Virtual Reality

While flicking through the tv a few nights back, I came across a program on Discovery Channel, it was called "Sci Fi Saved My Life: The Matrix".

Much of the material was a re-hash of what is widely known in the research community about the state-of-the-art in VR. I persisted with the program as it contained an interesting interview with Jaron Lanier
However watching the show got me thinking about the list of movies that have been and continue to be important in influencing developments and research in VR. Here is a list of some notable movies:
Seminal Hollywood moments that have been influenced by, or have influenced developments in technology.

StarWars 1977-2008
TRON 1982, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner and Cindy Morgan
Brainstorm 1983, starring Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood and Louise Fletcher
Videodrome 1983, starring James Woods, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits and Peter Dvorsky
Total Recall 1990, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone and Michael Ironside
The Lawnmower Man 1992, starring Jeff Fahey and Pierce Brosnan
Disclosure 1994, starring Michael Douglas, Demi Moore and Donald Sutherland
Strange Days 1995, starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis
Virtuosity 1995, starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe and Kelly Lynch
Johnny Mnemonic 1995, starring Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Dina Meyer and Ice-T
Andoromedia 1998, starring Hiroko Shimabukuro and Eriko Imai 
The Matrix 1999, starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburne
ExistenZ 1999, starring Jude Law, Jason Leigh, Ian Holm and Willem Dafoe
The Thirteenth Floor, 1999 starring Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol and Armin Mueller-Stahl
Avalon 2001, starring Malgorzata Foremniak and Wladyslaw Kowalski
Minority Report 2002, starring Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow and Colin Farrell

If you feel I have omitted an influential movie or have anything to say on the above please leave a comment.
Dave

well, I have been quite remiss in not maintaining my blog recently. So much so, that the number of VR environments have exploded in recent months.

Look at this from Tech Crunch:

Virtual Worlds Are So Hot Right Now: $345 Million Invested So Far This Year
I feel like today is Virtual World Day. We started off the morning covering the public beta launch of Vivaty, then Second Life and IBM announced that they bridged two virtual worlds, and Google launched its own version of virtual worlds with Lively.

If it seems like everybody is starting their own virtual world, it is because they are. A report put out today by Virtual Worlds Management tracks $161 million put into 14 virtual-world investments during the second quarter of 2008. In the first quarter there was even more activity, with $184 million put into 23 virtual worlds and supporting technology companies. That brings the total this year alone to $345 million across 37 deals. Some notable deals (you can see the full lists by clicking on the last two links above):

Second Quarter 2008

Grockit——————-MMO Learning Game——-$8 million——-Integral Capital and Benchmark

Nurien Software——–3D social networking——-$15 million——-Northern Light, Globespan, NEA

PrimeSense————-Gestural Interface———-$20.4 million—–Led by Canaan Partners

Realtime Worlds———-MMOG Developer———$50 million——–Maverick Capital, NEA

Stanford Parallel —-Parallel Processing————–$6 million——-Sun Microsystems, AMD, Nvidia, IBM,
Processing Lab for Virtual Worlds HP, and Intel

Turbine———————-MMOG——————-$40 million————–Time Warner and GGV Capital

First Quarter 2008

9You———–Virtual World/Casual Games——$100 million——–Temasek Holdings

Dizzywood —————Youth World————— $1 million——-Shelby Bonnie, Charles River Ventures

EveryScape————— Mirror World————–$7 million——–Dace, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Fix8 ———————- Avatar Content————$2 million ——–SK Telecom

Gizmoz ——————- Avatar Creation ———- $6.5 million——-DoCoMo Capital, ngi group

iOpener ——————–Mixed Reality ————-$6 million———Triangle Venture Capital

Sparkplay Media——Casual MMO with Games—–$4.25 million—–Redpoint, Prism Ventureworks

Unisfair ——————–Virtual Events Platform—–$10 million——-Norwest, Sequoia Capital

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

the Aerospace Psychology Research Group, School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, is part of a large EU Research Consortium, and they are currently looking for a researcher to work on an EU project.

The main work of the group concerns carrying out research into the human and organisational factors which underlie safety, reliability and change in complex safety-critical industries like aviation and the process industries.
The work will include VR and HCI/Human Factors.

The position is available immediately and will require one month in Milan.
The salary ranges between 30K-35K Euro (negotiable).

If you would like to know more about this position, please contact:

Alison Kay on 00353 (0) 87 2635673
or:

kayam AT tcd.ie