Slashdot Mirror
"Virtual Motion" for Future Video Games?
Piete writes "The BBC's Tomorrow's World has just shown an item on MotionWare.
It looked very impressive.
By stimulating the inner ear, the user feels that they are moving.
Some very impressive shots of children swaying and falling over! "
You're obviously not a true sysadmin. A true sysadmin would be trying to find ways to fit their users with the device. Just imagine it - bounce the user off walls every time they overload the network downloading pr0n. . .
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This inspires some nice game titles:
Quake 4 - The Vomit Comet
Duke Puke'em
Aliens vs. Pukator
Speaking personally, I'm looking forward to this sort of thing for racegames. It doesn't quite feel real enough playing on a steady chair even with a car - with a bike it's dreadful.
I suspect, as normal, the first people to REALLY pick this up will be the pornographers. We've already got the bodysuits to give passable VR sex - this could make it all rather more interesting. Imagine the market if they program this to a zero-gravity effect model, somehow...
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Mr disco was in the wrong place.
AAAAHHH!!!!
And what happens if I use a teleport while I'm falling? The blow involved in the transition from free fall to standing on solid groud would probably knock me unconscious...
On the other hand, it brings new meaning to force feedback. I'd actually have to moderate my use of the rocket launcher.
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NO CARRIER
You may not like playing the next version of Tomb Raider. Lara tends to die by falling occasionally. That could be rather scary. Actually that's a masterpiece of understatement. Something tells me this is a feature that would *not* appear in the official version of any game.
Right, I'm off to patent a vomit-proof keyboard - the next Big Thing.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
This isn't the only problem with VR gear, though.
There have been some reported eye problems. Imagine you're in a VR world, wandering round. Imagine you walk up to the edge of a cliff and look over it. Ordinarily your eyes would have to refocus, but you're in VR so the screen is still the same distance from your eyes. Which has apparently caused some problems, as the eye was actually tricked well enough to try and refocus...
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I read an article in Popular Mechanics a while ago dealing with this and trying to instill such a sense into future robots. They referred to the sense as "proprioception."
(The cure for 1984 is 1917.)
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
... or test on a cloudy night.
My Dad's pretty reliable at this, too, but with a small amount of practice and thought it's possible to do this from the sun and stars. So if neither are even slightly visible - and on a cloudy day you're potentially going to get one horizone lighter than the other due to the position of the sun - you could test it pretty reliably.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
yeah, that's what it means now, Gibson was postulating a possible escalation of the term to describe a seriously "disordered" part of society, it goes beyond obsession into severe dysfunction, I should have made that clear, I figured I'd get a bunch of replies saying it means nerd and house... which it does, currently.
Esperandi
Otaku Programmer and everything else dealing with computers except networking
Wow. Lemme tell you, I have a hard enough time keeping ahead of all the script-kiddie attacks on IRC-- do you really think I'd PLUG something into my HEAD that can make me puke?
...So I'm happily playing Descent 5 some evening, with my linux-supported USB (hey, I can dream) Verti-go-go, when some '7337 haxor-type decides that the Ping of Death isn't enough and sends me an Oversized Packet of Core Dump... but it's not X that barfs, it's me. No way, Jose.
What's next? Virtua Fighter arcade machines with a little springy boxing glove to knock the wind out of you? How about the new ultra-VR goggles from STB that burn your retinas out if you look at the flare from a BFG 9000? Ooh! I know! The ultimate in teledildonics-- USB vice grips so you can get blue balls whilst on IRC!
-- You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I downloaded the demo for the original Quake, and it made me so sick, that I wrote off the possibility of buying it. I didn't even try Quake 2.
For some reason, though, I decided I'd sit through the download and try Quake 3. It has so much more motion than Quake, and yet doesn't make me queasy. Could it be the increased amount of wide open spaces?
I can see how a virtual motion device may be helpful in Quake, but would proabably be downright brutal in Quake 3 (see my "Q3A tier 6" message below).
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NO CARRIER
But your brain might get confused and the reflexes that get called into play turn out to be the ones you learned playing Carmageddon or Grand Theft Auto. Pedestrians might not be too keen on the results.
"Hey - *I'm* walking here..." Fthlurp!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Temperature sense gets no respect too. Touch is
something completely different from temperature.
Does anyone have a good explanation why birds only have two eyes? We can only effectively perceive depth in one plane due to the orientation of our eyes. Not a problem as we're land bound. But birds could take advantage of three in a triangular formation. So why don't any have three eyes?
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Yes, you be right, thanks for the correction. i went on a Gibson binge and read nearly all of his books in a month (what a boy won't do when he runs out of Neal Stephenson novels)... I've never heard of All Tomorrows Parties though, is it new or old? I'll have to go do some searching ;)
Esperandi
Snow Crash still rocks my ass.
I actually have very little perception of time. I've worn a watch pretty much constantly since I was 7-8 (no, not the same watch...) and have little or no ability to tell HOW MUCH time has passed without reference to clocks or watches. No way of knowing if the two are linked, but I'm not giving any kids of mine watches so young.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I would argue against counting the "muscular position sensors", since they are internal sensors. When most people think of "senses", they are referring to mechanisms that return information about the outside world. Otherwise, you could count all kinds of internal sensors, like the oxygen/nitrogen balance in the blood.
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There is a really neat experiment which has proven this, in sight, at least.
The image captured by your eyeball is actually upside down. The brain has learned to make us perceive that we see everything the right side up, but if you wear a pair of glasses which inverse the image captured by the eye (to make it properly displayed on the back of your eyeball), the brain will temporarily forget how to make you see everything the right side up.
People who wore such glasses went for a number of DAYS seeing everything upside down, even after taking them off.
[I hope to god that's understandable - I should have gone to bed a few hours ago]
The point is that our brain has several functions to perform to adjust to the physics of the real world. If you start screwing with the input, you're likely to get it confused.
bart.
Which is why Kryten tries lasering messages into Lister's arms, and eventually entering the game himself...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I personally would only count the mechanism rather than the particular information content. For example, I wouldn't count air-pressure because (I believe) that is caused by movement of the hairs on your skin, which is activating the mechanism of touch.
That's why I would count balance, because it's a separate mechanism that is making a measurement not covered by the other senses.
Now, as you point out, what we call "touch" does seem to make a lot of different measurements. I don't know enough about how nerves work to know if there are different sensors for each type of measurement, but they're all lumped into "touch".
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Whilst this may only be the first step towards manipulating sensory data, such non-invasive techniques have great promise for bringing about William Gibsons technology of Sim Stim (simulated stimulation).
Whiles the control would need to be much finer, surely similar techniques could be applied to creating induced sensory data directly into the brain. (Though my knowledge of the field is meager to say the least; perhaps there are minute differences in the way people use their brains - however sections may perform multiple functions, such as in the brain damaged.)
Look at the inner ear
Well, I spoke about it with a girl and tried to look at it but she was so outraged by the comments I made that she left me off with two cheeks having a high blood pressure.
Is that what is called a Geek trying to date a girl???
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
If we use these things, and slowly train our mind not to react from motion the same way, we're putting ourselves in danger from things
I am not too sure about that...I am sure people were afraid of the same effect when roller coasters first came about!
I'm almost always a bit dizzy so this is nott for me thanks.
i can imagine that stimulating motion within the inner ear leaves the possibility for many problems to occur. If children are affected (which by the way isn't really all that funny when you consider the possibility of permanent medical damage) then adults too could have problems. My worry is that this could have a lasting affect. An inner ear imbalance can often affect someone for several hours afterwards, (example after a plane flight many people are left with the world slightly tipsy for awhile) The longer exposure, the longer the disorientation lasts. Prolonged interference with the inner ear, both for a certain amount of time without a break and with continuous use over a period of weeks or months may in the end cause permanent unpredictable damage. I hate to imagine all the affected people out on the roads driving!
-- People who don't like dragons... who knows *what* they'll do?
I want a bioport as in eXitenZ. Apart from it having great gaming potential, it's pretty damn erotic, especially if you can get Jennifer Jason Leigh to stick her toungue in it...
Awahhhh... drool
think of the fun ppl could have writing an email virus that made the person feel like they were getting flipped over and over, round and round. have it automatically start when a game starts using it. now wouldn't that be neat.
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dead angel
i am strange people. -me
dead angel
i am strange people. -me
spreading linux lovin' since 1998!
Think of the horrors for all of the motion sick people in the world.
Keyboards will need to be much more waterproof.
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Max V.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I remember at a mall nearby they had a place where you can play a VR game for $5. Kind of like a whole little arcade. They had three games there I believe but I only played two (boxing and some 2-player nerf-gun deathmatch type thing)... I remember people used to go there to watch the people in the boxing game fall over, it was about the damn near funniest thing I ever seen. I played that game, and I fell too when I got knocked out, sure the graphics were blocky and everything but my God it seemed real. Now imagine this new thing incorporated. Not only do you wanna fall over yourself when your VR self gets knocked out, but you get to feel the impact of running over to your opponent and taking a couple jabs to the face. Scary...
Ok. so you get this system working on quake or some other 3D shootemup. If someone could alter the communication between server and client this would get ugly: you are about to Frag your 10000th target when all of a sudden you seem to be moving in the opposite direction and this totally throws off your aim. I think getting Neurocracked is an interesting albiet scary concept.
(I'm imagining a bunch of teenage kids still living at home never leaving their "lair" rather than to eat and drink... or maybe not even that)...
I'm not convinced it's a bad thing, I just kinda wish that a heightened sense of responsibility came with all of these kinds of advancements...
(Apologies for the spelling errors, I just bought one of those damn ergonomic kbds...)
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
hahahaha... that'd be funny... maybe it's because I didn't sleep last night that this is causing me to laugh uncontrollably but that'd be an awesome prank to pull on a friend
I wonder what implications this has on political prisoners and torture? You could really mess with somebody's head with that thing.
-sigs of the world unite
I could see passenger boats carrying a few of these onboard to stick on the heads of those feeling nauseous - after all, if you think you're walking around in whatever virtual world, you'll probably feel better.
Touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing are all determined by configurations of highly sensitive nerves. The fact that you know what organ measures this only makes Tim's point for him. Balance and motion (more specifically acceleration) could be fairly called a sense.
jpowers
-jpowers
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
But think of the points you'd rack up. 100 points for seniors.. 50 for normals..
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Insert Witty Sig Here
As someone with inner ear damage, thus a bad sense of balance, I wonder if you could take one of these things, hook it up to a gyrosope, and provide a prosthetic balancing device?
When I'm playing Asheron's Call, I want to feel myself falling off a cliff...but wait, I'm afraid of heights...maybe I don't....no, I do...damn, I'm so conflicted. Aw heck, I'm going to get one. When someone reprograms UT with this, please let me know.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
After reading this blurb, I've decided that I have immunity already. I get that feeling in my chest of falling down a hill when I go down a fast one in Descent and never feel disoriented. My system seems to self-adjust to things like quake, looking around, etc. I'm not the type to move my hands while playing SNES either ... I let my brain do the work.
... but that's fine, i'll enjoy the games :-0
I know people who can't do it
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I think that we detect air movement by the hairs on our skin, but I am certain that we can detect air pressure by another method. For instance, when you dive, climb a mountain, or go up in an unpressurised airplane, you will almost certainly need to equalise the pressure between your inner ear and the outside atmosphere.
Come to think of it, the way that is detected might also be a manifestation of touch due to membranes pressing against certain sensors (either from within or from without) harder than they otherwise should at 1 atmosphere.
Whaddya think?
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
but still very cool. Anybody know if this thing plugs into a standard port (USB, PS/2, etc.) or requires a separate card interface? CPU loads?
It would probably ruin my quake playing though - I'm a fast twitch player and it would make me get disoriented. My eyes will move way faster than my ears will let me. =)
Overdoses of vitamin B12 can lead to destruction of the neurology that is responsible for proprioception. This means there are people who don't know where their limbs are if they're not looking at them!!
As much as I hate the "big boys" I honestly think that unless someone like Sony picks this up it wont get to market. Bung are about the only company I know to manufacture something major and get it to market without a big company behind them. I'm sure the question of "is there a market for this thing?" never appeared in Bung's *cough* business plan.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm curious about the safty. Not so much weither it can permanently hurt you or not (I assume no). But, I noticed there was an API, maby its just me but I don't like the idea of a computer virus that could make me sick also.
There's no such thing as "depth in one plane"... the measurement of depth is the same in any plane, defined as the distance from the observer to a distant object.
Or, to put it another way, what information would be gleened from three eyes that you don't get from two eyes? If I turn my head sideways, I can still perceive the same distances.
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So what you're saying, and other communists have been for years, is that people are essentially stupid and shouldn't be allowed to make decisions. People are basically selfish creatures who shouldn't be trusted with the good of society at large as individuals or corporately. They should have decisions forced upon them by the more intelligent and benevolent odd-balls that show up every now and then.
... we've got voting for now ... :-)
Oh well
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
heh...I can see the cheats now
Next time you're playing quake a player runs up to you and shoots you will something and bam!, your balance all thrown off...actually that would make a pretty cool weapon =)
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
is our sense of humor. This has been linked to stimulation of the "funny" bone. The funny bone is connected to the... oh never mind...
Four huge video screens (one at the back for the rear-view mirror), force-feedback steering, completely enclosed car, all powered by an SGI Onyx. They were going to use it for driver training.
Two very disturbing effects I wanted to share:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Typing is much more than simply socializing, there is full-motion video, instant-access to reference materials to verify veracity, there is no way for the person to overpower or out-shout you in a discussion, it cannot degenerate into a shouting match or a physical confrontation. Also, there is no small talk, eye contact, body language, physical contact, scents or proximity... all of which are annoying as hell unless its with a person you're going out with.
Esperandi
Assuming you've used Win98, you should know what it's like when your box crashes while playing Quake :) You hear the sound sorta do a record skip thing. Imagine what this unit would do when the game crashes... Instant vomitorium.
-- My neighbors dog has a four inch clit.
This may seem weird, but a friend of mine has an uncanny sense of magnetic north. We can drive on a freeway clover leaf and in the middle of it, just out of nowhere, ask "which way is north" and watch her point in the right direction without looking outside of the car. We've even tried totally mixing her up so she doesn't know where she's facing, but she can always point straight north. One of the oddest things I've seen in my life.
-Ted
Balance and air pressure and the various other sences mentioned can all be reduced to a sense of touch. For balance it is the sense of touch between a stone responding to gravity (as all things do) and hairs in your ear recording this touch. etc etc for the other posted possible senses.
The real sixth sense is a sense of self! The sense that we all all individuals. This is the essence of consciousness (sp?)! The sixth sense is to be able to distinguish between your own actions and those of another. Between your thoughts and those of another entity. This sense is related to (the same as) the sense of morality, the sense of time, the sense of love and many more.
Anoncoward
Like noise canceling headphones, couldn't this "cure" motion sickness????
Or here's an idea that's even easier to implement:
I've been out to sea a lot and given my fair share of contributions over the leeward side.
Normaly after two weeks or so my sea sickness would go away.
Could a device like this be used to intentionaly induce motion sickness over a long period of time, with the hope of actually preventing it when a person goes on an expensive cruise of space shuttle flight?
Great name for the product: Sea Legs. Cruise companies could rent them out before cruises....
Keep on Keeping on
trikster2
My 1st thought was reguarding heavy lag -- where your movement is extreemly jerkey. I could see this being extreemly unpleasant on the senses.
I can also imagine games designed specifically for use with this, based on flying or something. Jumping off cliffs & such could be interesting. It sounds like this device is relatively weak, so they won't have to add safety measures to avoid convincing your body you just impacted the ground at 300mph, going to 0mph in a fraction of a second. Even when only affecting this one sense, I figure it'd be rather unpleasant.
I also think it'd be very neat to make use of this for blast effects in games, so when that rocket detonates at your feet, you feel the sudden acceleration away from it.
Yup. Howard Rheingold. Ex-boss of mine back in 96-97 for a start-up called Electric Minds, writer of an excellent book called Virtual Reality and IMHO an even better one (and more topical) called The Virtual Community : Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. More of the Rheingoldian one can be found at his website, here
Put on a blind fold, spin her around in a chair (with feet off the floor), and see if she can still point north. Repeat several times.
If she can, then tie a magnet to her head, and repeat the experiment. The Earth's magentic field is extremely weak, so the magnet should throw it off.
Frankly, I think that she's probably using dead reckoning rather than a magnetic sense. I seem to recall studies on this that showed that humans don't have a magnetic sense.
I could be wrong... anybody have reference to any studies? It would be interesting to know.
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I believe the popular theory on why people get sick when sensory information doesn't match is that this is an evolved reaction to poisoning. Many poisons alter the way people process sensory information, so when the brain encounters this, it empties the stomach to reduce the amount of poison in the system (which, in the caveman days, was more often ingested than injected, theoretically at least :)
If you're referring to HeadGames's "eXtreme" series with that first one, their games are already good enough at making people vomit...
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
That's odd; I've worn a watch since approximately the same age, and I have an almost uncanny "sense" of time. I know it's not completely conscience; I can "set" the time I will awaken to within 5 minutes of accuracy. However, it only works if I really need to wake up at that time for something important.
I suspect it is learned behavior; I find myself guessing the time before I look at at clock or watch. In essence, I use a time-keeping device to recalibrate my own internal clock. Perhaps a similar exercise for you would improve your sense of time? Food for thought.
My apologies, badly worded.
The point, though, is fairly simple. In the horizontal plane we perceive stereoscopically, due to the alignment of our eyes. In the vertical, we don't. Now, it's not difficult to see that the need is lower, but there should be an advantage for creatures operating properly in three dimensions having a third eye, out of vertical alignment with the other two. So why don't any have such an eye?
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Don't forget !
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Come to think of it, the way that is detected might also be a manifestation of touch due to membranes pressing against certain sensors (either from within or from without) harder than they otherwise should at 1 atmosphere.
I think you're right. It's the expansion/contraction of the air pushing on the membranes, just like I might feel pressure in my stomach from too much gas. :)
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They'd work wonders for romantic RPGs. ^_^
i was wondering if they gots one that attaches to your balls.
bortbox
intellegent sig
You're not "looking" at it the right way (pun intended). If I face forward and move my eyes up and down, left and right, I can tell distance to any object in the room. If I tilt my head sideways, I can do the same thing.
The point is that stereoscopic vision gives you the ability to tell the distance between two points.
Your point would be valid if I couldn't aim my eyes up and down and focus on an object outside of the horizontal plane. But since I can "swivel the plane", so to speak, two eyes can focus on any object and tell the distance.
If you're still not convinced, then give me an example of range information that cannot be measured by two eyes, but could be by three eyes.
Thinking about it, I will say this... it's possible that with three eyes you might get a little better peripheral depth perception on the vertical plane. If your eyes are aimed straight ahead, and something comes at you from above, it may be that you could get slightly more accurate depth information about something at the edges of your range of vision. Note, however, that you can still tell the distance with two eyes, it's just a little less accurate. I mean, I manage to duck just fine if something swings at me.
Vision is primarily designed to give fine information on what the eyes are aimed at, and coarse information at the periphery (like movement, etc). I don't think accuracy is really needed all the much.
To answer your original question (why not three eyes), I think the potential small advantages of peripheral depth perception don't outweigh the added complexity of processing a third eye. It's hard enough for the brain to process two eyes, imagine the complexity of merging three images! For evolution to make three eyes work well would require a huge advantage in survivability. It's like asking why don't we have four arms? That would be hugely useful (especially when soldering), but the advantages of four arms don't outweigh the added brain complexity that the coordination would require (and the probably loss of some other ability... brains are only so big).
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Well, doc, I'm not sure which patent you read but the one I read, US patent #5,762,612 available at http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5 762612 says nothing of the sort. From the description of the preferred embodiment, the system provides simultaneous and cooresponding stimuli to the visual and vestibular systems. The only mention of 2Hz in the patent refers to the signal's bandwidth. This isn't the same as the frequency.
Yes Sir! You bet the first thing that is going to happen when/if this thing was to come out is that someone is going to figure out how to make their friend dizzy and disoriented as heck while they are playing a game. Maybe a magnet to the wire, or yanking the cable out during the game. What sort of bad feedback would that *feel* like?
Get a trackball, set that thing on the lowest resolution possible, and swing your lunch right out! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
So, why do we get disoriented all the time playing VR games, Quake, etc?
:)
:)
:)
:)
:)
Well, basically, your eyes & ears are telling you one thing ("Woo - I'm running & weaving down a corridor") and your inner-ear is saying another ("Dude, you're sitting on yer ass!"). As a result, your brain hearkens back to the 'good ol days' back in the savannas/trees when, if your eyes & ears didn't agree with your inner ear, it probably meant you'd eaten something nasty that you'd better get out of your system fast. Thus - PUKE-O-RAMA!
I was speaking to a NASA guy *way* back in 93/94 in Boston who was delivering a speach to a VR group. He noted that being weightless meant that your eyes & ears told you one thing, but your inner-ear said another. "Brain to stomach - hello - evacuate!"
When the shuttle went up with mission specialists, many were seriously affected by motion sickness. Every minute that someone is in space costs a fortune, so it was not a good look to have them working at less than peak efficiency. So, NASA wound up using lots of nifty toys to simulate the disorientation on the ground so space-cadets could build up resistance to the nausea, etc. These included slowly rotatating a person who was strapped down sideways with their inner-ear at the center of the rotation. They'd then project images of the inside of the shuttle on the walls as the person rotated, thus inflicting the disorientation that can occur in space.
Now, of course, they can also use a VFX-1 and Descent to produce a very similar result at much less cost (and probably more fun for the space-cadet
Another way of getting a resistance to the disorientation is to have someone drive you around in a car. You sit in the back, facing backwards. Then, get a mirror and position it so you're looking forwards in the direction of travel. Focus on the mirror. Grab your barf-bag and tell the driver to start the car moving. Won't take long
So, the upshot is that yes, you get VR disorientation and this thing could be a cool aid to prevent puke-a-thon's during Quake/Descent/Aerobatics+VFX-1/etc. The problem to me appears to be that if you spend sufficient time wired in VR gear + this gismo, you stand a very real chance of reprogramming your reactions, etc.
Who's played DOOM/QUAKE/etc for hours on end and then tried to walk/drive home? Oh yes, great fun
Oh well, I guess I'll just have to buy one and try it out *grin*
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Balance isn't the only problem with VR. Focus has proved to be another major problem causing eyesight degredation and, well, headaches.
