CBS News Features ICT’s Mixed Reality Lab, Working at the Forefront of Virtual Reality

CBS News featured the work of Mark Bolas and the ICT Mixed Reality Lab. The story highlights Mark Bolas’ 30 years working in VR and the lab’s influence on virtual reality past, present and future.
“The way people collaborate and communicate is going to shift, to where physical presence isn’t as important as virtual presence,” said Mark Bolas, director of ICT’s Mixed Reality Lab and professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
The story stated that posting USC’s VR findings and designs online for free helped a little-known start-up company named Oculus VR develop its own virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift.
The segment also noted that USC is now bringing the technology to the U.S. Navy. As part of Project BlueShark, the Mixed Reality Lab designed a virtual world that turns plastic tables into digital menus that can be used to man a ship. It also noted the lab’s award-winning DIY work pairing smartphones with $2 lenses and special software to create low-cost, hand-made headsets.
“We see smartphones as a way that we brought computers out into the real world,” said Bolas. “But virtual reality’s really the way we’re now gonna go into the virtual world. And I think it’ll be as common as smartphones — we’ll all have one, and we’ll bring them with us.”