Volunteers who played a cigarette-crushing game had better odds of kicking the habit.
By Kristina Grifantini
A screenshot from the cigarette-crushing game
Smokers who regularly play a computer game that involves crushing virtual
cigarettes could have a better chance of kicking the habit. At least, that's
the implication of an experiment carried out by researchers at the University
of Quebec in Canada and published in the latest issue of CyberPsychology
and Behavior.
Virtual reality has been used to treat a variety of disorders
including phantom limb syndrome, arachnophobia, post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) and even the pain experienced by burn victims.
In the University of Quebec study, 91 smokers played either the
cigarette-crushing game or a ball-grasping game via a motion-tracking,
head-mounted display over 3 months. In each game, players wandered around a
medieval castle and used a virtual arm (controlled by a wireless game pad) to either
find and crush floating cigarettes or grasp virtual balls. At the end of the
three months, 15% of those in the cigarette-crushing group said they had cut
down on smoking (as measured by carbon monoxide levels in an exhale test),
compared to 2% of the ball-grasping group.
Aside from better smoking abstinence, those who played the
cigarette-crushing game also reported having lower nicotine cravings.
The researchers speculate that crushing virtual cigarettes may help
smokers feel more confident about quitting. The game may have also help players
associate crushing cigarettes with the feeling of winning.
It would be interesting to know if a regular video game would have
a similar effect, or if a more immersive virtual reality experience is crucial.
Using Google's Phone to Make Virtual Reality Goggles
Tired of waiting for mass market VR goggles? Here's an easy way to make your own.
By Kristina Grifantini
Both
virtual reality and augmented reality have been gaining attention with the growing
popularity of powerful smart phones. And, as the technology inside these devices becomes better
and smaller, it seems only a matter of time before someone invents cool-enough
looking VR/AR glasses or goggles.
In
the meantime however, the folks over at Recombu.com have demonstrated how to
make your own goggles using an HTC Magic smart phone, Google Street View, and pair
of plastic safety goggles.
By
cutting out a tight-fitting cardboard box, attaching it snugly to the goggles on
one end and to the smart phone at the other, the user can be immersed in a
scene of, say Paris. What makes the experience immersive is that the smart
phone's compass and accelerometer senses when the user moves her head, allowing
the virtual street view to move along with her.
Some very interesting ideas are being showcased this week at SIGGRAPH 2009.
By Will Knight
The annual
meeting of the ACM's Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive
Techniques, SIGGRAPH
2009, takes place in New Orleans this week. The event brings together some
of the world's best digital artists and computer researchers and is a showcase
for some interesting new interfaces.
Here are five
particularly cool ideas that will be on display at this year's event.
1.
Touchable Holography
A team of
researchers at the University of Tokyo led by Hiroyuki
Shinoda has developed a display that lets users "touch" objects that appear
to float in space in front of them.
The virtual
objects appear in mid-air thanks to an LCD and a concave mirror. The sensation
of touching the objects is created using an ultrasound device positioned below
the LCD and mirror. The airborne ultrasound tactile device used to produce the
sensation of touch was demoed at SIGGRAPH in 2008.
Frantz Lasorne, a student
at L'École de Design in France, has invented an ingenious way to breathe new
life into old toys.
Lasorne's Scope display automatically recognizes ordinary toys that
have been mounted onto platforms covered with hexagonal patterns. Viewed
through the augmented reality display, these patterns become
interactive buttons and can be used to make virtual modifications to the toy.
As the video below shows, a Lego person can, for instance, be instantly armed
with a giant virtual bazooka.
A team from INRIA
and Grenoble Universities in France will demo a new virtual reality system
called Virtualization
Gate that tracks users' movements very accurately using multiple cameras,
allowing them to interact with virtual objects with new realism.
The
user wears a head-mounted display (HMD) and moves through a virtual space while
several cameras track his movement. The video here shows a guy kicking over
virtual vases and pushing around a virtual representation of himself. A cluster
of PCs is needed to perform the necessary image capture and 3D modeling.
Researchers
at the University of Southern California will demo Headspin, a 3D
teleconferencing system that maintains eye contact between a three-dimensional
head and several participants on the other end of a connection.
To capture an
image, a polarized beam-splitter "places" the camera virtually near
the eyes of the speaker. The 3D display works by projecting high-speed video
onto a rapidly spinning aluminum disk to generate an accurate image for each
viewer.
Chris Harrison, a
researcher at Carnegie Mellon University whose human-computer
interaction work we've written about previously, will demonstrate his new scratch input technology. The system turns any surface into
an instant input device by sensing the unique sound produced when a fingernail
is dragged across it.
The interface
is small enough to fit into a mobile device, Harrison says, and could thereby
turn any surface the device is placed upon into an interface.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology