An easy-to-use guide, filled with tutorials that will teach you how to set up and use iCloud, and profit from all of its marvellous features. This book is for anyone with basic knowledge of computers and mobile operations. Prior knowledge of cloud computing or iCloud is not expected.

A Survey of Augmented Reality summarizes almost fifty years of research and development in the field of Augmented Reality (AR). From early research in the 1960's until widespread availability by the 2010's, there has been steady progress towards the goal of being able to seamlessly combine real and virtual worlds. This monograph provides an overview of the common definitions of AR, and shows how AR fits into taxonomies of other related technologies. A history of important milestones in Augmented Reality is followed by sections on the key enabling technologies of tracking, display, and input devices. The author also review design guidelines and provide some examples of successful AR applications. The work concludes with a summary of directions for future work, and a review of some of the areas that are currently being researched. This is an invaluable resource for researchers and practitioners. It provides an ideal starting point for those who want an overview of the technology and to undertake research and development in the field.

This book uses a step by step approach to teach you how to design, deploy, and manage a Horizon Workspace based on real world experience. Written in an easy to follow style, this book explains the terminology in a clear and concise manner. Each feature is explained starting at a high level and then drilling down into the technical detail, using diagrams and screenshots. This book is perfect for IT administrators who want to deploy a solution to centrally manage access to corporate applications, data, and virtual desktops using Horizon Workspace. You need to have some experience in delivering BYOD initiatives and delivering applications from the Cloud (SaaS).

This book gathers a collection of selected works and new research results of scholars and graduate students presented at the 6th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (AIVR 2022) via the Internet, during July 22-24 2022, hosted and organized by Sojo University in conjunction with other three universities and Beijing Huaxia Rongzhi Blockchain Technology Institute. The focus of the book is interdisciplinary in nature and includes research on all aspects of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, from fundamental development to the applied system. The book covers topics such as system techniques, performance, and implementation; content creation and modelling; cognitive aspects, perception, user behaviour; AI technologies; interactions, interactive and responsive environments; AI/VR applications and case studies.

How much time does your organization waste in unfocused, unengaging and unproductive virtual meetings?

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Virtual Reality (VR) was created to fulfill human curiosity about exploring beyond the reality. Humans establish the experiences of a real world based on the feedbacks from sense organs, such as eyes, ears, nose and hands. By replacing real images, sound and tactility with computer-generated illusions, a virtual world can be built for the human user to navigate in and interact with. In this book, the authors gather current research from across the globe in the study of virtual reality including education processes implemented in the simulated environment of the laboratory; an intuitive 3D interface infrastructure for virtual reality applications; virtual environments for the visualization of cultural and archaeological heritage; virtual reality in psychotherapy and autism and virtual reality as a tool for machining-processes simulation and in the textile field.

This is the story of the life and experiences of Fran's avatar, Ayo. Ayo is her name within Second Life. Ayo will first describe what Second Life is, how she and Fran relate, then she will tell stories of her experiences in Second Life with each of them illustrating a point about life in Second Life. All these themes are centered around the encounter of Ayo with her "twin soul" Ludwig and the reactions of their Real Life creators hidden behind their laptops. A touch of romance thrown in... What will Ayo and Ludwig's future be ? makes Ayo's Aventures pleasant and interesting to read.

Step into the world of virtual reality with your newly created avatar and begin to experience the tools that make this world interactive! During their infancy stage, virtual environments were largely based upon the gaming community and over time have been adapted to meet the growing number of users and educators. The Virtual Worlds Handbook, with CD-ROM, provides a user-friendly approach that will help trainers and educators create an effective and interactive environment within the Second Life virtual world. This book was written to help the novice user tackle the natural learning curve while providing the experienced user with tips, tools, and tricks to help any educator or trainer meet their professional goals faster. The opportunities using virtual reality are limitless and provide online students with a unique opportunity to connect both physically and educationally to one another, to faculty, to university, and to a worldwide market.

Drag those windows from your screen and into the air in front of you. Use a simple glance to switch lights, open doors or surf the web. Virtual devices, virtual objects will surround us, anywhere. Only one piece of real hardware will do it all, replace anything. From application concepts to technical design to even a fiction chapter carrying us into the future, "this book is a blueprint for an entire technology." The new edition has been greatly extended, with many new ideas and materials. From the foreword by Oliver Bimber, professor of augmented reality: "I was captivated by the last edition of 'The End of Hardware' on a round-trip flight to Los Angeles. This book is not only an in-depth introduction to the concept of head-attached displays for augmented reality (AR), but also a great source of inspiration for many professionals - at least it is for me. Being a technical guy, I particularly enjoyed reading the technical design chapter which, in this new edition of the book, has been greatly extended with many details on holography, light fields and MEMS. Despite a technological focus, the book is written in a popular-scientific style - and therefore allows easy access to the material - even for non-experts. If I were to characterize this book in a single word, that word would be 'inspiring'. I can only hope that one day, someone will pick up and realize these ideas. For although, this might not be the 'End of Hardware' - it could well be the beginning of many new and exciting interfaces to the digital world in which we all live in."