If they could find a way to get the system to detect what the eyes would be looking at, they could adjust the display to focus on that distance (blur the display of objects at varying distances), fooling the eyes yet again into believing they're focusing. That would take care of the eye-mind connection, but I guess then you have to deal with the fact that the eyes really are not focusing. The brain thinks they are, but the whole time the eyes are focused on the one plain (screen), which could cause problems itself.
You know, the only real safe VR will be when they send signals to the brain, including sight. I guess kind of like the Matrix. They patch into your sensory inputs into the brain and emulate the world in your mind. That way your eyes and other organs will operate normally, but what you 'see' will be the program. But, as in the Matrix, it would cut you off from the world. You would be in a 'dream' world.
Otherwise, you could just go straight to holograms. They may be headmounted, but the quality of that may be much lower. If it's holographically displayed, you'd have the depth perception, motion, focusing, etc. Range might be restricted though, unless you find a way to simulate a projected hologram. If that's all possible, then you may able to create a virtual room with no wall, in front of your eyes. That may be feasible... the black interior of the headset would block the outside world and create the holographic display. It wouldn't be a 2 screen idea for each eye, but one panoramic view, so both eyes are still required to perceive depth.
Does that all make sense?
Yep, I think that was the point. And y'know what, he's right. People are essentially stupid (and dangerous), and shouldn't be trusted with anything beyond the tending of a small goldfish, but only so long as it doesn't matter if the goldfish dies.
Maybe the more intellegent and benevolent "odd-balls" should be the ones making the decisions. "Normal" people can't seem to get things right.
After all, how do you explain the WWF??
I imagine it will work well for certain games and not others.
Perhaps it would work well for driving games. One thing that annoys me about many driving games is that, when cornering, there is a point where your wheels begin to slip, but there are no real cues about when it will happen. With this Virtual Motion technology, you could feel the centrifugal forces.
- Cebert -- bleh.n3.net
Speaking with several people who do testing with VR headsets they?ve noted problems with depth perception and motor skills after using the headsets.
That's not too surprising. It's basically an acclimation effect. The brain tends to continuously re-calibrate the interactions between the senses and the environment. VR throws off that calibration (temporarily) by stimulating only some of the senses. I suspect that the virtual motion device could either reduce the effect by providing some semblance of the normal relationship between the visual field and the vestibular sense, or it could make it worse by providing more reasonable but 'unreal' calibration data.
In any case, the effects are ALMOST certainly temporary, and at a guess would wear off in two weeks max. I base that on experiments where test subjects are fitted with glasses that invert their visual field. It took two weeks for the inversion to seem normal and for hand eye coordination to normalize and another two weeks to recover once the glasses were removed.
The plasticity implied by that experiment is amazing to me!
Like I don't already need a barf bag in some of these VR pod environments, now they have to start electrically messing with my nervous system...
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
That would take care of the eye-mind connection, but I guess then you have to deal with the fact that the eyes really are not focusing.
Perhaps a lens system that causes the eyes to actually need to re-focus. Just have the lenses shift focus opposite of what you want the eye to do. That would actually enhance the realism of the visual display somewhat.
Actually I think there is already group doing some research into this at Stanford. When I was there at the Biomimetics lab there was a group working on this exact thing.
Essentially the goal was to negate the effects of motion on the inner ear, something like those earphones which cancel out unwanted noise. The principle was proven to be attainable but they were having trouble figuring out how to stimulate the inner ear without producing unwanted side affects. In other words, the cancellation signals were too strong or out of synch so it would only make the test patient more motion sick than before. I think this can be eventually overcome but only research and time will tell.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
IBM already makes them.. They're the Model 'M' and Model 'F' keyboards. Vomit-proof, coffee-proof, and if you get one of the older incarnations (Model Mx where 13 > x, or Model Fx where 10 > x) they've got a metal shell that makes them bulletproof and handy for repelling intruders. I've had a F6 working properly after inadvertantly spilling four shots of espresso in it. The keys didn't click right, but neither it nor its integrated touchpoint missed a beat.
Downside is they're not (l)user-proof. We lost so many keycaps from them we kept a full keyboards worth in the bottom of out service boxes, and forcefully sticking a paperclip into the PS/2 expansion jack will kill them if done just right.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Man just when you thought the Melissa virus was a problem. (well, I didn't but...)
Just think, that next quake plug in you install could randomly send you straight into a wall then pull you up a hundred feet, and drop you down a flight of stairs. And you'd be feeling the actual movement.
Ouch.
I deem this virus Puke 1.0
Click here to read too much about my personal life
That's nice, I would have said that I was talking about the current definition of Otaku if that's what I meant, but it wasn't so I didn't... I was talking about the possible future definition which Gibson gave it, hence I stated that in my post... Esperandi
The first thing I thought when I looked at the article about this technology is, "what a great torture device this would be."
Look Ma, no marks on the body.
I would argue against counting the "muscular position sensors", since they are internal sensors.
The position sensors combined with the tendon stretch sensors tell us the weight and firmness of an object. They also contribute to the sensation of falling. I can see your point though, there's a file line to draw somewhere.
Side note: some weightlifters foolishly inject anaestetic into their tendons to defeat the stretch sensors and allow them to lift more. As a result, they get severely torn muscles and tendons. That's why the practice is banned in competition.
I wonder if you could take one of these things, hook it up to a gyrosope, and provide a prosthetic balancing device?
Excellent idea! I suppose it comes down to where the damage is. As long as the nerve itself is still functioning reasonably well, it should work.
Does anybody know anything about the effects of running electric current through your vestibular system on a long-term basis?
Tsk, tsk...been reading too many Colin Powell reviews lately, haven't we? =P.
Actually, the Communists have been saying for years that we should eliminate the concept of private property. The idea that total democracy may not be the best way to make decisions has been around a lot longer than communism. We have voting in this country, but what are we really voting for? We're voting for a representative to make our laws for us -- to make the decisions that are best made by some intelligent and benevolent odd-ball. The problem, in my opinion, is that the people who are getting elected have made it their job only to get elected, and rarely understand just what it is they've been elected to do.
share and enjoy
You may chat with more people at once online, but socializing is much more than simply typing. In Real Life(tm), say a club, you socialize in many ways, whether it be a drawn-out discussion, smalltalk, eye contact, body language, physical contact, scents or proximity.
ah, but you forget that commandment 14 is 'thou shalt rock and roll all night and party every day' ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
marriage and prostitutes
I've died in my dreams many times I guess but I haven't actually died, I think. So why should people die in "the matrix"? After all, you know you're inside it.
If you think about it, all sensation is related to touch. Sight is nothing more than your eyes being hit by photons. Sound is nothing more than your ears being hit by vibrating columns of air (or water, or whatever medium the waves are traveling through). Smell/taste is your nose/tongue being hit by various molecules that posses smell/taste. Balance is related to the touch of the water in your inner ear. All sensation can be decomposed into various particles hitting you in some way. I think the only thing that really distinguishes between the senses is how the brain perceives the external stimuli.
I have had similar experience. I find that I wake up almost exactly 3 minutes before the alarm goes off. This only works if I'm not extremely tired, but it does work if I change the alarm time. I agree with your theory on learned behavior. I think that in addition to using the time-keeping device as a calibration method, there are other calibration methods including daylight. I find that weeks I spend with daylight coming in through a window, I have a better sense of time. Note that that isn't checking the angle of the sun. It's just that the amount and quality of light acts as an additional calibrator. I find myself only looking at time-keeping pieces to confirm my suspicions of what time it is. "It's got to be 2:00. Yup it is."
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
the system provides a signal to the inner ear (through electrodes mounted behind the ears and on the forehead) that is non-specific and designed to effectively turn the balance system off -- the system cannot tell your ear that you are tilting left or right -- it simply blasts your ears with a 2 Hz electrical wave. With your inner ears shut down, the visual input provides the only motion cues.
Note also that the patent *includes* the use of visual input. The medical-use stimulators are already patented, of course.
So, there's still plenty of room for all you wetware hackers to figure out the correct electrical signals to actually stimulate the inner ears correctly (instead of just shorting them out).
So far on this list, people have brought up how a completely self-enclosed virtual reality would cause people to go for days and weeks in their virtual worlds without coming up for air. What everyone seems to be missing is that if we do ever get to the point where we've got a neural implant (that is, a device that completely takes over your brain), we could program it to take over the fourth dimension, time, as well.
Time, and the passage of time, is just a function of how your brain differentiates between seperate events. If we can override this system, we could live an entire lifetime of events in a split second, assuming your brain could work that fast. In this case, we could live out thousands of lifetimes in the course of a few weeks. Imagine this.. how long is your life already? Of course, I wouldn't be worried about getting "trapped" in that lifetime, considering that if we have full control over the brain, we can put a giant "EXIT" button in every lifetime that will cause the program to shut down.
-Brock
Ok. this is a common mistake. There are 4 senses. hearing Is not a sense. It is actually the sense of touch. Your brain however has developed a very nice process for interpretting the pressure,sense of touch, in your ear drum, There for you think you hear sound. To make it more clear, How can you sense something that is not even real. 'Sound' meaning the vibrations sent through solid objects that eventually vibrate your ear drum and body, is not a physical. It doesn't exist. you can see, why becuase you have receptors that recieve light. Yes light is real it is physical. You can smell, why becuase you have receptors that recieve chemicals and particles in the air. you can taste, becuase you have receptors that recieve chemicals and send signals. You can touch, why becuase you have receptors that can detect tempeture and pressure and send these to your brain. And this is what 'hearing' is. The pressure and vibration on your ear drum interpretted by your brain. As for all this other mumbo jumbo about gravity and knowing where your body parts are, those are not senses, those are preceptions. Your brain precieves things from your senses. just has it interprets vibration into sound, stereo image into depth etc.. Again balance is held by the sense of touch. In your ear you have liquid and the sense of touch, becuase you feel the liquid, determines if you can keep balance. Once again, knowing where your body parts are once again is the sense of touch. These are preceptions not Senses.
I'd probably misconfigure it so it would only make me throw up after I did something like deleting /etc/passwd...
Automated kick-me-while-I'm-down machine.
OTOH, it would be an interesting experiment in negative reinforcement (can you train a good sys admin by causing pain every time he screws the system over?).
This will increase the sales of new keyboards due to spew splatter.
well, I couldn't help but wonder...
Will they also release a LGPL version of the code? IANALU
Since it's a serial port interface, it shouldn't be very hard to reverse engineer. It could be a sickening experiance though.
by simply increasing the voltage, you can experience ultra-real sensations when you're hit by one of those lightning-bolt guns in Quake 3.
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Anybody have the galvanic or vibration criteria for temporary and permanent damage to the vestibular system sitting around their desk? I quote from the manufacturer's web site: "Motionware® overrides the body's balance inputs. " Wonderful. Does anybody here really know what the short and long terms effect of this would be? I mean really. Don't kid yourself or post pablum. One possibility is PERMANENT problems. I'm working on an issue with an underwater sound system the Navy is excited about deploying worldwide. This system produces sound underwater that has injured divers, including Navy divers in test programs, some for very longs periods of time. Nobody knows what the long term effects are of this new system, especially when used outside medical treatment protocols. Medical applications of galvanic treatment are tightly controlled. Do you seriously think game or vr developers are going to observe health protocols? It would be a drag on time-to-market. And marketing sure isn't going to talk about 'health effects'. Gee, vertigo for weeks, that's radman. Not!
I'll bet it can accurately simulate mition enough to cause motion sickness.
I'm sure parents will be pleased when their children vomit from too much video-game playing. ;)
Hosting for Creators: http://rpg-works.net
The virtual motion folks came by our company HQ back when I worked for a small game company. Despite being a lowly programmer, I got to test drive it a little. The sensation was not unlike that 'falling' feeling that you might get after a long day at the local roller coaster park. The demo I experienced also involved a small memory-foam pad that helped lessen the sensory feedback of your feet touching the floor. This wasn't integral to the product, but it did help heighten the effect.
The device was attached to a small box which I believe contained most of the circuitry. They mentioned plans to eliminate this separate box, but I don't know if they have yet. I forget how this rig connected to the computer, but it was via a standard port. (serial or parallel...I saw this before USB was wide-spread)
The sensation was very pronounced in some directions and not so strong in others. The device was very good at simulating linear motion to the front, back, and sides. It had trouble generating rotational motion, but that may have changed. I forget how it handled motion along the vertical axis.
One thing I remember vividly is that after a short time of wearing the head-piece (and sweating a little where it contacted my skin), the small voltages that it used would start irritating my skin.
Again, I saw this product a few years ago. It really wasn't bad at the time, but our games just didn't lend themselves to such a device. I imagine it has been improved substantially over the passed couple of years though.
-Brother Dog
Does anybody here really know what the short and long terms effect of this would be?
Please read the whole thread. That particular thread was not discussing the possable harm from the galvanic stimulation itself, just the effects of inaccurate sensory input.
Galvanic stimulation is generally considered safe, though there hasn't been much testing for long term/frequent exposure like gaming tends to be. It sounds like their employees will be the first to know!
I also imagine they WILL be somewhat concerned about safety since a billion dollar class action lawsuit can really screw up your profits.
I don't know what the Navy has to do with this!
eXtreme Diving -- Complete with simulated vertigo!
Rollercoaster Tycoon II -- Now you can take your park for a spin.
NASA Space Camp -- Take a virtual ride in the Vomit Comet
M$ Flight Simulator 1901 -- Before the Y2K patch, you can do 3 flips until you realize there are no planes and start a simulated downward spiral.
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Yes! That guy!
Oh yeah, that reminded me of a chapter in the book "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" by neurologist Oliver Sachs (the guy who Robin Williams portrays in Awakenings, and, to a lesser extent, Tom Cruise in Rainman). He came across a case of a woman who had lost her kinestetic sense after an accident. She could move her body normally, but she had lost all "feeling" for it. She described it as being trapped inside someone elses body, like being living dead. Her own body disgusted and terrified her.
Pretty scary thought.
************************************************ ***
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
There's a video "Otaku no video" which is a must
for people who either love or hate anime; it is
the penultimate definition of the word otaku.
Someone had to do it.
ertigo The inner ear is connected to many areas of the brain. Probably best to not poke around with that stuff.
do I really want to feel like a "grapple monkey" while playing CTF. I don't think I would particularly want to feel like I am flying through the air from my flinging grappling hook. Marijuana/Beer + inner ear distortion + quake may not work too well ;-)
...this device should actually reduce VRD because it is synchronized to the visual stimuli.
Latency is an important issue but if this device's latency is synchronized to that of the display I don't see how it can make things worse
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Adding to what you're saying, the brain does certainly have an amazing ability to adapt itself to new situations. It has been shown by experiment that the brain is not strictly "programmed" to carry out a predescribed set of steps. The ability to invert images so they are oriented properly in the "mind's eye", for example, is something the brain adapts to.
