#virtualimmersion

[michellethielen]

We love learning about the wisdom and energy God creates! #yogafaith #VirtualImmersion with @michelle.thielen and @lizgloverwilson of @stonewaveyoga and @stonewaveyogapoughkeepsie - Pocono Immersion Students will be blessed at immersion in August! #ChristianYoga #Chakras #GodGivenEnergy #AllCreationDeclaresHisGlory !! #ChristianYogaAssociation #ChristConciousness #pennslyvania #yoga #love #poconos #200hour #ytt #teachertraining (at YOGA FAITH) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_lQatxlvQo/?igshid=6ol7187h7pfo

[david-carr-realtor-connecticut]

#VirtualImmersion drowns natural development and composite experience

[immersedin]

(via Get Ready For Virtual Reality Movies | Fast Company | Business Innovation) Jaunt's plans for 360 immersive video. Observation that expectation is that with this content it will be shorter, but people will explore longer and more often. "Jaunt just scored $6.8 million in funding for its camera that can make movies for the virtual reality Oculus Rift headset. Using the Oculus Rift dev kit--which the company purchased off of Craigslist!--Jaunt has created the algorithms necessary to give viewers the feeling of being inside a movie. The experience, according to Gizmodo, sounds pretty incredible: Immediately I was standing directly in the middle of a skate park. The sun was shining. There was a guy going back and forth over the shallow peaks and valleys directly to my right. There was no break in the scene as I looked left, and up, and all the way around behind me, and the sound remained true to the direction of his wheels along the concrete. This was a very real���like, shockingly real—3D transportation. It was a mouth agape, I-can't-stop-giggling-out-of-pure-incredulity kind of leap."

[michellethielen]

Poconos, Pennsylvania- we will see you in August! #teachertraining #christianyoga #cya @christianyogaassociation #christianyogaassociation #yoga #faith #yogafaith also see your #YOUBELONG #VirtualImmersion Classes! (at Poconos Pennsylvania) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-k8IIXFKvy/?igshid=l4jfuy9cfmv4

[immersedin]

(via Digital Hajj: How religion feels using Mecca 3D, Second Life, virtual worlds, and online.) Immersive experience as a real religious experience (not just the feeling of playing Call of Duty in a whole new way): .....Going on a technologically mediated pilgrimage might resemble the experience of a flight simulator. “You can never substitute the place where the Prophet stood,” as Chbib says. But virtual participation in religious activities can still give people an authentic experience, though of a different sort. Krystina Derrickson, an Islamic scholar, writes of visiting Mecca in the virtual world program Second Life: “When my ‘avatar’ visits the Mosque, I feel compelled to take off my avatar’s shoes,” she says, “because, really, it’s me visiting that Mosque.” The Mosque is not real, but that does not mean it lacks “a rather noticeable social and cultural reality.” Derrickson thinks that this gives it and other digital religious spaces a kind of “ambiguous” sacredness.

[immersedin]

VR (and similarly other co-presence approaches) and literal death rather than virtual death: ""The low hanging fruit of VR, to me, is horror games that purposely do jump scares. We're very close to having the first death in VR - I firmly believe that. "When the commercial version comes out, somebody is going to scare somebody to death - somebody with a heart condition or something like that. It is going to happen. Absolutely." While this may seem sensationalist at first glance, Unger was entirely sincere in his intent. If the supreme evocative power of VR is now beyond doubt, it follows that it poses certain risks to users with fragile mental or physical conditions."

[immersedin]

Academic article confirms that feeling of 'social presence' - impression that a virtual character is really there, with a person - helps generate empathy.... "This study is about pain expressed by virtual humans and empathy in users immersed in virtual reality. It focuses on whether people feel more empathy toward the pain of a virtual human when the virtual human is a realistic representation of a known individual, as opposed to an unknown person, and if social presence is related to users' empathy toward a virtual human's pain. The 42 participants were immersed in virtual reality using a large immersive cube with images retro projected on all six faces (CAVE-Like system) where they can interact in real time with virtual characters. The first immersion (baseline/control) was with a virtual animal, followed by immersions involving discussions with a known virtual human (i.e., the avatar of a person they were familiar with) or an unknown virtual human. During the verbal exchanges in virtual reality, the virtual humans expressed acute and very strong pain. The pain reactions were identical in terms of facial expressions, and verbal and nonverbal behaviors. The Conditions by Time interactions in the repeated measures analyses of variance revealed that participants were empathic toward both virtual humans, yet more empathic toward the known virtual human. Multivariate regression analyses revealed that participants' feeling of social presence—impression that the known virtual character is really there, with them—was a significant predictor of empathy."