The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online.

Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such virtual worlds emerge from physical workplaces marked by negotiation, creation, and constant change. Thomas Malaby spent a year at Linden Lab, the real-world home of Second Life, observing those who develop and profit from the sprawling, self-generating system they have created.

Some of the challenges created by Second Life for its developers were of a very traditional nature, such as how to cope with a business that is growing more quickly than existing staff can handle. Others are seemingly new: How, for instance, does one regulate something that is supposed to run on its own? Is it possible simply to create a space for people to use and then not govern its use? Can one apply these same free-range/free-market principles to the office environment in which the game is produced? "Lindens" as the Linden Lab employees call themselves found that their efforts to prompt user behavior of one sort or another were fraught with complexities, as a number of ongoing processes collided with their own interventions.

In Making Virtual Worlds, Malaby thoughtfully describes the world of Linden Lab and the challenges faced while he was conducting his in-depth ethnographic research there. He shows how the workers of a very young but quickly growing company were themselves caught up in ideas about technology, games, and organizations, and struggled to manage not only their virtual world but also themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. In exploring the practices the Lindens employed, he questions what was at stake in their virtual world, what a game really is (and how people participate), and the role of the unexpected in a product like Second Life and an organization like Linden Lab."

As Web-based interactive 3D graphics, popularly referred to as Virtual Reality (VR), continue to become more affordable, research and development groups in various fields have been adopting Web-based VR technology. Despite substantial adoption, how and how much the technology benefits target users and the providers who choose to adapt the technology is not well understood. Previous research has established that VR provides users with unique human-computer interaction. However, little is known about how users experience the Web-based VR technology and how user-system interaction contributes to system usability. This book investigates user perception of Webbased VR comparing to conventional 2D graphics and system usability affected by the user-system interaction process. The impact of Web-based VR on system usability was empirically examined from an integrated view of technology acceptance in information systems and human-computer interaction. In addition, the impact of user characteristics on user-system interaction while using a VR system was examined. This book provides new knowledge about usability, sense of presence and technology acceptance in VR and provides insights for future research, which should be important to anyone designing, developing and evaluating a VR system in general and to an electronic commerce or market research system in particular.

The overall subject of the book is visual culture. What sets it apart and gives it such an original emphasis is its multi-disciplinarity and the range of critical voices, ranging through film studies, architecture, creative practice, biology, pedagogy and media theory, which are brought to bear upon the question of visuality and its relationship to futurity. In our everyday lives, we navigate across a vast sea of visual imagery. Yet, we rarely pause to question how or why we derive meaning from this sea. Nor do we typically contemplate the impact that it has on our motivations, our assumptions about science and about other people, and our actions as individuals and collectives. This book is a collection of interdisciplinary perspectives, from science to film, from graffiti and virtual environments to architecture and education that examines the ways in which we interact and engage with the visual elements of our environments. Visual Futures provides an interdisciplinary examination of how we visualize and use visuals to make meaning within our environment. A diverse range of contributions and perspectives from biology, film, virtual reality, urban graffiti, architecture, critical pedagogy and education challenge our current attitudes, norms and practices of looking and seeing, opening up questions about the future. The future is a concept with significant political stakes and the work of rethinking and reimagining possible worlds requires a host of practices, which include the work of seeing, of image-making and of representation - all of which is political work taken up by the book contributors. Primary readership will be among scholars and students of visual culture, media studies, digital cultures, fine art, architecture, education, science communication and sociology. Clearly aimed at an academic readership, it will also appeal to practising artists, architects, software developers and educators.

2003 Susan Koppelman Award given by the Joint Women's Caucus of the Popular Culture/American Culture. Most writing on cyberculture is dominated by two almost mutually exclusive visions: the heroic image of the male outlaw hacker and the utopian myth of a gender-free cyberworld. "Reload" offers an alternative picture of cyberspace as a complex and contradictory place where there is oppression as well as liberation. It shows how cyberpunk's revolutionary claims conceal its ultimate conservatism on matters of class, gender, and race. The cyberfeminists writing here view cyberculture as a social experiment with an as-yet-unfulfilled potential to create new identities, relationships, and cultures. The book brings together women's cyberfiction--fiction that explores the relationship between people and virtual technologies--and feminist theoretical and critical investigations of gender and technoculture. From a variety of viewpoints, the writers consider the effects of rapid and profound technological change on culture, in particular both the revolutionary and reactionary effects of cyberculture on women's lives. They also explore the feminist implications of the cyborg, a human-machine hybrid. The writers challenge the conceptual and institutional rifts between high and low culture, which are embedded in the texts and artifacts of cyberculture.

