Video Gamers Seem to Have Advantage in Learning

Neuropsychologists of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum let video gamers compete against non-gamers in a learning competition. During the test, the video gamers performed significantly better and showed an increased brain activity in the brain areas that are relevant for learning. The research team studied 17 volunteers who according to their own statement, played action-based games on the computer or a console for more than 15 hours a week. The control group consisted of 17 volunteers who didn't play video games on a regular basis. Both teams did the so-called weather prediction task, a well-established test to investigate the learning of probabilities. The researchers simultaneously recorded the brain activity of the participants via magnetic resonance imaging.

The participants were shown a combination of three cue cards with different symbols. They should estimate whether the card combination predicted sun or rain and got a feedback if their choice was right or wrong right away. The volunteers gradually learned, on the basis of the feedback, which card combination stands for which weather prediction. The combinations were thereby linked to higher or lower probabilities for sun and rain. According to the questionnaire results, the gamers were notably better in combining the cue cards with the weather predictions than the control group. They fared even better with cue card combinations that had a high uncertainty such as a combination that predicted 60 percent rain and 40 percent sunshine.

More information:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170929125104.htm

Antikythera Shipwreck Yields Bronze Arm

Marine archaeologists have recovered a bronze arm from an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, where the remains of at least seven more priceless statues from the classical world are believed to lie buried. Divers found the right arm, encrusted and stained green, under half a metre of sediment on the boulder-strewn slope where the ship and its cargo now rest. The huge vessel, perhaps 50m from bow to stern, was sailing from Asia Minor to Rome in 1BC when it foundered near the tiny island between Crete and the Peloponnese. The project team, from the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and Lund University in Sweden, discovered the buried arm with a bespoke underwater metal detector which has revealed the presence of other large metal objects nearby under the seabed.

The Antikythera wreck first came to light in 1900 when Greek sponge divers happened on the scene in 50 metres of water. Archaeologists have since pulled up spectacular bronze and marble statues, ornate glass and pottery, stunning pieces of jewellery, and a remarkable geared device – the Antikythera mechanism – which modelled the motion of the heavens. During the 2017 excavations, divers recovered a bronze disc that may be a missing part of the ancient device. But it is the statues that made the wreck famous. In the 1900s, archaeologists working at the site surfaced pieces of a beautiful Hellenistic bronze, named the Antikythera Youth. The statue now stands in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens alongside an impressive bronze head named the Antikythera philosopher, also hauled from the wreck.

More information:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/04/antikythera-shipwreck-yields-new-treasures-and-hints-of-priceless-classical-statues

The World's First 8K VR Headset

Pimax 8K allows users to experience VR with Peripheral vision while solving the problem of screen door effect and motion sickness. Pimax 8K VR has been built to support the mainstream content currently available in the market, including Steam VR, while offering the largest field-of-view (FOV) of 200° and the highest resolution (2*3840x2160) on any VR headset on the market with less than 15ms latency.

Users can simply use their peripheral vision instead of constantly moving their head, making for a more intuitive experience. The company also addressed and reduced one of the key visual shortcomings of VR technology. Known as the 'screen door effect', this is the phenomenon where the eye can detect the fine line between pixels in an image - something which, in VR can hinder immersion and the experience as a whole.

More information:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimax8kvr/pimax-the-worlds-first-8k-vr-headset

AR Patent Kills The Keyboard

The future of typing may no longer include a keyboard. Recently, Microsoft’s newly granted patent, titled 'Holographic keyboard display', describes what the future of text input could look like. Using a virtual keyboard plane to sense a user’s inputs, the AR/VR system will function like a normal keyboard and read users’ gestures to simulate typing. The grant mentions gaming as a first application, but Microsoft’s entrenched interest in enterprise IT makes the workplace another obvious application.

Combined with its headset AR/VR technology, future knowledge workers may not need desks, or even centralized workplaces. Instead, smartglasses could virtualize the desktop PC as we know it, allowing workers to type from any position and from any part of the world using hand gestures. The patent description notes an HMD (head-mounted display) device that would contribute to the tracking system. But the patent describes the virtual keyboard as being applicable for both virtual and mixed reality headset applications.

More information:

https://www.cbinsights.com/research/microsoft-ar-vr-holograph-keyboard/

VS Games 2017 Paper II

On the 7^th of September, we have presented a co-authored paper entitled 'Investigating the Effect of User Profile during Training for BCI-based Games' at the 9th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications (VS-Games 2017), which was held in Athens, Greece.

This paper illustrates the importance of gender, individual role (i.e., user profession), and time of use when interacting with a BCI game, with a total of 34 participants. Furthermore, we present the effect of reported workload and loss of self-consciousness during the game play on performance.

A draft version of the paper can be downloaded from here.