In one very interesting visual experiment, several volunteers were fitted with goggles which inverted the images they saw (ie. they saw everything upside down.) They were placed in an enclosed, protected environment where they wore these goggles 24 hours a day. After a while the volunteers became used to performing simple tasks with an upside down image; it was awkward, but possible.
However, after about a week, almost all the subjects reported that they were now seeing things properly oriented! Their brain actually realized it was generating an upside-down image, and inverted it. When the goggles were removed, they saw things upside down! It took another week or so without goggles for the brain to re-adapt to normal images.
This just goes to show that the brain is capable of amazing things, especially when it comes to sensory input.
kugano
So how many senses can we squeeze into a game now?
Sight, sound, touch(force feedback), smell, and now the oft-overlooked sense of balance.
All thats left is taste and the sense of direction. And the one that lets you see ghosts.
To confirm, a friend of mine (a Norwegian) claims to have sense of (geographical) direction - very useful in norwegian fjords you understand :-). i was sorta wondering how that was possible - so these cells have something to do with that..
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
This is exactly the kind of things that patentets should be used for. Far from obious technology. But that doesn't say say that I wouldn't be glad if it was in the public domain.
And let's quote their site: "our system uses a scaled-down version of widely-used medical technology to create the sensation of actual movement by stimulating the neurological system"
Hope they didn't get a patent through that covers anything already widely used.
Prior to Virtual Motion's breakthrough, galvanic stimulation of the vestibular system had only been used for medical treatment and/or the diagnosis of balance disorders.
Gee, maybe prolonged (~8 hours a day for a year) exposure will hurt peoples sense of balance. And don't tell me that you can't play video games that long, because _I_ did it in college.
On the same insane desire for reality, they are going to start putting a few grams of radioactive toxic waste in the next doom package so that you can actually feel the effects of radiation poisoning...
Oooohhh, look at how the green slime glows...
-- Never make a general statement.
> Any theories on why we have the popular notion of only five senses?
Ignorance
Psychologists recognise several more:
Kinasthesia (how far your joints are flexed, including the spine)
Acceleration (inner ear, as discussed in depth in other posts)
hot/cold
We can also sense depth by scale and edge angles. Look at a photograph and you will see what I mean; you can still approximate how far things are from each other even though it is not a stereoscopic image. -Decimal Dave
This may have some consequences...
:)
Picture this:
You're sitting at your desk, fraggen away in Q3, spin around to rail some poor fool, and your head slams into the wall! I can just see the headlines now: "Proof That Computer Games DO Kill".
Still, it would be kinda cool.
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It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you...
Consider the following... 1) They sure talked about the patent alot. 2) They gave some functions from their language "as advance notice of intended functionality", but did not tell ust anything about how to implement these functions, what kinds of paramaters these functions take, or even more importantly, what language these functions are in. 3) No details are given about how it works other than "Motionware® overrides the body's balance inputs." and the phrase "MotionWare uses galvanic stimulation of the vestibular system" Kinda sounds like mumbo jumbo designed to help them get investors. Seriously, I think this is a bunch of bullshit to draw attention to their company. Don't invest here.
Okay, don't get me wrong, I definetely think this is cool technology, but it has the same downfalls as VR. You can simulate me falling out a plane (or getting railed in Quake) all you want, but so long as my butt is still warming a chair, its not going to be real enough (in the case of getting railed in Quake, that might not be a bad thing). When will we get the real cool tech? One of these, a VR suit, and a zero-g room... then you could simulate whatever sensation you wanted.
Now, this sounds like a GREAT idea in theory. But consider what would happen if something was wrong, or if somebody creates a hacked version. With graphics, all it can do is give you a minor headache, but imagine the pain a misused effect could be? I seriously hope that the manufactureres put severe limits on the strenggth of the pulse, or they'll be looking at a whole stack of lawsuits.
Motion sickness is caused by having your middle ear bumped around too much without other cues about movement. I can't imagine this VR technology is not for people who get carsick easily.
I don't want to play any videogames that leave me feeling like I just took a long car ride. I just get this kind of soggy sleepy feeling. Mebbe more exciting motions would be different, but I just doubt the technology.
Where is my mind?
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
If this person doesn't like slashdot, then why would they expend so much mental power to find the flaws and point them out? My guess is that someone trashed a past posting of his and he went postal. No one seems to have imparted the importance of tact to the Anonymous Heckler. I wouldn't have written this if the 'problems with slashdot' weren't slid in between expletives and bitches. There are ways to influence change, and there are ways to be an ass. I didn't know the line was so thin.
I doubt it would be smart to get a dog to walk on its hind legs by slicing off his front legs.
.......And wasn't the subject Virtual Motion
-Halo
'Corinthiad 1, Chapter 13, Verse 11'
Eisen ma sheisse.
"Some very impressive shots of childen swaying and falling over !"
This sounds like family fun. Until you realize what would happend if the kid fell badly and hit the corner of a table with his head. This is a lawsuit waiting to happend!
Tell your friends about xenu.net
haha I remember the Gibsonian definition in Idoru:
"Otaku: techo-fetishist with social deficiency"
I asked my Japanese co-worker what it currently meant and he replied simply "freak".
BTW Im currently reading All Tomorrows Parties and its great so far!
Not only that but try closing one eye. Uhh look... everything is still 3d.. and yes.. you still have depth perception good enough not to notice any difference.
The addon packs for first person shooters include the bose ultra 150 decible bass cannon vest and the electric nides on either side of the headset.... :)
hmm... that would be kinda... um.. interesting.
SaintAlex
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
heh improve balance even. So like cats.. we always land on our feet.
For me, random, changing motion == fine. Constant vertical-axis rotation == nausea. I wonder what that says about my inner ear?
Oh, and for the record: My vote for "Ride I Absolutely Will Never Get On Even If They Pay Me" goes to the spinning-teacups ride (the one with an Alice in Wonderland theme) at Disneyworld (or is it Disneyland?). I've never been to Disneyworld/land/whatever, and don't particularly want to. But I've seen short video clips of that ride, and it scares me! Constantly rotating around a vertical axis that ITSELF is rotating around another vertical axis... If you want to see me throw up in record time, put me on that ride.
Let's hear from anyone else who's interested: what roller-coasters or rides make you throw up, and what leaves your inner ear completely indifferent?
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
combine this with a little java and web bassd chat and cyber sex will never be the same heh? and you thought those poeple were addicted now?
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
Just though i might make this comment. I travel up and down the bluemoutains in australia every day to get to TAFE. The first few weeks my ears would "pop" when i went past a certain altitude. However it doesnt do it anymore.. strange eh :).
Gee... first we've got kids who have seizures from watching the "pokemon" TV show. Now kids throwing up from playing video games. So what happens when they try to play the *pokemon* video games??
count me in. BTW I priced the units and right now it would run $1500 US for 1. lets hope some one picks it up.
Question reality.
It's commonly repeated that humans have five senses... touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell.
However, I contend that humans have six senses, but for some reason, one gets no respect. The sixth, of course, is balance. You could also call it a sense of gravity. Think about it.
Any theories on why we have the popular notion of only five senses? I've never come up with a good one myself.
--
Methinks about the potential for this in use in adult movies... :)
That's rather curious.l Loss of adequate proprioception is more commonly associated with a deficiency of B12, rather than as a product of overdosage of cyanocobalamine. Can you provide any URLs to sources of info about this phenominon?
Silicone breast implants ring a bell. Well, if that's how you use them. Or are you referring to the unproven silicone diseases?
Saccharine. Yeah, one error. How about cane sugar? Sugar beet sugar? Maple syrup? Honeybees?
