This ScienceDaily article reports food presented in a virtual reality environment causes the same emotional responses as real food. From the article: "Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Annals of General Psychiatry compared the responses of people with anorexia and bulimia, and a control group, to the virtual and real-life snacks, suggesting that virtual food can be used for the evaluation and treatment of eating disorders.

This VR Geek Blog article shows how to build your own low-cost virtual reality wall. From the article: "Following the VR Kit – HMD (VR Goggles), here’s the Wall ! If you want to build one for yourself, join the VR Geeks !

I have to say I’ve been waiting to have this kind of setup at home for 15 years, and I could finally build one myself !!

A 2.20m x 1m65 3d screen ! With that I can look at the 3D pictures and movies I took with my Fuji W1 3D camera, play (in 2D) with my game consoles, watch (2D) movies and .. get immersed !

Microsoft’s Kinect was announced at a huge performance at the 2010 E3 trade show. The Xbox Kinect is the official name for the Natal project Microsoft announced last year. To control the games and features on the Xbox Kinect, the user is expected to use their whole body. Release of the Microsoft Kinect will probably be in November, and also the Kinect could be sold as an add-on to the XBox 360 gaming system.

Article Resource: Microsoft Xbox Kinect - Motion-controlled gaming goes hands free By Personal Money Store

The way the Microsoft Kinect operates

The Microsoft Kinect system uses a two-camera system to capture motion. Depth is captured by one camera, when another takes RGB color photographs and video. Combined, these cameras can re-create full body motion.This means there could be no controllers and no separation between game and player.

The games published to the Kinect

This Physorg.com article takes a look at the displays of the future. From the article: "Talk about gazing into the future. Imagine ultra high-definition TVs not much thicker than a millimeter. How about electronic books made with plastic screens that flex like a magazine? Or perhaps a display that lets you touch a virtual version of yourself on the other side of the glass?

The technology to build these crazy new gadgets is being shown in Seattle this week during Display Week, the Society for Information Display conference.

A combination science fair and industry bazaar, the event is drawing 6,000 people from most of the companies developing TVs, monitors, touch screens , electronic books and cell phone screens.

Inventors and component manufacturers will be showing their latest creations to consumer-electronics companies, looking for technology and materials to build the next iPad or wafer-thin 3-D TV.

This Neurokuz article discuss the illusion of body ownership in relation to VR. From the article: "The classic ‘rubber hand illusion’ gives profound insight to our brain’s ability to confuse the real and living with the inanimate. Originally reported by Matthew Botvinick and Jonathan Cohen in 1998, when people have their hand hidden from view and watch a dummy hand being stroked with a paintbrush while their hidden hand is also stroked, they feel the stroke to be coming from the dummy hand rather than their real hand.

This Physorg article talks about a low-cost gestural interface which uses a pair of brightly colored lycra gloves. From the article: "Ever since Steven Spielberg’s 2002 sci-fi movie Minority Report, in which a black-clad Tom Cruise stands in front of a transparent screen manipulating a host of video images simply by waving his hands, the idea of gesture-based computer interfaces has captured the imagination of technophiles. Academic and industry labs have developed a host of prototype gesture interfaces, ranging from room-sized systems with multiple cameras to detectors built into laptops’ screens. But MIT researchers have developed a system that could make gestural interfaces much more practical.

This Barco press release reports Microsoft and Barco have partnered for the design and implementation of a new collaborative meeting room in the Microsoft Technology Center Paris. From the press release: "Microsoft, a world leader in computer and software technology, and global visualization specialist Barco announce that they have partnered for the design and implementation of a new meeting room in the Microsoft Technology Center Paris. This room, named the Envisioning Center, is equipped with state-of-the-art collaboration technologies as part of a unified communication process.

This Physorg.com article is looking at an object recognition system, developed by MIT researchers, which breaks images into ever smaller parts. From the article: "Object recognition is one of the core topics in computer vision research: After all, a computer that can see isn't much use if it has no idea what it's looking at. Researchers at MIT, working with colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed new techniques that should make object recognition systems much easier to build and should enable them use computer memory more efficiently.

This ScienceDaily article reports researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid's Facultad de Informática have developed a model for 3-D virtual learning environments based on an autonomous virtual tutor that detects collaboration. From the article: "There are two sides to collaborative learning: collaborating to learn and learning to collaborate. For this reason, learners may require guidance on both how to perform a task and on questions concerning collaboration.

The proposed model is based on analysing non-verbal communication about collaborative interaction that takes place while a task is performed. An avatar personifies the tutor in the learning process, which materializes in the visual framework provided by virtual environments, thereby supporting the collaboration process.

This Technology Review article describes a floor giving tactile, audio and visual feedback. From the article: "Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada have developed floor tiles that can simulate the look, sound and feel of snow, grass or pebbles underfoot. Such a tool could perhaps be used for augmented reality applications, tele-presence, training, rehabilitation or even as virtual foot controllers.

The modular "haptic" floor tiling system is made up of a deformable plate suspended on a platform. Between the plate and platform are sensors that detect forces from the user's foot. And the plate can give off vibrations that mimic the feeling of stepping on different materials. A top-down projection and speakers add visual and audio feedback.