I only dug out this post, which I wrote in April 2020, in the height of the first lockdown, but never got around to publishing (things started getting very busy with the pivot to online teaching). I thought I should finally put it out
Like many of us who have…
I published a post a couple of weeks ago based on a paper that I wrote with my father about AI and the philosophy of science. It was an updating of a book that he had written in the 90s about AI and Scientific method. I had helped with current…
On Monday, Mel Slater, VR pioneer (and my former boss), gave a public talk as part of the Frontiers in Virtual Reality lecture series co-organised by my colleague Xueni ‘Sylvia’ Pan.
Though I’m very familiar with Mel’s work, every time I hear him speak he brings some new insights…
I recently did something I don’t normally do, I collaborated on an academic paper with my father, Donald Gillies. He is a philosopher of science, and the paper we wrote originated in the mid 90s when he published a book on AI and Scientific method, which summarised the state of…
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post comparing Social VR with video calling as methods for keeping in touch and working during lockdown.
Since then we had a class in Altspace for our Masters in Virtual and Augmented Reality. It was nice to get a chance to use…
This week I did a “lockdown lecture”, part of a series of talks from academics in Goldsmiths, Department of Computing. They are a way of keeping in touch with our current students, prospective students and wider public during the COVID-19 lockdown. It was great to make contact with a lot…
There are many ways of classifying different types of VR interaction. These classifications have different uses. Our MOOC describes various exotic forms such as Natural Interaction, Magical Interaction, Passive Interaction and Non-Diegetic Interaction. Most of these are based on full body movements, which will increase the sense of presence, relative…
In my last post I talked about Social VR and mentioned an important paper by Mel Slater, Anthony Steed and colleagues, called Small-Group Behavior in a Virtual and Real Environment: A Comparative Study. I thought I should talk about it in a bit more detail as it has important implications…
I’m writing this a couple of weeks in to the UK’s lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. This is my first chance to take a step back to think and write after two very hectic weeks of adjusting to teaching and research online (and, to be honest a very hectic 6…
Today I am proud to be launching a new MOOC: Machine Learning for All, together with this blog to support the course. I have been working on the course for almost a year and, in a certain sense, even longer because it builds on over a decade of work on…
