Apparitions recently attended one of Wired Sussex’s excellent FuseBox events. This one was presented by Dr. Diego Martinez Plasencia of Sussex University and Lab Interract and it was organised by Rosaline Hoskins at Wired Sussex.

It was a great event discussing the various new breakthroughs Diego and his colleagues at Lab Interact have been developing regarding Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality human computer interaction techniques. He believes the future isn’t about stereoscopic headsets and gestural data gloves but rather that there is a vast amount of untapped potential.

This had led them to experiment with various techniques producing some very interesting results. Using lenticular displays they were able to create surface viewing for multiple users whilst also allowing personalised information (if you are not familiar with the word lenticular, think of those gifts that would often come free in a cereal box and when you change the angle of perception you get a different visual. This is a more technologically advanced version of the same idea.

They also experimented a lot with fog as a surface to project onto. Such examples including creating soap bubbles which they filled with fog, tracked and projected onto, which through testing and exhibiting proved very popular with children. They also created fog displays that changed in shape they were able to control them using electric fields.

In addition to these they are also working on various other techniques including experiments with AR mirrors. All in all, it was a great event with both some great research on display as well plenty of thought provoking questions from the crowd. I will leave you with this comment.

How do we know that what we see is actually real? What constitutes reality? and if we all see a subjective version of the world around us is there really such a thing as a reality?