Mar. 21: SCIENCE PUB. Virtual Reality: Past failures, Current Hype, and Future Vision. Our wildly popular Science Pub Series has returned for a seventh incredible season! Enjoy lectures on scientific topics of general interest in our Arizona Room (main floor banquet room) over beer and snacks. The room opens at 5:00 PM and quite often is full by 6:00 PM. Avoid disappointment and come down early for dinner and a pint before the presentation which begins at 7:00 PM. This month’s lecture will be presented by Dr. David Gerhard, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Regina. Virtual reality has long been the dream of science fiction, education, and entertainment.  The ability to craft a world entirely of your own making, beyond the frustrating real-world constraints of gravity, physics, and consequences, would allow people to go anywhere, do anything, or be anyone.  We have been working on ways to record and represent reality since antiquity, and our first attempts to simulate reality were decades ago. What makes this new generation of VR headsets different? Is it another tech trend destined to fail, or is it the start of a new generation of believably immersive simulated experiences?