The people who get married in Second Life, the idea there seems to be that love is purely a product of the mind, and that just seems insane to me. The body has such a central role in our sexual lives, in our physical lives, that you can't just leave it behind.

Q&A with author Tim Guest [Nerve]

"What we're trying to do is take people into a virtual crack-related neighborhood or crack-related setting and have them experience cravings, just like they would in the real world," Rosenthal said.

It's all a form of classical conditioning, a phenomenon first explored by Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate when a sound occurred, commonly believed to be the ringing of a bell. By ringing the bell before feeding the animal it began to associate the bell with the anticipation of food.

The main difference here is the use of virtual reality to provide the stimulus, rather than actually putting crack cocaine on a table and hitting the addicts with rolled-up newspaper whenever they reach for it. "Bad crackhead!"

While the program has had some success, Rosenthal doesn't see his work as merely a way to help addicts recover their lives.

"This isn't about cocaine, and this isn't really about substance use," He said. "This is about creating new learning and extending that learning to the real world."

In another experiment a hammer was swung towards the neck of the 3D construct, causing subjects to start to sweat, feeling as if they were about to be struck.

"This was a bizarre, fascinating experience for the participants - it felt absolutely real for them," Dr. Ehrsson says.

"This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of teleportation. If we can project people into a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications. The experience of playing video games could reach a whole new level."

My one worry about the technology used in gaming applications is that it could be far too real. I've been scared out of my wits playing horror games in the past. What if it were so real I felt I was in the game itself? I could easily see gaming-induced panic attacks occurring. How real do we want to get?

How to be in two places at once [globeandmail.com - Thanks Julian!]

"This isn't the kind of technology, or model, that this industry — or Orkin — is used to considering," notes David Lamb, Orkin's vice president of learning and media services. He's working with senior officers in the company to build a business case for such training, and, given the potential savings the company could eventually realize across its 400 branch offices, "there's a very high probability we'll move into this arena."

Stone's other clients include a medical devices firm, a global energy company looking to train power plant employees in a safe environment, and a major logistics company that he's created a driving simulation for using the Wiimote in a plastic steering wheel assembly.

But why the Wiimote, when other motion sensing devices have been around for years?

The advantage of the Wiimote is that it's a "human-centric device," says Eric Klopfer, a professor at MIT. A gyroscopic mouse, by contrast, "maps well onto the computer's interface, but not to the person's. The Wiimote fits the user. ... People know intuitively what to do with it when they pick it up because we use it like devices we are familiar with — bats, rackets, wands, etc."

Hit up the link below for a deeper look at what Brown can do for you. Comments about the sexual applications of the Wiimote in Second Life are sure to follow.

Wii + Second Life = New Training Simulator [Wired]

Limpit over at WiiDs found this outdoor Wii kiosk in his home town of London. Two young gentlemen in white puffy Wii coats and hats demoed Wii Sports outdoors to an adoring crowd of onlookers on a Samsung HD TV.

This could really add a whole new level of realism to Wii Sports. Imagine dragging your Wii and your big ole TV outside and playing a round of Wii baseball in the rain, just like the professionals do! Your neighbors could pull up lawn chairs and boxes of popcorn and coolers full of beer that they can throw at you when you make a particularly terrible play. It would be the ultimate in virtual reality. Flynn De Marco

Wii Outdoors ?! [WiiDs]

CNET's Second Life bureau was assaulted the other day during an interview with virtual land magnate Anshe Chung. As the interview was set to begin, the CNET theater was set upon by a horde of animated flying penises.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future.

I believe this is exactly what William Gibson was envisioning when he wrote Neuromancer. I can just picture his editor calling him up. "Yeah, the story is great...very innovative, cutting-edge stuff. Could use a few less airborne dicks."

Unfortunately CNET has no screenshots of the attack, or the one that followed, eventually crashing the server. I'd look harder, but I don't think my coworkers here would appreciate me doing a Google image search on "flying penis". Michael Fahey

Update - Thanks to commentors, we've found the video, and you can see it after the jump!

Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

CNET interviewer assaulted by flying wang [The Register, via Valleywag]

This may very well be the lamest thing to ever come out of the Street Fighter franchise: a Virtual Reality ride through Bisonopolis. What's the point of putting Street Fighter and VR together if you're not going to use it to zoom up Chun Li's vagina in first person? Florian Eckhardt

We're calling bullshit on this. The tiny man-child playing Mario gives the world a convincing bit of thespianism, but there are too many parts where the action doesn't quite match up. We know that for some people, the Nintendo ON is the gamer's wet dream, but everytime we look at VR, we can't help but think how much of a pain in the ass it all looks. Thanks, Josh!Florian Eckhardt

Evil Avatar spotted a rumor as juicy as it is implausible about an upcoming PS3 peripheral designed by Primesense:

In conclusion, we have a very reliable source that claims Sony will have a PS3 peripheral which will recognize a user and his entire environment as well as his movements and will incorporate them into useful, in-console actions. The applications of this tech to gaming are obvious and if this story is proved right, Sony may yet manage to steal Nintendo's thunder in this generation of the console wars.

Ha ha. Yeah, right. Nintendo ON, anyone? Crecente thinks this could be for real — however, a shoddily designed site proclaiming a full virtual reality space for the PS3 is a bit hard to swallow, especially when even MIT grads who are merely the physical projections into our dimension of hovering astral brains have barely been able to get the tech to work right.Florian Eckhardt

PS3 Secret Hardware Revealed (via Evil Avatar)

Very serious website Serious Games Source has a feature on VR being used as therapy for those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:

In ongoing research projects the Veterans Administration, the US Army, and the Office of Naval Research are using VR Exposure therapy to treat soldiers afflicted with PTSD. We are developing a number of Middle East conflict simulations that include such common elements as sniper attacks, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and rocket propelled grenade (RPG) attacks. These applications include functionality that allows therapists to dynamically control the intensity of the experience for the patient, increasing or decreasing the level of stimulation and tension according to the level of anxiety.

This goes along with the traditional treatment for PTSD, which has the patient re-imagining the event while in a safe environment with a mental health professional, and then reworking it over and over until it's been processed. This is a simplistic and hamhanded explanation, but you get the idea.

The problem is that those suffering from traumatic memories will generally do anything to avoid them, making the therapy difficult. Having a simulation do the "imagining" for the patient seems to shortcut this issue.

The article is long and complicated (and very serious) and full of graphs, but a good read anyway. Eliza gauger

Playing Games with Painful Memories:
Designing VR Exposure Therapy Simulations for PTSD [Serious Games Source]

Kick Ass Kung-Fu is a virtual reality (soooo 1990's) installation that gives players a chance to really, well, kick ass. Players' physical movements correspond to the in-game character. In the above clip, a bunch of black belts show off just how the game works and demonstrate a smorgasboard of kicks, flips and punches. Uh, this looks kinda hard. —Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Kahsoon]

GamesFirst has posted a look at one of those quasi-virtual-reality doodads, the Trimersion Head Mounted Display.

It sounds pretty swank. The gyroscopic head gear plots your head's movements and maps them to the appropriate d-stick for looking around in the game you are playing. High-quality stereo sound pumps through the headset and the player holds a gun with all the buttons that you'd find on a PS2 or XBox. Obviously, you can't control which direction you are pointing your gun independently of which way you are facing in an FPS like Halo — your gun is just a graphic rooted to the bottom of the screen.

The entire system is wireless and Trimersion expects to be moving about 100,000 units a month by late this year, not only to gaming enthusiasts, but to organizations like hospitals. One mentioned use for the technology is overlaying three-dimensional MRIs over a patient's body. A tad expensive for this gamer at $395, but hell, that's still cheaper than the PS3. - Florian Eckhardt

Trimersion: The Next Phase in VR HMDs [Gamesfirst]