Canada conference and expo helping virtual reality gain widespread acceptance
Smaller than a golf ball, a miniature boxwood prayer bead from medieval Holland, depicting heaven and hell, is now in another avatar: A virtual reality display, where a user can walk through its layers, taking in details of the minute carvings at multiple angles, look at the face of one figure that, in real life, would be the size of a pinhead.
This was among the exhibits at the recent Virtual and Augmented Reality Conference and Expo (or VRTO).
Featuring nearly 100 speakers and 50 exhibitors, VRTO was in its second year and brought bleeding-edge technology to the space at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Enhanced acceptance of VRTO has obviously pleased its founder and executive director Keram Malicki-Sanchez, as he said, “It has doubled in terms of the number of attendees and my effort to get those people through the door is probably half.”

Those at VRTO represented tech majors like Google, Microsoft, IMAX, AMD, with participants from NASA Ames Research, and various universities.
This was where you could experience VR in a 360 environment, literally, in what is described as IglooVision, while watching a immersive short feature starring Godzilla and made by Google, as a haptic harness created a sense of motion, feeling tremors and shakes.
VRTO provided an inkling of the sectors that resurgent VR tech may impact in the near future: From medicine to manufacturing, movies and gaming, to research.
Or even philanthrophy, as with GivLuv, which “allows viewers to virtually experience the stories of people impacted by charities across the world and for the first time make a contribution through their headsets.
All of this matches Malicki-Sanchez’ vision for VRTO to “see it at the very dawn of a medium which is finally coming into its own, steer the conversation towards true discovery, true experimentation, broad thinking”.

Amazon's pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinic to open soon in its Seattle headquarters

Exercise does not undo ill effects of being fat on heart health: Report

Facebook's oversight board to decide on Trump ban

Google threatens to block its search engine in Australia over media law
- Under the laws, the firms would be required to compensate Australian media outlets, ranging from Rupert Murdoch's giant News Corp to public broadcasters ABC and SBS, for publishing snippets of their content in search results.

IS claims Baghdad twin bombing that killed 32, wounded 110
- The open-air market, where second-hand clothes are sold at stalls, had been teeming with people after the lifting of nearly a year of Covid-19 restrictions across the country.

Top Iran leader posts Donald Trump-like golfer image, vows revenge

Pak risks FATF blacklisting as it continues to finance terrorism: Report

Joe Biden has no plans to call Donald Trump: White House

Biden launches '100 days mask challenge', makes quarantine mandatory for flyers

LIVE: India's active Covid-19 cases slump below 190,000

McConnell seeks to push Donald Trump impeachment trial to February

Texas doc steals damaged vaccine vial, administers to friends, family: Official

Joe Biden's US revives support for WHO, reversing Donald Trump retreat

Elon Musk offers to build tunnels under wet, flood-prone Miami
