Engineer explains VR at five levels of complexity

Why VR/AR gets farther away as it comes into focus

Thirteen years after XR devices became a big tech obsession, VR/AR devices are not just behind schedule, they still seem far away. This article provides an overview of the hardware realities getting in the way of the vision.

Immersive technologies include virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality

Virtual reality relies on technologies that use screens to generate every pixel, immersing a user in an entirely digital world. In contrast, augmented reality overlays digital content onto views of the real world. Mixed reality combines both to allow real-time interaction with virtual objects.

A guide to what you need to get started in VR

From Oculus Rift to Google Daydream, VR is getting plenty of hype. But what system should you buy? And what should you play?

Breaking down how and why 5G will change the world

The jump from 3G to 4G networks was pretty huge, and 4G to 5G is many times greater and is almost difficult to comprehend. This nine-minute video dives into how 5G will transform our world.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Experience the Apollo 11 mission in VR

Take one small step today and experience the historic moon-landing through VR. This video showcases how VR is allowing the public to travel through space through the eyes of those who lived through it.

People learned to fly in VR, and their brains then accepted wings as body parts

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts. The brain research has potential implications for how VR training may help people adapt to prostheses. (Free with email.)

What does the metaverse actually look like?

An emerging virtual world could change how we work, play, and do business. This five-minute video shows you what it looks like and the potential it holds.

Wish you could experience life on the Western Front of WWI?

Virtual reality offers a new perspective on World War I in this nearly 14-minute video. National WWI Museum and Memorial Public Program Specialist James Taub demonstrates the War Remains VR experience side by side with what he sees through the headset. A grim and detailed simulation of trench warfare combined with Taub's observations and insights.

Explaining CRISPR at five levels of technical detail

CRISPR is a new area of biomedical science that enables gene editing and could be the key to eventually curing diseases like autism or cancer. WIRED challenges biologist Neville Sanjana to explain this concept to 5 different people; a 7-year-old, a 14-year-old, a college student, a grad student and a CRISPR expert.

Blockchain, explained in five layers of difficulty

Blockchain, the key technology behind bitcoin, is a new network that helps decentralize trade and allows for more peer-to-peer transactions. Wired challenged political scientist and blockchain researcher Bettina Warburg to explain blockchain technology to five different people: a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert.

Watch a first-person demo of Microsoft's HoloLens

The headset enables users to interact with projected objects in augmented reality by combining Windows Mixed Reality with eye- and head-tracking sensors, a hand-operated controller, and a microphone that can pick up voice commands.

Four video explainers on quantum fundamentals

Ready to level up your working knowledge of quantum mechanics? Check out these four TED-Ed Lessons written by Chad Orzel, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College

Behind the fascinating disguising mechanism of camouflage

Camouflage—nature's master game of hide-and-seek—is more complex than simply how things look. The disguising process required millions of years of evolution that have programmed how our brains take shortcuts. Watch this video to see examples of camouflage and understand how we process it.

The Society of Automotive Engineers sorts self-driving technology into six levels

At level 0, a vehicle cannot intervene on its own, and the driver controls all navigation. At level 3, the car operates autonomously under limited conditions, but a human can still take control. A future level 5 vehicle drives itself and lacks a steering wheel or pedals.

Efforts to build touch-enabled machines highlight the complexity of human touch

The challenges that engineers are facing as they try to reproduce a human's ability to touch and also give robots the ability to interpret that kind of sensory flow are furthering our understanding of the myriad intricacies of human touch—and the challenges in emulating it.

The impact of gravitational force on our bodies surprised early coaster riders and engineers

There is only a certain amount of gravitational force that the body can handle before dealing with consequences like short-term vision loss or unconsciousness. Increased scientific understanding has largely reduced these impacts, with engineers combining periods of intense pressure with periods of relief.

We hear because soundwaves are converted into electrochemical signals in our ears

This science teacher video systematically walks through the biology of the outer, middle, and inner ear. The explanation starts with the auricle, an external part that funnels sound through the auditory canal, and the tympanic membrane (the ear drum), which vibrates when sounds hit it. Beyond that, as the video details, is the eustachian tube, which is connected to the back of our throats and allows air to pass in and out to equalize ear pressure.

The basic science of rockets

How do rockets work? What is the science behind a rocket launch? How does a rocket go into space? In this short and simple video, we discuss the science of rocket propulsion and what takes to get these vehicles into orbit.

Professional vocalists explain the mechanics of singing

Ever wonder how your favorite singer hits those high notes? Have you been amazed at someone bringing down the house at karaoke? The secret behind singing is that it's more technical than most realize. In this video, a handful of professional vocalists break down the basics to demonstrate how you can develop a more musical voice.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Five potential ways to achieve time travel

While the author discounts the possibility of traveling to the past, it lays out five hypothetical modes of catapulting into the future: speed, gravity, suspended animation, wormholes, and light. Each has some scientific basis, but none are realistic for humans. Read the article to learn where they offer promise and where they fall short.

Take a series of virtual tours of Biosphere 2

The videos provide a 360-degree view of the indoor rainforest, ocean ecosystem, Landscape Evolution Observatory, and underground technosphere. A Google Maps Street View option is available to explore additional biomes, with each associated with a different floor level on the bottom right.

The platform's ease of use relies on a complex architecture

Hitting "play" on Netflix is easy, but it triggers a multistep process that fetches the selected content, converts it for your screen, and finds the closest server to deliver it in the highest quality.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Using generative AI to create video introduces physics-compatibility challenges

Models involved in generating video from text must maintain spatial and temporal coherence while adhering to the laws of reality to produce smooth, logical motion. Ensuring this consistency creates long-term dependencies with high computational times.

This is the human brain on the world's strongest psychedelic

Within seconds of inhaling a high dose of vaporized synthetic 5-MeO-DMT—a lab-produced substance that otherwise is naturally derived from the glands of the Colorado River toad—it induced slow brain waves. Such waves are typically associated with unconsciousness due to a coma or anesthesia, perhaps explaining why users describe feeling like everything falls away. The compound is currently in clinical trials for treating depression.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by more than 1.5 million Muslims each year.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

Watch the cumbersome, but necessary, precautions healthcare workers must take to care for and protect themselves while caring for Ebola patients.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.