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The 10th-gen Apple iPad hits a low of $300, plus the rest of the week's best tech deals

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Spotify says it has quietly begun offering refunds for its soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing. The company told <strong>Engadget</strong> on Thursday that, as of last Friday, customers with proof of purchase can contact customer service and get their money back for the vehicle streaming device.

Spotify says it will refund Car Thing purchases

Amazon Prime Day 2024: Everything you need to know about the upcoming sale in July

Android’s RCS message capabilities are inching closer to iMessage’s. Google said today that you can now edit RCS messages, bringing them into parity with the iMessage editing feature Apple added two years ago.

You can now edit RCS chats in Android Messages

Amazon isn't only interrupting its Prime Video subscribers' viewing experience with ads -- it's also removing their access to Dolby Vision and Atmos unless they pay $3 a month on top of their subscription fees.

Amazon Prime Video won't offer Dolby Vision and Atmos on its ad-supported plan

But Meta has confirmed that restriction won’t apply to its trending feature. “Political content can be a topic,” a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. “We will only remove political topics if they violate our Community Guidelines or other applicable integrity policies.”

Meta is testing a trending topics feature on Threads

Engadget

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Investigating Internet Freedom & Digital Democracy with Nicole Scott and Simon Morgan

নিকোল স্কট এবং সাইমন মরগনের সাথে ইন্টারনেট ফ্রিডম এবং ডিজিটাল ডেমোক্রেসি

Internetfreiheit und digitale Demokratie mit Nicole Scott und Simon Morgon

Libertad en Internet y democracia digital con Nicole Scott y Simon Morgon

Liberté sur Internet et démocratie numérique avec Nicole Scott et Simon Morgon

निकोल स्कॉट और साइमन मॉर्गन के साथ इंटरनेट स्वतंत्रता और डिजिटल लोकतंत्र

ニコール・スコットとサイモン・モーゴンによるインターネットの自由とデジタル民主主義

Nicole Scott과 Simon Morgon이 함께하는 인터넷 자유와 디지털 민주주의

Liberdade na Internet e democracia digital com Nicole Scott e Simon Morgon

Свобода Интернета и цифровая демократия с Николь Скотт и Саймоном Моргоном

Nicole Scott ve Simon Morgon ile İnternet Özgürlüğü ve Dijital Demokrasi

Tự do Internet & Dân chủ Kỹ thuật số với Nicole Scott và Simon Morgon

妮可·斯科特和西蒙·摩根的互联网自由与数字民主

To Build, or Not to Build, That is the Question: Techno-Optimism vs. Decelerationism

নির্মাণ করা, না নির্মাণ করা, এটাই প্রশ্ন: টেকনো-অপটিমিজম বনাম মন্থরতাবাদ

Bauen oder nicht bauen, das ist die Frage: Technooptimismus vs. Entschleunigungismus

Construir o no construir, esa es la cuestión: tecnooptimismo versus desaceleracionismo

Construire ou ne pas construire, telle est la question : techno-optimisme contre décélérationnisme

निर्माण करें, या न करें, यही प्रश्न है: तकनीकी-आशावाद बनाम मंदीवाद

構築すべきか、構築すべきでないか、それが問題です: テクノオプティミズム vs. 減速主義

건설하느냐, 건설하지 않느냐, 그것이 문제이다: 기술 낙관주의 vs. 감속주의

Construir ou não construir, eis a questão: Tecno-otimismo vs.

Строить или не строить, вот в чем вопрос: технооптимизм против деселерационизма

İnşa Etmek ya da İnşa Etmemek Sorun Bu: Tekno-İyimserlik ve Yavaşlamacılık

Xây dựng hay không xây dựng, đó là câu hỏi: Lạc quan về công nghệ và chủ nghĩa giảm tốc

