Virtual Horizon Research Articles

Charting the Virtual Horizon: Trends of the Metaverse in Business and Management

Charting the Virtual Horizon: Trends of the Metaverse in Business and Management

Beyond Virtual Horizons: Navigating the Infinite Metaverse Landscape and Unveiling its Real-World Impact

Abstract: The Metaverse, a digital realm where virtual and physical realities converge, has rapidly evolved from science fiction to a transformative force in our ultramodern world. This comprehensive study delves into the heart of the Metaverse, unravelling its intricate layers, implications and groundbreaking operations. Going beyond the conventional explorations of virtual reality and augmented reality, our exploration uncovers new dimensions and paradigms that will reshape industries and societies. Our investigation begins by dissecting the technological underpinnings of the Metaverse, examining the fusion of blockchain, artificial intelligence, decentralized networks and quantum computing that enable its existence. We unravel the intricacies of digital identity, ownership and privacy within this immersive digital landscape, proposing innovative solutions to the challenges that lie ahead. Furthermore, our study scrutinizes the Metaverse's profound impact on various sectors, similar as education, healthcare, entertainment, finance and commerce. We present pioneering use cases, including medical telepresence for remote surgeries, AI-driven immersive learning environments, unveiling new possibilities.

Security and Privacy in Vehicular Digital Twin Networks: Challenges and Solutions

With the flourishing and advancement of autonomous vehicles, the vehicular digital twin (VDT) has become an emerging paradigm, consisting of inter-twin communication and intra-twin communication. VDT can effectively address the current shortcomings of the autonomous vehicle and provide enhanced and scalable services to the users. Nevertheless, strict security and privacy concerns arise, as VDT collects a wide range of privacy-sensitive information of the users in real-time and is exposed to an open network environment in both physical and virtual horizons. In this article, we investigate the security and privacy of VDT. We first describe the vehicular digital twin network architecture in detail and then investigate some VDT-related applications. After that, we discuss the security and privacy issues in VDT. Finally, we put forward several potential countermeasures and open research issues for VDT from the perspective of security and privacy. We expect this work will bring more attention to further investigation on security and privacy solutions for vehicular digital twin networks.

Virtual fourfold

Daniel O’Shiel recently identified four categories of virtuality, which he terms “real virtualities”, that are perpetually present in human perception. These virtual horizons (Self, World, Others, and Values) continuously structure our experience without themselves being directly experienced. This essay argues that O’Shiel’s four categories of the virtual correspond strongly to the concept of the Fourfold found in the writings of the later Heidegger, and that Heidegger’s Fourfold can be fruitfully understood as a phenomenological framework of the virtual.

Чинники впливу на розвиток сучасної німецької та англійської медіалексики

The media are reaching new virtual horizons in order to provide information for their customers. Online journalism responds quickly to geopolitical processes in the sense of creating new vocabulary. The relevance of the topic is that the study is about today's factors that determine the relationship between language and society. Mass media perform the function to connect people during self-isolation and during pandemic the aim of mass media was to keep public well-informed and to avoid panic. Although there is counterproductive function if we use them as a substitute for real-life social interaction. The purpose of the research is to analyze the German media vocabulary about the coronavirus in a synchronous aspect through the prism of English and Ukrainian. The goal is to determine the main way of word-building. Results of research. The German language as well as any other widely used language demonstrated a reasonable range of new words that are associated with the coronavirus. In particular, there are a lot of compound words, the first component of which is Corona. The usage of lexical items (pandemic, quarantine, isolation) has increased that used to be commonly known for people sometimes they were forgotten or rarely applied in communication. During this coronavirus pandemic, words have been returned to active use although they were on the periphery of the vocabulary and have acquired the same or additional meaning. In times of crisis, the speaker strives for laconic expression of one’s opinion. To achieve such an effect journalists composite clear in meaning, understandable model of word formation, i.e. blending, and abbreviation instead of syntactically heavy constructions. Linguistic ratings capture the most relevant words of the year, which are a socio-political portrait, which is presented with the help of nominative linguistic markers. The results of the study confirmed the importance of the media's influence on public opinion, the avoidance of manipulation, and the performance of direct media functions. There will be a long-lasting need to comprehensively study the texts of the media: with linguistic mechanisms and the system of language development on one hand, and with the cultural system of action in the intercultural space on the other hand. It should be noted that the vocabulary of the COVID-19 pandemic due to its linguistic reflection is bound to be distinguished in linguistic rankings.

Generalized second law and universal relations of cosmological black hole

The objective of this paper is to investigate the validity conditions for the generalized second law of thermodynamics, and the universal relations for multi-horizon dynamical spacetime. It is found that there are three horizons of McVittie universe termed as event horizon, cosmological apparent horizon, and virtual horizon. The mass-dependent and mass-independent area product relations are formulated in terms of areas of the dynamical event horizon, cosmological horizon and virtual horizon. It is noted that whereas the area sum relation is mass independent, the area product relation is explicitly mass dependent. Moreover, we have also analyzed and listed explicit mass-independent and mass-dependent relations.

