Author: Efstratios Geronikolakis

Ever wondered what it’s like to delve deep within a South African cave to discover and recover some of the most famous ancient human fossils in scientific history? The opportunity is now at your fingertips – and it’s free via the Apple App Store and Google Play! Internationally renowned paleoanthropologist Professor Lee Berger and Perot Museum of Nature and Science leaders, in partnership with South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), today announced a world-first virtual reality (VR) app to view “bones that are shaking up our family tree.” Berger – who recently dominated world science headlines with...

Coming to a museum near you…virtual reality tours. Boston-based HistoryView.org is partnering with the Texas-based Metroplex360 to create 3D tours of museums, art galleries, historic sites and more. Brian Lyra and Elizabeth Benoit, the co-founders of HistoryView.org, came up with the idea when Lyra was a real estate photographer after he created a virtual tour of a historic home he was selling. Benoit, a teacher, recognized the educational potential for virtual tours. “I showed her the virtual tour and she looked at me and said ‘you know, we should make field trips out of this’,” Lyra said. “The next...

Mae Jemison, the first woman of color to go into space, stood in the center of the room and prepared to become digital. Around her, 106 cameras captured her image in 3-D, which would later render her as a life-sized hologram when viewed through a HoloLens headset. Jemison was recording what would become the introduction for a new exhibit at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, which opens tomorrow as part of the Smithsonian’s annual Museum Day. In the exhibit, visitors will wear HoloLens headsets and watch Jemison materialize before their eyes, taking them on a tour of...

The sunken ruins of ancient cities, the monuments of lost civilisations, may reappear before our eyes thanks to new technologies of augmented reality. Euronews’ Denis Loctier went to Italy for Futuris to investigate a remarkable new tool under development. Two thousand years ago, a now-flooded coastal area near Naples was a fashionable Roman resort — Baia. Today, you have to dive to see the remains of the luxurious villas. And soon, to make your diving experience even better, you could take your tablet along. “Thanks to this system, divers can know their position underwater, which normally isn’t possible as...