Lead in gasoline. Gee, you're going to ignore gasoline itself as an innovation? Oh, yeah, it's carcinogenic...at least to rats, who have a protein in their liver which it binds to.
DDT. Gee, a poison is dangerous. Imagine that. Surely malaria and yellow fever are not dangerous, as they're natural.
Fortunately, I have this all-wood computer on which I can safely read this.
I can just imagine how this would help people with a slight case of motion sickness (like me) start to fix it. Then again, maybe not. I'd hate to have to take Dramamine before playing a nice round of Unreal Tourney (especially if I got gibbed, that would be slightly discomforting).
Should be fun to see where this goes.
--Forager
- "Sometimes knowledge alone is not enough."
- "Seek and ye shall find."
student of animation and the fine arts
Messing with your inner ear? That sounds risky. I wouldn't want to be beta testing programs that use this technology. Couldn't it really jack you up if something goes wrong?
What I am interested in, is what sort of torture devices you could construct from such a thing ?
Without enough realistic input to the brain, it would be possible to get someone to confess to the most heinous of actions, without leaving so much as a trace ....
'Confess Damn You ! .. vile spawn of Beelzebub, thou hast taken into thy chambers the many tailed Goat of the Night, and hast with this beast passed countless hours of licenstious shamefullness ! .. Admit thy wrongdoing or be forever damned !'
because all the theme-park companies and roller-coaster manufacturers would lose millions. Think of it: Why spend three hundred dollars to go to a theme park if you can get it at home?
-raph
I wonder if this might have the same problem as VR headsets have had? Speaking with several people who do testing with VR headsets they've noted problems with depth perception and motor skills after using the headsets. They've even had to limit usage to make sure employees can drive home safely.
Very basically put the problem tends to stem from the fact that the simulations are real enough to fool the senses (obviously the intent). However, the physically the body gets out of sync with the senses. They've suited the effect and have found that the effect takes place after only a few hours for a while afterward. While with after a few hours of such exposure the effects are negligible, they've recorded worse problems after exposure of a few hours each day over a few weeks that even employees noticed outside of testing. The effects so far do seem to wear off in a week or so, but studies of regular usage over more than a few months have not been completed (or at least they haven't released them).
A native speaker could probably give a clearer definition.
Cheers,
The_Messenger
--
I like to watch.
for improving gaming skills. I wonder if that'd be allowed as preparation for the Razer/CPL tourney ... or mabye this would be the video game equivalent of sterroids :).
:)
That $40,000's as good as mine now...
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
few points..
It doesent work on everyone yet.
Its very crude (at this point).
It was controlled by a joystick, which the operator moved to coincide with the movements of a rollercoaster on a video. This would be very easy to computerise, but it just shows that they're still at an early stage.
Acous
Now even those of us who don't naturally have video game induced seizures can enjoy the feeling of uncontralable shaking! yay for technology!
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Q3A... apocalypse void... getting gibbed off the railgun spawn spot, bouncing off to the bottom, the bouncing off the bottom platform into the void, where you gib into even more bouncing bits....
*glee*
SaintAlex
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
the history channel is a REALLY good source of information on all kinds of stuff. They seem to be not only interested in reporting history, but recording it as well.
-FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
One reason that balance is forgotten is that it is always there. Aside from zero-g (which few of us experience at all, let alone often), there is always information for our sense of balance to pick up.
In addition, there is much less information to be picked up. I can smell the difference between cinnamon hazel nut bread and ordinary hazel nut bread, but there is only one down.
Or was it really a rhetorical question? I get so confused about these things...
Thank you for not thinking.
I first read about this type of technology over a year ago, and it never materialized. While it is an interesting concept, it's difficult to market. Who wants to buy something that will give them motion sickness?
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
If your sense of balance can be messed with enough to make you feel like you're falling or getting blown to the side, you're gonna forget that you're sitting in that chair real quick.
Ex1. Imaging retrofitting Gran Turismo with this stuff... no more "Hey I'll spin out and just keep driving", you'll be messed up enough with your senses just from the pull of a normal turn to make the game THAT much more realistic.
Ex2. In Quake, you walk up to someone, hit them point blank with a rocket, and land on two feet and keep walking if you have enough health. But not if you feel like you got blown back halfway across the room in real life like the guy on the screen did. You'll rip out the mouse cord falling backwards.
Ex3. Those free-fall nose dives in MS Flight Simulator (or hell, Corncob 3D) are just a little more realistic now. The sensation of falling straight down while seeing it through 3d goggles and hearing it through headphones should make you shit a nice sized brick.
One quick application I think that would be possible is making Everquest's "drunkedness" interface even more extreme ;)
Esperandi
Of course people get sick seeing it happen now, with actually feeling the movement, people would prolly be losing their cookies all over their keyboard.
Not sure about this, but I think it would require quite a bit of CPU power. I don't quite get how it works, but either a) the CPU calculates what to do and the thing does it, or b) it takes position, rotation, and gravity, etc from the game and calculates it itself.
Hopefully it doesn't snag the CPU power. Perhaps it can interface with 3D cards using OpenGL (or DirectX) and use values given by those to simulate the motion...
On a related thought, wouldn't it be behind the screen by a frame at least? It would need the data from the previous frame and the data from the current frame to calculate the change in position / orientation. Wouldn't it lag behind and disorient people unless tthey had framerates faster than the limit at which the mind can tell?
Of course, I could be completetly wrong on all accounts.
--
Talon Karrde
Rhetorical question... No, I'm serious. You're probably right that it's not a particularly "sexy" sense since there is not much texture to the information it conveys. Still, it's incredibly important to normal functioning.
--
Hmm.. I wonder if we can get the space-sickness feeling fom it.
IF so, it could help in astronaut training..
In russia, they put you in spinning chairs, and things in order to get cosmonauts accustomed to space sickness..
The space-inclined among us might think this a novel experience...
It sounds like you are describing what the word "Otaku" means in William Gibsons book Virtual Light (or maybe it was Mona Lisa Overdrive, I forget, I read them back to back)... basically its a person who never leaves their house, spending most of their time in a sort of "alternate reality." But its not all bad, the alternate reality afford people a tremendous amount of power and a 16 yr old can control an entire corporation without anyone knowing he's only 16 - he succeeds on his merits... but in society such people are looked upon as anti-social and such pretty much like anyone who spends a lot of time in online worlds (MUDs, etc) does now...
Esperandi
It always amazes me that people couldl consider me antisocial when I sit in a chat room with 200 people, listening to and talking to every single one of them.... its more social than offline people could ever possibly be.
Remember the Ask Slashdot about simulating walking in a VR environment? One of the topics raised many times was the problem of perception of motion. Well here is our solution.
Human beings are not made for running at 999MPH, this device or a descendant of it could be used to simulate that, couldn't it? Other such things should be possible. Given that motion can induce sickness, fast heartbeat, and other such things, I see a few possibilities... desensitization, discovery ofall-new motion-related health problems that are primarily or wholly psychosomatic...
Esperandi
Brings back the brain in a jar solipsism...
No need for expensive training equipment like the "vomit comet", underwater tanks, and that whirly-gig-type-thingy-of-which-I've-forgotten-the -proper-name, when you can just simulate space missions, and the experience of weightlessness, in a virtual reality training program.
-Hypr Geeque
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
>All thats left is taste and the sense of direction. And the one that lets you see ghosts.
i taste dead people
As a psych student, there's actually seven. the seventh is (i can't remember the name) having to do knowing how your muscles are positioned in relative to the rest of your body.
(I'll forgo the rant about people not only misconcieving 5 senses, or 6 senses, when there's actually 7.)
Remember that older slashdot article about building something that would allow actual walking to control virtual movement, but people complained the "sense of motion" would be wrong? Viola.
