and  Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. I think it’s a good idea to organize these salons, they remind me of the Metanomics series in Second… Continue reading →

One million headsets – success or failure?

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How much is about one million headsets? Consumers purchased 915,000 PlayStation VR headsets as of Feb. 19, roughly four months after it went on sale, so The New York Times reports. This is in line with Sony’s goal of one million by April. But how does this result, which seems… Continue reading →

Philip Rosedale wants to improve upon the real world

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The Financial Times runs an intriguing portrait of Philip Rosedale, the founding father of Linden Lab and Second Life and these days building a VR-compatible virtual world called High Fidelity. The article not only focuses on the virtual world ambitions of Rosedale but also on his renovation and building projects… Continue reading →

Virtual Reality Games as a Metaphor

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“Virtual” is often used as a metaphor for “almost nothing” – like in “it’s only virtual, it’s not real”. I encountered an interesting example of that language usage by a well-known historian – actually what he referred to was more “mixed reality” than “virtual reality”, but his logic was the… Continue reading →