建设还是不建设，这就是问题：技术乐观主义与减速主义

243 Stories To Learn About Virtual Reality

153 Stories To Learn About Vr

The grown-ups have entered the room. On February 6, Google the imminent launch of Bard, its search experience fueled by conversational AI. Within 24 hours, Microsoft answered Google by a new version of Bing Search also powered by conversational AI. It's an OpenAI Arms Race. OpenAI didn't start it. But OpenAI was the catalyst for these back-to-back announcements when the company made its ChatGPT chatbot available to the public in November 2022. Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, noted on its blog that the new Bing “is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 – and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.” The new Bing had better live up to those words. I understand why Microsoft launched a version of the conversational Bing in preview mode. When you are a challenger brand, you have to be bold. But Bing . announced releasing has nowhere near the cachet and popularity as Google Search And conversational AI is dogged with concerns about and . The critics will actively look for potential problems on Bing. By contrast, Google has stressed it is taking more time to vet Bard with “trusted testers” -- a demographically and geographically diverse group of people external to Google who are supposed to help Google mitigate against bias creeping into the Bard search experience. : on February 8, Google's new conversational AI tool, Bard, provided inaccurate information in a high-profile public demo and promotion, causing a public embarrassment. The gaffe reinforced the wisdom of Google's original approach of developing AI-powered search tools on its own timetable and amplified the concerns about the accuracy of conversational AI tools. Both Google and Microsoft have noted that with conversational AI, search becomes a jumping-off point for deeper, more creative experiences. According to Microsoft's blog, accuracy bias An update There are times when you need more than an answer – you need inspiration. The new Bing can generate the content to help you. It can help you write an email, create a 5-day itinerary for a dream vacation to Hawaii, with links to book your travel and accommodations, prep for a job interview or create a quiz for trivia night. The new Bing also cites all its sources, so you’re able to see links to the web content it references. And Sundar Pichai wrote that “Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.” In addition, Microsoft announced that it has updated the Edge browser with new AI capabilities and a new look, and the company has added two new functionalities: Chat and compose. Per Microsoft, with the Edge Sidebar, you can ask for a summary of a lengthy financial report to get the key takeaways – and then use the chat function to ask for a comparison to a competing company’s financials and automatically put it in a table. You can also ask Edge to help you compose content, such as a LinkedIn post, by giving it a few prompts to get you started. After that, you can ask it to help you update the tone, format and length of the post. Edge can understand the web page you’re on and adapts accordingly. So far, at least one test of the functionality with Bing and Edge, , has earned a thumbs-up. from Engadget The integration is a good move on Microsoft’s part. Edge is hardly a popular browser, and here again, Microsoft is acting like a challenger brand by making a bolder move than Google did. Two lingering questions will be addressed soon. What will Bard and Bing do to Google's and Microsoft's advertising models? Conversational AI tools flourish by giving searchers detailed responses instead of links to other sites. But paid search on both Google and Bing depend on people staying engaged on Google Search and Microsoft Bing clicking on links. Will problems with inaccurate responses and bias damage the search user experience? Having people vet Bard is no guarantee of success. Unless they’ve been chosen carefully and in an inclusive way, they could make problems of bias worse. Meanwhile, it was time for Big Tech to put its muscle and thinking behind conversational AI. You can be sure that Amazon, the most popular source of product searches (even more popular than Google), will make an announcement of its own, and so will Apple. Google especially needed to act. OpenAI was eating its lunch even though Google had been working on its own conversational AI tool for years. Once Bard goes live officially, the world will really change.

The Conversational AI Arms Race Has Begun

কথোপকথনমূলক এআই অস্ত্র রেস শুরু হয়েছে

Das konversationale KI-Wettrüsten hat begonnen

La carrera armamentista de IA conversacional ha comenzado

La course aux armements de l'IA conversationnelle a commencé

संवादी एआई आर्म्स रेस शुरू हो गई है

会話型 AI の軍拡競争が始まった

대화형 AI 군비 경쟁이 시작되었습니다

A corrida armamentista conversacional da IA começou

Konuşmaya Dayalı Yapay Zeka Silahlanma Yarışı Başladı

Cuộc chạy đua vũ trang AI đàm thoại đã bắt đầu

会话式 AI 军备竞赛已经开始

Imagine a robot that can see, hear, and smell 10,000 times better than humans and computers. One would think this is impossible, but it is, in fact, completely plausible. The human senses are limited and it is, for this reason, police and army personnel use trained sniffer dogs to detect drugs, bombs, and fugitives. The problem is that caring for and maintaining these animals is costly and time-consuming. Enter the combination of science, technology, and biology - or rather, synthetic biology. In a study published recently in the journal, , researchers have discovered a way to harness the capabilities of the locust, which has a highly-sensitive sense of sight, touch, and smell. Biosensor and Bioelectronics By using the antenna of a locust and keeping it “alive”, scientists were able to capture a large variety of smells detected and undetected by humans. Antennae from a desert locust were connected to an electronic system that, using machine learning, detects and measures odors with a level of sensitivity usually only found in animals and insects. According to , they then paired the robot with an algorithm that learned to characterize the smells by their signal output. an article in Engadget In this way, the team created a system that could reliably differentiate between eight “pure” odors, including geranium, lemon, and marzipan, and two mixtures of different smells. This phenomenal discovery could have far-reaching applications. Researchers say such robots could one day be used to detect drugs and explosives, and could theoretically replace canines in airport and police search operations. Obviously, this would be cheaper and more efficient. It can also be used to detect problems in the food industry such as freshness, mold, and various other bacteria. Ideally, it could also be used by doctors to detect various types of diseases and cancers not typically detected by other technologies. While the researcher claims the robot is a “scientific first,” this may be a stretch. Last June, researchers from Michigan State University published research detailing a system that used surgically-altered locusts to . detect cancer cells As far back as 2016, scientists also tried turning locusts . into bomb-sniffing cyborgs Clearly, researchers have been thinking about this technology and the need for it for a long time now. The concept is there but perhaps needs a few more years until technology is advanced enough to be able to put this terrific and exciting technology to use in the field. Regardless, once this technology is paired with AI, it can be used not only to detect issues but also to predict issues as well. This would be a game-changer and would accelerate the advancement of synthetic biology and its practical applications.