Understanding Hypermedia, first published in 1993, firmly established itself in the design and media community as the definitive introduction to this exciting new communications medium. Understanding Hypermedia 2.0 completely revises the original edition, bringing the story of hypermedia bang up to date with full coverage of the Internet and other new developments. The book examines all of the digital media, from Web sites and CD-ROMs to satellite communications. A history of hypermedia and its key players is followed by a survey of the controversial issues that surround it and an overview of the elements that can make up a hypermedia product, including sound, video, animation and hypertext. An extensive gallery of applications shows how the medium is now being used to inform, entertain, sell to and communicate with users worldwide. Practical information on design and production is also included, together with an extensive glossary of technical terms and a comprehensive bibliography. The book concludes with a look towards the digital future in the new millennium.

Imagine being able to "walk" into your computer and interact with any program you create. It sounds like science fiction, but it's science fact. Surgeons now rehearse operations on computer-generated "virtual" patients, and architects "walk through" virtual buildings while the actual structures are still in blueprints. In Virtual Reality, Howard Rheingold takes us to the front lines of this revolutionary new technology that creates computer-generated worlds complete with the sensations of touch and motion, and explores its impact on everything from entertainment to particle physics.

The book that launched the virtual reality debate is back in print with four additional appendices. Which is most fundamental--matter, energy or information? Dukes takes readers on a voyage of discovery and nothing will ever be the same. (Philosophy)

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Economist, Wall Street Journal & Vox 'The father of virtual reality' (Sunday Times) explains why virtual reality presents the ultimate test for humanity. 'Essential reading, not just for VR-watchers but for anyone interested in how society came to be how it is, and what it might yet become' Economist Welcome to a mind-expanding, life-enhancing, world-changing adventure. Virtual reality has long been one of the dominant cliches of science fiction. Now virtual reality is a reality: from the startling beauty of lifelike video games to the place where war veterans overcome PTSD, surgeries are trialled, and aircraft and cities are designed. VR is, in fact now, the most effective device ever invented for researching what a human being actually is - and how we think and feel. More than thirty years ago, legendary computer scientist, visionary and artist Jaron Lanier pioneered its invention. Here he blends scientific investigation, philosophical thought experiment and his memoir of a life lived at the centre of digital innovation to explain what VR really is: the science of comprehensive illusion; the extension of the intimate magic of earliest childhood into adulthood; a hint of what life would be like without any limits. We are standing on the threshold of an entirely new realm of human creativity, expression, communication and experience, and as we use VR to test our relationship with reality, it may test us in return. 'Vivid and absolutely extraordinary' Evening Standard

"With his YouTube channel, Mitch's VR Lab, Mitch has helped thousands of people understand the foundations of locomotion and interaction mechanics with clear and concise UE4 videos. I'm thrilled that he has taken the time to bring all his knowledge and experience in working with Unreal Engine and Virtual Reality to the Unreal (R) Engine VR Cookbook.... Mitch is uniquely qualified to share this book with the world." -Luis Cataldi, Unreal Engine Education, Epic Games, Inc. For game developers and visualization specialists, VR is the next amazing frontier to conquer-and Unreal Engine 4 is the ideal platform to conquer it with. Unreal (R) Engine VR Cookbook is your complete, authoritative guide to building stunning experiences on any Unreal Engine 4-compatible VR hardware. Renowned VR developer and instructor Mitch McCaffrey brings together best practices, common interaction paradigms, specific guidance on implementing these paradigms in Unreal Engine, and practical guidance on choosing the right approaches for your project. McCaffrey's tested "recipes" contain step-by-step instructions, while empowering you with concise explanations of the underlying theory and math. Whether you're creating first-person shooters or relaxation simulators, the techniques McCaffrey explains help you get immediate results, as you gain "big picture" knowledge and master nuances that will help you succeed with any genre or project. Understand basic VR concepts and terminology Implement VR logic with Blueprint visual scripting Create basic VR projects with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR, Google VR, PSVR, and other environments Recognize and manage differences between seated and standing VR experiences Set up trace interactions and teleportation Work with UMG and 2D UIs Implement character inverse kinematics (IK) for head and hands Define effective motion controller interaction Help users avoid motion sickness Optimize VR applications Explore the VR editor, community resources, and more If you're ready to master VR on Unreal Engine 4, this is the practical resource you've been searching for! Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that enables the user to see the real world, with virtual objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world. This book includes chapters focused on the following: the methodology of AR software for educational purposes; the use of augmented reality applications in the area of music education and music therapy; medical AR (in which the virtual entity is medical data); the role of AR in consumers' augmented experiences; and AR for cultural heritage, meaning the developments in multimedia technology to facilitate the learning experience in cultural heritage with the aid of improved user interaction methods.

Play is human nature, which we remember and return to because of the excitement involved. Hence, play is in most cultures used in learning common rules and in achieving social harmony among children as well as adults. Additionally, practical subjects such as science include playful interaction with objects. This book outlines theoretical frameworks that apply in playing to learn and characteristics of games that are important in encouraging learning. Regrettably however, abstract and boring systems, as well as watching television, replace such enjoyment in learning. Fortunately, robust virtual environments and realities ease the rigour in designing and in executing educational play. It has to be noted that virtual environments are now designed for television sets, mobile telephones and computers. Therefore, the book 'Information and Communications Technology' (ICT) includes all of such technologies, although the cases reported here are specifically computer games.