Quantum-Corrected Two-Dimensional Horava-Lifshitz Black Hole Entropy

We focus on the Hamilton-Jacobi method to determine several thermodynamic quantities such as temperature, entropy, and specific heat of two-dimensional Horava-Lifshitz black holes by using the generalized uncertainty principles (GUP). We also address the product of horizons, mainly concerning the event, Cauchy, and cosmological and virtual horizons.

WHY THE HORIZON IS IMPORTANT FOR AIRBORNE SENSE AND AVOID APPLICATIONS

Abstract. The utility of the horizon for airborne sense-and-avoid (ABSAA) applications is explored in this work. The horizon is a feature boundary across which an airborne scene can be separated into surface and sky and serves as a salient, heading-independent feature that may be mapped into an electro-optical sensor. The virtual horizon as established in this paper represents the horizon that would be seen assuming a featureless earth model and infinite visibility and is distinct from the apparent horizon in an imaging sensor or the pilot’s eye. For level flight, non-maneuvering collision course trajectories, it is expected that targets of interest will appear in close proximity to this virtual horizon. This paper presents a model for establishing the virtual horizon and its projection into a camera reference plane as part of the sensing element in an ABSAA system. Evaluation of the model was performed on a benchmark dataset of airborne collision geometries flown at the National Research Council (NRC) using the Cerberus camera array. The model was compared against ground truth flight test data collected using high accuracy inertial navigation systems aboard aircraft on several ’near-miss’ intercepts. The paper establishes the concept of ’virtual horizon proximity’ (VHP), the minimum distance from a detected target and the virtual horizon, and investigates the utility of using this metric as a means of rejecting false positive detections, and increasing range at first detection through the use of a region of interest (ROI) mask centred on the virtual horizon. The use of this horizon-centred ROI was shown to increase the range at first detection by an average factor of two, and was shown to reduce false positives for six popular feature detector algorithms applied across the suite of flight test imagery.

A visual horizon affects steering responses during flight in fruit flies.

To navigate well through three-dimensional environments, animals must in some way gauge the distances to objects and features around them. Humans use a variety of visual cues to do this, but insects, with their small size and rigid eyes, are constrained to a more limited range of possible depth cues. For example, insects attend to relative image motion when they move, but cannot change the optical power of their eyes to estimate distance. On clear days, the horizon is one of the most salient visual features in nature, offering clues about orientation, altitude and, for humans, distance to objects. We set out to determine whether flying fruit flies treat moving features as farther off when they are near the horizon. Tethered flies respond strongly to moving images they perceive as close. We measured the strength of steering responses while independently varying the elevation of moving stimuli and the elevation of a virtual horizon. We found responses to vertical bars are increased by negative elevations of their bases relative to the horizon, closely correlated with the inverse of apparent distance. In other words, a bar that dips far below the horizon elicits a strong response, consistent with using the horizon as a depth cue. Wide-field motion also had an enhanced effect below the horizon, but this was only prevalent when flies were additionally motivated with hunger. These responses may help flies tune behaviors to nearby objects and features when they are too far off for motion parallax.

Robust Range Estimation with a Monocular Camera for Vision-Based Forward Collision Warning System

We propose a range estimation method for vision-based forward collision warning systems with a monocular camera. To solve the problem of variation of camera pitch angle due to vehicle motion and road inclination, the proposed method estimates virtual horizon from size and position of vehicles in captured image at run-time. The proposed method provides robust results even when road inclination varies continuously on hilly roads or lane markings are not seen on crowded roads. For experiments, a vision-based forward collision warning system has been implemented and the proposed method is evaluated with video clips recorded in highway and urban traffic environments. Virtual horizons estimated by the proposed method are compared with horizons manually identified, and estimated ranges are compared with measured ranges. Experimental results confirm that the proposed method provides robust results both in highway and in urban traffic environments.

Area products for stationary black hole horizons

Area products for multi-horizon stationary black holes often have intriguing properties, and are often (though not always) independent of the mass of the black hole itself (depending only on various charges, angular momenta, and moduli). Such products are often formulated in terms of the areas of inner (Cauchy) horizons and outer (event) horizons, and sometimes include the effects of unphysical "virtual" horizons. But the conjectured mass-independence sometimes fails. Specifically, for the Schwarzschild-de Sitter [Kottler] black hole in (3+1) dimensions it is shown by explicit exact calculation that the product of event horizon area and cosmological horizon area is not mass independent. (Including the effect of the third "virtual" horizon does not improve the situation.) Similarly, in the Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-de Sitter black hole in (3+1) dimensions the product of inner (Cauchy) horizon area and event horizon area is calculated (perturbatively), and is shown to be not mass independent. That is, the mass-independence of the product of physical horizon areas is not generic. In spherical symmetry, whenever the quasi-local mass m(r) is a Laurent polynomial in aerial radius, r=sqrt{A/4\pi}, there are significantly more complicated mass-independent quantities, the elementary symmetric polynomials built up from the complete set of horizon radii (physical and virtual). Sometimes it is possible to eliminate the unphysical virtual horizons, constructing combinations of physical horizon areas that are mass independent, but they tend to be considerably more complicated than the simple products and related constructions currently being mooted in the literature.

Are quantization rules for horizon areas universal?

