Virtual reality helmets will get cooler and increase screen resolution. Graphics in VR games will definitely become more beautiful. Augmented reality on smartphones will become more realistic and faster. On PlayAmo, for example, gambling has never seemed so real in a virtual world. These evolutionary processes are the trends of any year. But 2020 has shown that the industry has more interesting ways to develop.

The trends of the next few years did not suddenly appear. Everything listed below has existed and has been developing for decades.

Virtual Offices 

Having to stay at home almost all year because of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has suddenly made people take a closer look at VR. Many have switched to remote work and are faced with the fact that in isolation from the team, work is no longer so effective. Phone calls in Zoom do not completely solve the problem – via video communication, the feeling of presence is fully transmitted so-so. Because of this, many large companies have started talking about the need to create virtual offices in which people can interact with colleagues in virtual reality.

Even the main legislator of VR fashion – Facebook – has presented a ready-made solution – Infinite Office. Global testing of Zuckerberg’s virtual office is ongoing.

Learning in VR 

The year 2020 clearly showed that education is the most promising area for the use of VR and AR. There have been advances in this direction before, but this direction attracted close attention when students around the world switched to remote learning due to the pandemic. It quickly became clear that video communication was not enough here either: not all professions can be mastered in this way, and the level of immersion in the educational process is not at all the same. This is where VR came to the rescue.

VR helps educate people in the most unexpected areas. What can we say about doctors and firefighters, on whose professional preparedness the lives of other people literally depend. The direction of VR-learning has been developing for many years, and there will undoubtedly be more such examples in the next year.

More Lightweight, Standalone and Wireless VR Headsets

To be honest, VR began to catch the attention of the masses when some helmets got rid of the so-called “base stations”. The average normal person doesn’t want to fill the room with cameras to chop cubes in Beat Saber a couple of times a week! The standard consumer also doesn’t want to build a $2,000 computer for VR, get tangled up in wires, and suffer neck pain caused by the weight of VR headsets. All of this has yet to be dealt with by the industry. And so more and more compact standalone helmets will be released, especially given the excellent start of Oculus Quest 2 at the end of 2020.

There are already examples, and Panasonic showed the brightest at the beginning of the year at CES-2020. Their device is not even a VR helmet, but VR glasses in a steampunk design. They are beautiful and very light, but still show super-high-definition images without a “mesh”, and even support HDR. But this is still a prototype – when the glasses go on sale is unknown. On similar grounds, the former head of HTC Peter Chow spoke, introducing the XRSpace Mova VR headset, the lightest among autonomous ones, according to the company. Huawei and many other companies also presented their device – the trend for lightweight and autonomous devices will intensify.

Apple will be part of the race. Recently, the famous ‘fruit’ company announced that it will break into virtual reality with ‘Reality One’, ‘Reality Pro’ and ‘Reality Processor’ products.

Apple’s next product line could start with a device called “Reality One”. An entity associated with the Cupertino company recently filed trademarks for “Reality One”, “Reality Pro” and “Reality Processor”.

Experts suggest that these names are a signal that Apple, like Meta*(Zuckerberg’s product), intends to actively work to create a metaverse and offer products and services.

Earlier in 2021, it was reported that Apple engineers are working on a speed boost that has 12 cameras that track the movement of the user’s head, as well as the ability to perform an action that makes it possible to follow the movement of the eyeballs. Its price could be in the order of $ 3,000.

Concerts, Museums and Travel in VR 

Another consequence of the global pandemic era. The story here is the same as that of VR training and virtual offices. You can look at reproductions in Google Images, watch a kayak on a river on YouTube or a concert of your favorite band, but the feeling of presence will not be the same. Therefore, in 2020, many event organizers jumped in and started organizing VR broadcasts of everything in a 360-degree format. At a time of the most severe restrictions, this has greatly helped the concert, museum and tourism industries not to throw back their hooves. Needless to say, even the famous Burning Man festival was also held in VR format in 2020!

Although the transfer of live shows and museum exhibitions to the virtual space was spurred on by the pandemic, the phenomenon is unlikely to disappear after it: it turned out to be very convenient, inexpensive and immersive. In addition, the direction has huge potential for growth. For example, museums can organize interactive VR performances. Art has been friends with virtual and augmented reality for a long time. And there are interesting options for concerts: remember Travis Scott’s performance in Fortnite? Now imagine the same thing, but only in VR! In general, VR events can become not a substitute for real ones, but a separate self-sufficient experience and a large industry.

We Will Hear the Term XR More and More Often 

XR stands for Extended Reality, that is, enhanced, extended reality. This is not a new technology, but a collective term that includes everything at once – virtual reality in helmets, augmented reality in glasses and smartphones, and all the software and opportunities that these technologies provide. The term was coined by marketers back in 2019 and has been used more and more often since then.

Why is it needed? But for convenience! After all, VR and AR technologies are getting closer and closer to each other and are striving for complete unification, and in the future we will hear about it more and more often.

Data storage systems based on DNA can become an outlet for humanity, which generates ever greater amounts of information. Compared to all other carriers, DNA has a phenomenal data density. But there is another very interesting advantage. You can get access to the best casino with a lot of advantages online and get a Bizzo Casino bonus. Data storage does not need energy to work. Plus, information can be stored for hundreds of years. After a few centuries, data can be read without problems – of course, subject to the availability of appropriate technologies.

But DNA also has its downsides. For example, there are currently no standards for encoding information in a DNA strand. The process consisting in the synthesization of artificial molecules has a price. And a pretty high one. Plus, reading the stored information can take days or weeks. Repeated recourse to DNA strands for information leads to a violation of the structure of molecules, so that in the end errors can occur. A method has now been proposed to help solve some of these problems. The data storage system is a cross between a regular file system and a metadata-based database.

