#virtual embodiment

Furries of Second Life

Over the years of me being on Second Life I've met and became friends with many furries from all across the globe who are truly wonderful people.

And within those years I've came to realize that Second Life and the philosophy of Virtual Existentialism / Embodiment allow us furries to genuinely fully express who we are without any physical constraint, among many other benefits they offer.

What kind of virtual embodiment or virtual reality experience would you like to have?  I have always wanted to travel to as many places as I can.  Maybe there's virtual reality tours for tourists.  I want to VR Versailles! Or Mt. Everest! Or the moon?

This is an amazing article from The New Yorker.  The article reports that virtual reality programs have been used to help rehabilitate men who figured in domestic abuse cases.  Can VR help people suffering from mental disorders?

Pioneering creators of virtual reality are also pushing for a code of ethics in the use of VR.  So will there be a set of rules and penalties in the virtual world?

And lastly, if you can make a living out of virtual reality as a creator, tech programmer or maintenance crew, can you elect to have a virtual life or spend most, if not all of the rest of your life, in virtual reality? How far do we go with this?

Excerpts from the article:

“There’s going to be a moral panic around V.R. as it spreads ... It’s going to be the root of every evil, and there’s going to be a huge campaign against it. I hope the companies realize this, because they have to be prepared for it.”- Scientist Slater, quoted in The New Yorker

"In their V.R. code of ethics, Metzinger and Madary predict that the “risk of users suffering psychological trauma will steadily increase as V.R. technology advances.” -- The New Yorker

Scientist Metzinger "worries about scenarios that encourage the character traits that psychologists refer to as “the dark triad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy." -- The New Yorker

A short video to help VES members and would-be members (or anyone else who's interested in the concept of virtual embodiment!) to understand our ideology c=

The virtual representation of the user in immersive virtual environments, the avatar, has elicited a lot of attention both in virtual reality and psychological research communities. In addition, with the increasing demand in virtual reality applications and games, the need to understand how users perceive their virtual representation is becoming more and more important. Following the original Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) experiment of Botvinick and Cohen (1998), a large number of researchers have been exploring users' sense of ownership towards fake limbs and other body parts in order to understand under which conditions the brain accepts them as part of the users' body. Virtual reality is a powerful tool to answer these questions as the user's avatar can be altered in numerous ways in order to assess changes in the sense of embodiment and behaviour. This project aims at pushing forward the knowledge of virtual embodiment in VR.

Publications

Argelaguet F., Hoyet L., Trico M. and Lecuyer A., "The role of interaction in virtual embodiment: Effects of the virtual hand representation," 2016 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR), 2016, pp. 3-10. doi: 10.1109/VR.2016.7504682

ID Engines vert.ego