Doubts have been expressed on the universality of holographic/string-inspired quantization rules for the horizon areas of stationary black holes or the products of their radii, already in simple 4-dimensional general relativity. Realistic black holes are not stationary but time-dependent. Using two examples of 4D general-relativistic spacetimes containing dynamical black holes for at least part of the time, it is shown that the quantization rules (even counting virtual horizons) cannot hold, except possibly at isolated instants of time, and do not seem to be universal.

Reel time: ethnography and the historical ontology of the cinematic image

Confronting the cinema philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson and Andre Bazin with ethnographic work in the shooting of south Indian popular film, this essay explores a cinematic experience of time as a creative duration of emergence. I seek to suggest that such a texture of time is essential to such filmmaking as a process of affective expression. If modern cinema allows for an intuition of time in flux, that is, its capacity to do so may often depend upon the inhabitation of such time on the part of its makers. Closely attending to the cinematic thought and working practice of one Indian director, this essay focuses on the various ways in which practices of shooting on location may be taken to extend the virtual horizons of one's perceptions, actions and affections. Each of these three domains of experience – perception, action and affection – are proposed as means by which time itself is encountered as creative in nature. To scout, shoot and inhabit such a milieu to make oneself open to what it might yet become as it is filmed: to move along with the flow of its emergent potential. This essay argues for ethnographic engagement with film production practices as a crucial means of engaging the contingent and uncertain ‘happening’ of cinema, seeking thereby to encourage a broader shift in scholarly examinations of creative expression: from the subjective intentions of creator-auteurs, to the immanent potential of the situations in which they come to encounter newness.

Filosofia e comunicação na era dos horizontes virtuais

When we pass through places already known, the map of these territories precedes the experience, taking the virtual form in our mind. When we look at the horizon we see nothing else, but an imaginary map can form in our mind, indicating the virtuality of something that potentially exists but is not up to date. Thus, given the circumstances of perception, it is possible to affirm that we are also in an era of virtual horizons.

A Uniform Sky Illumination Model to Enhance Shading of Terrain and Urban Areas

Users of geographic information systems (GIS) usually render terrain using a point light source defined by an illumination vector. A terrain shaded from a single point provides good perceptual cues to surface orientation. This type of hill shading, however, does not include any visual cues to the relative height of surface elements. We propose shading the terrain under uniform diffuse illumination, where light arrives equally from all directions of a theoretical sky surrounding the terrain. Surface elements at lower elevations tend to have more of the sky obscured from view and are thus shaded darker. This tinting approach has the advantage that it provides more detailed renderings than point source illumination. We describe two techniques of computing terrain shading under uniform diffuse illumination. One technique uses a GIS–based hill-shading and shadowing tool to combine many point source renderings into one approximating the terrain under uniform diffuse illumination. The second technique uses a C++ computer algorithm for computing the inclination to the horizon in all azimuth directions at all points of the terrain. These virtual horizons are used to map sky brightness to the rendering of the terrain. To evaluate our techniques, we use two Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)—of the Schell Creek Range of eastern Nevada and a portion of downtown Houston, Texas, developed from Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) data. Renderings based on the uniform diffuse illumination model show more detailed changes in shading than renderings based on a point source illumination model.

Michel Foucault: Literature and the Arts: A Report from the Colloquium at Cerisy-la-Salle, June 23-30, 2001

Foucault is never exactly where we expect him. The power of his language undermines and compromises the constancy of his thought and his being by linking them to other thoughts, other beings. And despite numerous rapports with writers, painters, musicians, and philosophers, concretized in texts, interviews, demonstrations, etc., the virtual horizon of his encounters seems endless. Since his death, his oeuvre has continued to be unfolded by unpublished connections, sometimes untimely, which often are born and exist only at the moment of their expression. Thus Foucault becomes a sort of cross-roads constantly traversed by thinkers and artists, a perpetually moving nerve center that opens aesthetic and intellectual experiences into countless interpretations. This is what was experienced at Cerisy in June 2001. Despite this, it is easy to detect a common denominator in the heterogeneity of the papers given, a common thread in the disparity of the encounters that have been staged with varying degrees of success. In fact, the speakers have attempted to present the principles of Foucault's thought, as though they had been directed to find the origin of his knowledge. Paradoxically, this urge is perhaps involuntary, for don't the peripheral objects of the conference (literature and the arts) naturally take his thought back to its origins? Nonetheless, one thing is certain: the sobriety with which

Synthesis of Non Linear Controllers

A family of nonlinear multivariable controllers is developed for multivariable linear systems by modifications of a class of optimal linear controllers. These underlying linear problems minimize only quadratic control costs, but respond to state deviations through constraints that x(t) should approach zero at a virtual horizon time. The nonlinear controllers are developed by making the effective horizon a function of the current state. These nonlinear controllers retain the computational simplicity of the linear horizon constraint designs, while adding the advantage of bigger effective gains for large state deviations. While the nonlinear controllers obtained in this way do not explicitly minimize any performance indices, it is possible to find conditions which assure that the resulting closed loops systems will be asymptotically stable. Moreover, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of on-line implementation of the corresponding algorithms.