The limits of blockchain, for now

An interesting take on the use of blockchain in the mass consumer markets by Adam Frisby, CEO and lead developer of Sinespace, a Unity-based MMO and social VR platform: on VentureBeat he explains “why blockchain isn’t ready for primetime“. “As it stands, blockchain is caught between three competing objectives: fast,… Continue reading

Gold farming revisited

I vividly remember how fascinated I was by Julian Dibbell‘s book “Play Money: or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot” (2006). The subject was gold farming, a practice described by Wikipedia as such: In the 1990s and 2000s, gold farming was the practice of… Continue reading

HTC brings physical objects into a virtual world

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

New Media experts: 3 steps to get ready for Virtual Reality

You’re a new media expert, specializing in video, social media, liveblogging or infograhics? Get ready for the final breakthrough in virtual reality, which is starting to impact sectors such as education and even the newspaper industry. As a columnist about new media for the business newspaper De Tijd in Belgium,… Continue reading

The anti-Minecraft

Lots of Second Life-people don’t like Minecraft. They consider it too primitive, too childish or whatever. I disagree, I think it’s a fantastic game helping young and not-so-young people all kinds of digital literacies. Joseph Flaherty Wired made me discover another game with Minecraft-like aesthetics, but with themed worlds which… Continue reading

Microsoft’s HoloLens delivers a new level of augmented reality

Dieter Bohn and Tom Warren at The Verge had an amazing mixed realities experience at Microsoft. They tried out the HoloLens, a headset that projects holograms into real space. They report about having Minecraft on a coffee table and about an amazing experience during which an engineer who was communicating… Continue reading

Virtual Reality as a Tool for Humanity

A short but beautiful video featuring the grandfather of virtual reality, professor Tom Furness. He can be situated directly into a tradition which goes back to Vannevar Bush, who in 1945 described the Memex-device in As We May Think – a technological dream of making knowledge accessible in ways corresponding… Continue reading

Virtuix works on virtual treadmill for military and police

Virtuix, the maker of the virtual reality treadmill Omni, prepares applications beyond gaming. Here you see the treadmill in a gaming context: http://youtu.be/aTtfAQEeAJI Roel Verrycken, the US correspondent of the Belgian newspaper De Tijd, had an interview with founder Jan Goetgeluk and asked which new applications his company is developing…. Continue reading

Peter Diamandis: you will (also) be a virtual world citizen

The Belgian newspaper De Tijd has a great interview (Dutch language) with Singularity University co-founder, author, entrepreneur and futurist Peter Diamandis. When asked about the short-term evolution, Diamandis referred to virtual worlds. He expects interesting stuff to happen there as those worlds become more “real”. People will go there for work and… Continue reading