How AI Will Soon Integrate With Synthetic Biology

On the early web, some content pioneers experimented with interactive, community-fed, literate smut. In the mid to late 80’s, a group of undergrads met at Brown University. They were immersed in the liberal arts—semiotics, philosophy, visual art—and in any other generation bound for careers as professors or editors or marketers in the media field. But this group, spurned by an unwelcoming job market and a rising computer literacy in the general public, turned to the web instead and became the backbone of the popular tech scene in New York known as Silicon Alley. Among them was Steven Johnson, who joined Stephanie Syman to launch one of the earliest online magazines. The group also included eventual head of MTV interactive Nicholas Butterworth, who got his start creating the web-based bulletin board . Mark Tribe was also part of that class, and he would go on to create a virtual community called Rhizome. But one of the last of this class to get started—and certainly the most enigmatic—was Rufus Griscom, who created the erotic online magazine alongside his partner Genevieve Field. Feed, SonicNet Nerve Griscom met Field when at a publishing house, where they both worked as editors. They hatched an idea early for a literary erotica website, that leaned into nude photographs of real people’s bodies, and long form articles where nothing was off limits. Griscom watched from the sidelines with interest as his friends from Brown in Silicon Alley began to shape what a site like that would even look like. Then they gave it a name: webzines. Webzines like and and were cultural products born on the web with their own editorial mannerisms, aesthetic, and attitude. Zines were pithy but often not short (word count doesn’t cost a thing when its digital), blending sarcasm and wit with sharp criticism of the mainstream cultural status quo. Word Suck Feed There was something else that stopped Griscom and Field from launching their idea: the law. It wasn’t until the Communications Decency Act was amended in 1996—which enabled a much wider set of content to be published to the web without censorship, a huge victory for the open web—that Field and Griscom felt they could launch something official, and maybe even attract commercial investors which so many of the soon dot-com bubble had already done. The day after the Communications Decency Act was passed, they launched Nerve.com. Conceived as a spiritual successor to the Playboy of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Nerve’s take on the webzine featured experimental formats and bold nude photography paired with longform editorials exploring sex, gender, sexuality, and relationships. As a product of the information age however, the content on Nerve was decidedly more cerebral and high-minded than most pornographic sites of the early web—”Playboy’s body with the New Yorker’s brain,” as a writer from would later put it. The site—and its writers—were able to create a unique editorial voice that was friendly, open, and sex-positive. “Literate smut,” as its slogan read. Entertainment Weekly But what really set Nerve apart was the way it centered its two enigmatic founders, Griscom and Field. The first version of the site even featured a picture of their coffee table that subbed in for the site’s navigation. But that was just the beginning. Because of the explicit nature of the site’s content and the fact that the two were actually dating, Griscom and Field found themselves in the spotlight. They were interviewed by Charlie Rose, featured in and and had a whole HBO documentary produced about them. Time Newsweek But it was a position they soon relished. The duo would throw lavish (and occasionally obscene) parties on behalf of . And each—consciously or not—cultivated a public persona that intended to match the voice of the site: out, loud, and not safe for work. Nerve Their public exposure and popular editorials helped launch Nerve to a huge level of success very quickly, leapfrogging some of Griscom’s classmates. By 1999, against the backdrop of what would soon become the dot-com bubble bursting, they were able to make their first acquisition, a like-minded community known as Bianca.com. Bianca.com was one of the earliest sites ever on the web, and certainly among its first official communities. It was developed by Jill Atkinson, Chris Miller, and David Thau in 1994 in the night hours after they logged from their day jobs at Hotwired ( ). They built the software that ran the site themselves, because nothing like it existed yet. making it the second site launched by a Hotwired employee in secret In its simplest form, Bianca.com was a series of chat rooms, forums, and guest books grouped into different categories where people could go looking for a bit of x-rated fun mixed in with their everyday conversation. Its community congregated primarily around topics of sex, from the mildly suggestive to the outright pornographic. But it also blended high brow discussions of culture and media with its smut. “It was smart high, minded, a peep of class amidst orgiastic moans of crass,” went one description from Wired. The site used the fictional persona of Bianca as a way to give it a bit of personality. Stories about Bianca were littered all through the site. She welcomed visitors into her “home” on the homepage, and visitors could navigate around by clicking through a crude, hand-drawn map. Each “room” in the house centered on a different theme and salacious backstory. Enter the kitchen for recipes to get in the mood, and the bedroom for wildly explicit dreams, for instance. The site was maintained by Bianca’s —a word that had a different connotation that in it does today—a group of moderators who’s job was to “maintain the shack, but they do not govern it… [to] quietly try to provide you with the tools to accomplish all your hearts could desire.” Trolls But it was the crowd of people that gathered at Bianca’s smut shack that made it a cult hit of the early web. It would never quite hit the traffic of publications like Playboy, or even Nerve, but it did gather a larger and larger base of loyal visitors. Between the raunchy exchanges and links to pornographic images, members would chat about books, movies, philosophy, and trade in occasional life lessons. Beneath its smut-covered veneer, Bianca was simply a place to have a conversation. Which made it a good compliment for Nerve in the late 90’s; Nerve provided the editorial and Bianca could provide the discussion. Bianca was never quite able to figure out how to make money, after all. It experimented with memberships and advertising, but neither proved sustainable in the long run. In May of 1999, when acquired Bianca, it was as much a lifeline for the site as an equitable partnership. Nerve But this was 1999, and within a year, the stock market would come crashing down, bringing most of the dot-com world with it. Nerve couldn’t hold on for very long. In the aftermath of the dot-com bubble burst, Nerve struggled to foot the bill for the bandwidth created by Bianca’s large community and they announced plans to shut the site down. Still, Bianca held on for several more years. But after years of neglect, the site was swarmed by vandals looking to spam or diminish the site. It eventually was taken offline completely. Nerve continued to operate for several years following the dot-com collapse, and grew its magazine publication, and even won a few awards in the later half of the 2000’s. But it too eventually folded under new ownership and by the 2010’s was no longer publishing new content. Bianca and Nerve almost struck a partnership that could’ve lasted. If only they had got the timing right. Sources Aaron Dinin. "Web Masters Episode #53: Genevieve Field." Web Masters. October 10, 2021. https://latonas.com/blog/web-masters-episode-53-genevieve-field/ V. Blue. "How sex censorship killed the internet we love." Engadget. January 1, 2019. https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-31-sex-censorship-killed-internet-fosta-sesta.html Farhad Manjoo. "Shut the Smut Shack? Users Moan." Wired. May 5, 2001. https://www.wired.com/2001/05/shut-the-smut-shack-users-moan/ Kaitlin Quistgaard. "Bianca shacks up with Nerve." Salon. May 5, 1999. https://www.salon.com/1999/05/12/bianca/ "bianca’s Trolls." Bianca. January 1, 1999. https://web.archive.org/web/19990128165553/http://foyer.bianca.com/shack/trolls.html First Published Here.

