Passenger-car gasoline in Italy costs the equivalent of around nine bucks a gallon. Formula One racing fuel goes for several euros more. And at a (full-speed) fuel consumption rate of between three and four miles per gallon, Ferrari's F1 cars can burn through heaps of Italian green during track testing. That's one reason the company, along with a few other F1-entrenched firms, are betting on the latest virtualization tech to help shave a few Euros off the high cost of testing.

Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created a robot-like avatar in the virtual world Second Life that isn't controlled by a person at a keyboard, but an artificial intelligence program.

There´s a reason you´re such a klutz when lopping off the head of a virtual ogre: You can´t feel what you´re doing. But game players will soon be able to get their hands on virtual-touch technology initially developed by Sandia National Laboratories and once reserved for such costly equipment as surgical simulators used to train medical residents. Novint Technologies´s desktop Falcon controller (novint.com), which will cost about $100, is the first interactive 3-D touch device for the home PC.