More About the Issues

Developed systems for storing data in DNA provide for the addition of certain sequence tags (sequence tags) to sections of DNA that contain data. To obtain the necessary information, regions are added to the molecule that are capable of forming base pairs with the desired labels. All this is used to amplify the complete sequence. Like tagging each image in a collection with its own ID, and then setting everything up to amplify one specific ID.

The method is quite effective, but it has two limitations. First, the amplification step, which is performed by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process, has limitations on the size of the sequence to be amplified. However, each tag takes up a portion of the already limited space, so adding detailed tags reduces the amount of data storage space.

Another limitation is that PCR amplifying certain DNA fragments with data consumes part of the original DNA library. That is, every time we read data, some of it is destroyed. Scientists compare this way of searching for information with burning a haystack to find a needle. If you do this often, you can end up losing the entire database altogether. True, there are ways to recover lost sections, but this method is not ideal, since it increases the likelihood of errors in the DNA and data sections.

The new method allows you to separate label information from the main data. In addition, the researchers have created a system that makes it possible to access only the data that interests us. The rest of the information remains intact, so that the DNA molecules remain intact and are not damaged.

New System

The technology is based on silicon dioxide capsules in which individual files are stored. DNA tags are attached to each capsule, which show what is in the file. The size of each capsule is about 6 micrometers. Thanks to such a system, scientists were able to learn how to extract individual images with 100% accuracy. The set of files built is actually pretty short. There are only 20 of them. But given the capabilities of DNA, then such a system can be scaled up to a sextillion files. These 20 files were encoded into DNA fragments about 3000 nucleotides long, which is about 100 bytes of data. A single silica capsule can hold a file up to a gigabyte in size. After the file is wrapped, single-stranded DNA labels are placed on its surface. Multiple labels can be attached to a single shell, which serve as keywords. For example, “red”, “cat”, “animal”.

Silica capsules labeled with this pattern are merged to become one unique data library. It is not as compact as pure DNA storage, but the data is not damaged in this case.

File Research

To search for files, a group of keywords is used – labels. For example, if you want to find a picture of a cat, the labels “orange”, “cat” and “home” are used. If you’re searching for a tiger, then you’ll use two words of the three:  “orange” and “cat”. The minus here is the search speed. It is unfortunately still pretty low in such a system. Something around 1 kB per second.

Another trick is that each label is associated with fluorescent molecules of a different color. Therefore, during the request, any capsules with the desired labels will glow in a certain color. Nowadays, devices with lasers integrated to separate objects by fluorescence color exist. So it is technically possible to extract the desired data. In this case, the remaining part of the library will not be impacted, which then means that the data will not be affected. It is no longer necessary to burn a haystack for the sake of finding one needle. An additional plus is the possibility of a logical search with different criteria. For example, query conditions can be complex: true for “cat”, false for “home”, true for “black”, etc.

Not Only Research

Yes, because the task of finding the right data is only part of the matter, and not even half. The discovered data still needs to be sequenced. And this requires opening the shell of silica, removing the thread stored in the capsule, introducing DNA into the bacterium, and then reading the data. This is an extremely slow process, compared to which even streamers are very fast technology.

On the other hand, DNA-based systems will not be fast, their main purpose is to store huge amounts of information that does not need to be retrieved often. In addition, over time, technology will be improved, so that the speed of reading information, hopefully, will increase.\

Tech giant Microsoft has announced the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) personal assistant Windows Copilot, in Windows 11.

On day one of its 2023 developers, the tech company announced that the AI tool will use current AI technology and large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 to offer help for specific tasks, such as generating content, answering questions, and providing information.

Also, the Copilot will help users run specific commands, customize Windows settings, and take care of tasks in Windows apps, such as Snap Assist and the Snipping Tool. Pairing the different tasks, users can also ask the tool to not only copy and paste text, but to rewrite, summarize, or explain the content.

Furthermore, Copilot will act as a more advanced and personalized type of search feature, letting users ask simple or complex questions.

In one example cited by Microsoft, it said, “Imagine you want to call your family in another country. Using Copilot, you can ask for the local time to make sure they’re awake. Now, you want to make plans to visit your family. Again using Copilot, you inquire about flights and accommodations for an upcoming break”.

Speaking on the rollout of this AI-enhanced feature, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “I think this is going to make every user a power user of Windows. With the feature, Microsoft is bringing AI to the biggest canvas of all”.

The Windows Copilot will be placed on the sidebar of the screen after it is launched, as Microsoft seeks to ensure that users can access it across all their apps and programs.

The Copilot  will function in a similar way to Microsoft’s Bing Chat, which will be available in preview for Windows 11 in June, Microsoft said.

To beef up Windows Copilot, Microsoft is also adding Bing Chat plugins to Windows. With plugins, developers will be able to integrate third-party apps with the Windows Al chatbot so that users can take advantage of a wider array of services.

Also, to keep pace with the advancements of Google Bard, Microsoft has announced that ChatGPT will be integrated into Bing as the primary search feature, offering more current responses sourced from the internet. The responses to search and web data will include references. Microsoft has announced it will be coming to ChatGPT Plus subscribers starting today, with availability for free users coming soon by activating a plugin.

It is worth noting that the tech company has been hinting about building Al features into Windows over the past six months, as it seeks to use Al to reinvent how users do everything on Windows.

Many had been expecting Microsoft to wait until the next major version of Windows, but the company is pushing ahead with its Windows Al ambitions instead. Ever since the rollout of ChatGPT last year, which saw it amass millions of users in a short while, several tech companies are beginning to integrate AI tools into their products to enhance users’ experience.