The Untold Story of 'Silicon Alley'

A mysterious group called the 'Video Industry Association of America' is trying to wipe the homepages of dozens of reputable sites from Google search. The targets, which stand accused of violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention policy, include Verizon, Pinterest, and Engadget. Google says that it's aware of these fraudulent notices but, thus far, they are not without damage. Over the past few years, copyright holders have asked Google to remove billions of links to allegedly pirated content. Most of these DMCA notices point to infringing material but occasionally mistakes are made, which can do serious harm. Even worse, the DMCA is also abused by scammers for personal gain. Over the past weeks, we have seen a new wave of suspicious takedown requests. These notices are not standard DMCA notices but point out links that supposedly bypass DRM restrictions, which violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention policy. Google handles these ‘Section 1201’ notices outside of the regular takedown system, which means that they’re not listed in the public transparency report. However, they are sent to Lumen’s takedown archive, where we spotted dozens of these dubious takedowns. “Video Industry Association of America” Two weeks ago we saw several notices that listed the “United States Copyright Office” as the sender, supposedly acting on behalf of the “Video Industry Association of America.” At the time, the Copyright Office confirmed that these were . sent by an imposter In recent days we have seen several similar notices and this time the is listed as both the sender and the copyright holder. However, plenty of questions remain. Video Industry Association of America First of all, we’re not aware of any legitimate organization that calls itself the “Video Industry Association of America.” But even if we were to believe that, the takedown request itself is rather confusing, as . this example shows The ‘American’ organization starts one request off in Russian and finds it hard to construct proper English sentences. In another notice, it complains of sites and apps that circumvent the copyright protection of streaming services, while classifying these as “ .” software cracks Things get even more problematic when we look at the URLs that are reported. While these include tools such as DVDFab and YouTube-rippers, which some rightsholders see as problematic, various legitimate sites are targeted as well. Targets Include Verizon, The Verge, and Quora For example, includes the homepages of Internet providers such as Spectrum, Xfinity, and Verizon, as well as the news sites Wired, The Verge, USA Today, and Techradar. this notice In some cases, the notices list articles that explain how people can download content from streaming services such as Netflix. However, those mostly point to legal options, such as about Netflix’s offline viewing feature. this Wired article This is just the tip of the iceberg. We have also seen Engadget, CNBC, CNET, and many other news sites targeted. Even Quora, PureVPN, and Pinterest can’t escape the wrath of the Video Industry Association of America. Legitimate Sites Removed from Google The good news is that Google took no action in response to most of these takedown requests. However, . The smaller news outlets , and had their homepages . not all sites were that lucky Fossbytes.com Techloot Robots.net wiped from Google’s search results TorrentFreak spoke to Fossbytes’ co-founder Adarsh Verma, who said that these claims damage the publication’s reputation and lead to a reduction in traffic. In addition to Fossbytes’ homepage, explaining how people can legally download videos from Netflix has been removed from Google’s search results as well. an article Google is Aware of the Problem Fossbytes reported the issue to Google, which informed the site that there is no official counter-notification process for these anti-circumvention takedowns. As such, the URLs remain deindexed for now. “There is no formal counter notification process available under US law for circumvention, so we have not reinstated these URLs,” Google replied, requesting a detailed explanation from the site. The response above comes from an email Fossbytes shared with TorrentFreak. This reveals some interesting details that are not available in the Lumen database, including the name, email address, and geolocation of the ‘Video Industry Association of America’ representative. As can be seen above, the sender is actually located in Russia and identifies itself as “Wolf Fang,” which isn’t a typical name, not even in Russia. The email address, which we won’t publish, comes from Gmail and references another animal’s fangs. Google is Aware of the Problem Speaking with TorrentFreak, a Google spokesperson says that the company is aware of the fraudulent activity and is taking action. “We are aware of these fraudulent notices. We have a number of mechanisms in place to detect abuse, and are always making improvements to our approach. Our transparency efforts are designed to help third parties, including journalists, identify these types of issues, and when they come to light, we reinstate URLs as appropriate,” Google says. Based on Google’s response, it seems likely that Fossbytes, Robots.net, and other wrongfully flagged sites, can expect their links to reappear in Google’s search results eventually. For now, it remains a mystery who’s behind these notices. It wouldn’t surprise us if the “Video Industry Association of America’ is actually a direct competitor of the stream-ripping and DRM circumvention tools that are reported. This is we several in the past. A competitor targets URLs from competing apps and sites, so their own site will end up higher in Google’s search results. a strategy have seen times In this case, however, the person in question is drawing quite a bit of attention, by adding hundreds of perfectly legitimate URLs to the takedown requests.

Mysterious Group Tries to Wipe Dozens of Reputable Sites From Google Search

Un grupo misterioso intenta borrar docenas de sitios de buena reputación de la Búsqueda de Google

Un groupe mystérieux tente de supprimer des dizaines de sites réputés de la recherche Google

रहस्यमय समूह ने Google खोज से दर्जनों प्रतिष्ठित साइटों को मिटाने की कोशिश की

謎のグループが、Google 検索から数十の評判の良いサイトを消去しようとしています

Grupo misterioso tenta apagar dezenas de sites respeitáveis da pesquisa do Google

Nhóm bí ẩn cố gắng xóa hàng chục trang web có uy tín khỏi Google Tìm kiếm

神秘组织试图从谷歌搜索中清除数十个知名网站

The principles we use to create effective VR and AR interactions have existed for as long as we have walked this earth. When the Internet was new, UX Designers were still a thing to come. I will never forget the first Javascript plugin I used: A typewriting effect that spit out green letters to form a terribly long and silly welcome message. It took forever to load and it was completely useless, but nobody else had anything like that in their Geocities pages, so I felt like I owned the web. Those were the days when the Internet was just becoming a thing, and we had no idea how new interactions and challenges would shape our careers. Today, we can check our thoughts against a dozen design systems that have already done all the heavy lifting for us; we know what works and what doesn’t. and those of us who had gotten good at thinking in terms of screens saw a perfect summer storm forming. How could I train myself in something so different from what I had been doing for the last dozen years? As we were simmering in certainty that we had conquered web usability, VR came along, Luckily, these fears were unfounded. Some of them , but most are actually based on the way human beings perceive and interact with the world. VR does present some exciting questions, but when it comes to principles on interaction we already have most of the answers. come from print Introducing: Virtual Reality Patterns What you will find here is a compilation of some of the basic perception principles that guide both our physical world and VR + AR experience design. I’ll be mostly focusing on the ones that are specific to VR as opposed to visual design in general — so you won’t see much detail going into Gestalt laws of proximity, similarity, continuation, common fate, etc. 1. Flat Surface vs Curved Design If you look at a flat surface (these words on the very screen you are facing, for example,) the elements placed right in front of your eyes will be more accessible than the ones on the edges or sides. Large flat surfaces that show distributed elements across them do not offer them all in an equal way. A screen is a small area, but imagine a wall with a person standing 1 meter away from it. How visible will the paintings 2 meters to each side be? Designing for a flat surface is very different from designing for a spherical world that also happens to have the user at its centre. You can circumvent the obstacle of elements being out of good reach by using, instead of a flat surface, a curved one. When the information is ‘wrapped’ around the user, they can easily navigate it without even having to take a single step. 2. Skeumorphic Design Skeumorphism is the idea of designing virtual things that mimic their real world counterparts, enabling the user to leverage their experiences with the real world. My favorite example of the , which was skeumorphic until we abandoned diskettes (the trashcan icon, on the other hand, prevails to this day.) save icon Skeuomorphism has fallen out of fashion in web and app design due to growing flat design trends, but its usefulness should not be discarded: It helped an entire generation learn how to navigate the digital era. There is no need for a VR app to things hyper-realistically. Skeuomorphism can be very useful, but it can also be taken too far. Instead, it’s more useful to think in terms of , rather than photo-realism: do cues ) "A given design does not need to include every possible cue, but the cues that are used must be concordant with one another — they need to work in harmony." ( Beau Cronin, Speculations on neuro-motivated design for VR In short: Use skeuomorphism when appropriate, but keep your options open. 3. Use of Depth This time, try slowly bringing your index one towards your nose. Keep your focus on it so it stays sharp. Now move it closer and closer. As soon as you get to (this varies from person to person, but mine is around) 10 cms, you will no longer be able to focus on it. The same basic principle applies to VR. If you place objects too close or too far from the user, they won’t be sharp enough for them to interact with it. The clue is to find a balance between close enough to be seen and far enough to be able to focus on it, with enough cues to give a proper sense of location. Depth perception is a combination of multiple factors, but it helps when we have things to compare against each other. "The most comfortable range of depths for a user to look at in the Rift is between 0.75 and 3.5 meters (1 unit in Unity = 1 meter) ) ." ( Oculus Developers 4. Motion Flow and Visual Cues Motion flow sounds stricter than it actually is. It’s about not creating experiences that wouldn’t happen in real life. If you do, you might be throwing the user into a motion sickness and nausea party (and possibly ruin their future enjoyment of VR, as lots of people do not give it a second try after a sickly experience.) The camera in VR is always mapped to the player’s head. It should always stay there. There are many ways of grabbing attention that do not require camera changes, and they are all supported by our evolutionary history. One especially: (I dare you to stare at grass and not freak out at all the movement you will notice if you truly focus on it.) This magnificent perception ability was born as a survival mechanism, and is one of our strongest allies when it comes to designing interaction. Just ask micro-animations. We are extremely good at noticing movement As a species we are also quite fascinated with the second, combine the two and you will be able to guide the interaction extra-effectively. So, instead of forcing the camera out of a person’s brain and scarring them for life, guide the person using other clues like movement and light . Read more: The Importance of Lighting in Creating Immersive VR 5. Interface Considerations Based on Human Vision Our eyes are marvelous organs that have evolved to actually focus only on a tiny area at a time. If you are willing, do the following: Extend your arm and look at That is approximately the area that is focussed or sharp in your field of vision (no kidding.) your thumbnail. These more or less two degrees your eye can ‘truly see’ are, luckily, accompanied by the ability to focus your attention on other areas in the field of vision, although they are and remain blurred. A 1:1 is advisable, as we are used to landscape formats on the web but they are not and would actually force a person to tilt their head in VR. Because of this, any meaningful controls you plan to use on your VR interface should not be placed in the periphery, but on the area right in front of the user. natural Other considerations for designing VR interfaces include: scale your interactive elements so that they match a real experience. For example, make buttons large enough for the user to interact with them without risking touching other interface elements. Appropriate scaling of elements: : Be sure to space out UI elements so they don’t trigger multiple elements accidentally. Limit unintended interactions 6. Anchor objects A visual or anchor point is an essential part of any successful (and nausea-free) VR experience. You need something that remains stationary when everything else moves, imagine otherwise a flight simulator without a cockpit, or a shooting game without an actual weapon. We are constantly evaluating our experiences by making comparisons. In size, in color. In space, in time. Never, ever, leave an anchor point out. Studies have shown that even a virtual nose can actually help reduce sickness. 7. Holophonic sound Sound is as important as visual input for a truly realistic experience. Without the right audio cues, the brain doesn't fully buy into the illusion. There’s a little map in your brain even when you’re not seeing the objects (…) If the sound is consistent with geometry, you’ll know automatically where things are even if they’re not in your view field. “ ” (Ramani Duraiswami, professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and co-founder of VisiSonics ) There are creators playing around with , or spherical microphones that capture a sound field in all directions, but other techniques are also highly effective. For example, rendering audio to objects as they — or the users- move through a setting (something almost everyone is familiar with thanks to ’ immersive cinema audio.) ambisonics attached Dolby Laboratories Adding sound to an experience will significantly refine and enhance its interaction. If you want to learn more about VR and audio, I wholeheartedly recommend by Mona Lalwani. this excellent Engadget article Conclusion In short, designing interaction for VR does require a completely new set of skills, but is instead based on principles that have long accompanied us. If it all should come to one thing, it’s this: not If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a good virtual reality. This article was originally published on Prototypr in 2017: https://blog.prototypr.io/designing-experiences-for-virtual-reality-lessons-from-the-physical-world-23c942741894

How Learning from the Physical World Can Help Us Design Virtual Reality Experiences

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