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
Great,
as if (insert favorite 1st person shooter here)
didn't make enough people naseous!
Hrm, I wonder how openGL will handle rendering
all that vomit?
When I play any of the VR type games such as Quake, I get ill. I don't mean ill from the gore. I mean physically ill from what is being shown to me. I read someplace that the problem is that your eyes are seeing motion, yet your inner ear is not detecting that you are moving.
If this would solve that problem I would be first in line. I love the Quake stuff, but feeling absolutely horrid after 10 minutes is not fun.
Imagine symlinking /dev/null to the usb or serial port with one of those things plugged in. And then give certain files different "signatures." You could set it up so attempting to delete /etc/passwd would make you throw up. Preventative systems administration is here, now :)
Poopdick.
Ok, now all we need is a quake III patch to support this wonderful piece of hardware.
Imagine if you will millions of teenagers across the globe puking their guts, without alcohol being involved.
I seem to recall a book about simulated reality (until we actually leave reality (never) we cannot have 'virtual' reality since virtual is something that does not exist - even in electrons pulsing through a CPI) that mentioned this very fact... I wish I could remember the authors name, he's fairly famous... ahh, Howard Rheingold! I'm 79.023% convinced that was his name... pretty good book, tackles this idea as well as simulating the other senses in not-so-stupid ways (most ways of simulating smell are pretty stupid)
Esperandi
Will market locked safe-SR boxes when simulated reality goes big.... so your body doesn't get stolen whilel your mind is playing.
Virtual Motion code
- It creates the illusion of motion, making you feel like you're moving when you're not.
- It helps reduce Cyber Sickness by coordinating the visual and vestibular inputs.
- It GREATLY increases the realism, or presence, of an actor in a Virtual Environment.
I found it one the motionware site http://www.vm3.com/MotionWare/option01.htmlFree as in "the Truth shall set you..."
Don't take the headset off!
If you MUST do something like drive a car, pipe the visual data into the helmet and watch it like a video game...
Esperandi
The choice in the new millenium of video games!
Esperandi
Awaiting holographic hentai games... ohhh.... vibrating mirror...
Sorry about the rant here, I fully expect to be -1'd... but why, exactly, are we spending thousands of dollars developing virtual reality technology while other science programs stagnate and die? NASA is running on a shoestring budget.. there's a huge circle out in Texas that was abandoned before it even got moving (supercollider), and there isn't even any funds going into making sure we don't wind up being broadsided by a mile-wide asteroid. I'm just alittle irked that most of the civilized world would rather dedicate their money to fashion and developing trivial advances like this than solving issues which are very near and dear to our existance.
Here's some examples you WON'T be seeing on the front page of any newspapers:
- No funding to make sure an asteroid doesn't see the huge "hit me" sign pasted over the north pole.
- NASA finds extraterrestrial intelligence but Congress cut funding so they can't communicate with ET.
- Congress cuts funding to those "damn welfare mothers" and redirects it to Rebock shoes so they can help economically disadvantaged CEOs.
- Astronomy - God paints the 11-19th commandments on the moon Titan (and also gives instructions for contacting him), but due to cutbacks all telescopes were recycled to help Billy Graham talk about God on weekend sermons.
- Nanotech - one of the few programs that actually gets funding. Result? Thousands of nanobots eat the president and covertly take over the world. Pinky is amused, but Brain is not.
- Medical - Cure for cancer shelved in favor of research on bigger breast implants.
Groan. Sorry about the rant... I'm just getting seriously irked about the lack of responsibility in this Brave New Era of capitalism and global corporatism. Well, that's enough. I think I'll go login to MS-AOL-Sun-Netscape-Time-Warner-it's-internet-but- better version 2000 and download my daily allotment of spam.
Grab a six pack. Drive to the local airport. Park at the end of the runway. Get out, slam three, and lay upside down on the hood. When that baby lands you'll get a heck of a rush.
I'll bet dollars to donuts that if someone is crazy enough to market it they'll be sued out of business within a month. The inner ear is extremely sensitive and overstimulation can cause permanent damage.
ive noticed a recent trend in slashdot articles.
ismell
upload your brain
'feel' the source
it disturbs me how close we are to actually building a matrix without even knowing it. were just a james bond supervillan away from complete domination.
I came up this idea when I was ten or so, right about when the phrase "virtual reality" appeared. Although my version involved magnets and iron filings. (Don't ask...)
By the way, in response to the many that have already posted about it, this gadget would actually eliminate motion sickness if used properly. AFAIK, motion sickness happens when your eyes and your inner ear are getting conflicting signals. Usually people solve this problem by changing what they're seeing, (by leaving the cabin and going up on deck, or turning off Quake, for example,) but fixing the input from the inner ear to match what they're seeing should work just as well.
Anyway, this gives me the opportunity to bring up something a little off-topic... What ever happened to head mounted 3d displays? A few years ago, they were supposed to be the wave of the future; there were even a few consumer devices with game support. (I always wanted to play "Magic Carpet" in 3d...) But they were clunky and expensive, because A) LCDs were lousy and costly, B) it was hard to get driver support, and C) computers had trouble pushing the polygons quickly enough anyway.
Now we have much better LCDs, MS-imposed standard driver interfaces, and ubiquitous 3d accelerators. So where the hell are my head-tracking 3d goggles?!? I'm not talking about specialized hardware, I'm talking about a $300 "Head Blaster" from Creative Labs or Diamond. (Or more likely, both.)
Wouldn't they enhance the gameplaying experience immensely? Am I the only one who thinks so?
MSK
The reason motion is not a sense is because it is just part of your nervous system. it's like calling pain a sense. Humans feel motion by the stimulation of the krista (sp?). A mushroom looking structure that moves in a gellatenous fluid. when the krista moves, and in turn, the fluid. it stimulates the nerves around that area stimulating certain impulses in the brain, AKA movement.
The above blurb, however, brings up some very important questions about manipulating the senses via external stimuli (read:cochlear implants). I'm not sure this is alltogether good. An article in the Feb. 2000 issue of Wired features a gentleman who will be implanting a transceiver in his arm to stimulate his nervous system (if a success, the experiment should be able to generate muscle movement via outside sources. this could possibly even lead to an electronic soma. If you were feeling blue, you could just send happy waves via computer to your own brain).
While i, for one, am a HUGE advocate of the modernization of the world, including new technology and such...where exactly do we draw the line?? Just something to think about the next time you see a blind person plug an optic nerve emulator into the back of his head, ala the matrix. (think that sounds a little outlandish? so did I, untill i saw a documentary about it on the history channel.)
-FluX
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Good lord, I'd be sick in a heartbeat if I didn't.
This sig is false.
Sure, right now we can only simulate the sensation of motion, but how long before we might be able to simulate other senses?
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
As a psych student, there's actually seven. the seventh is (i can't remember the name) having to do knowing how your muscles are positioned in relative to the rest of your body.
I didn't check that this wasn't answered in some post below my threshold, but the sense you speak of is called proprioception.
it wasn't the running man, it was that other arnold movie where he goes to mars to save the mutants, damn what was the name of that.
but I think the second item down on the Tomorrow's World page has more potential to help quite a few members of the Slashdot community. Take a look and see if you don't agree.
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
The sixth, of course, is balance. You could also call it a sense of gravity.
There's also the sense of the position and motion of parts of your body. This sense is sometimes referred to as the kinesthetic sense. (without moving your hands at all, what position is each of your fingers in?)
--
The shareholder is always right.
It's not considered a sense usually, but it is referred to as "the vestibular senses." These include balance among other types of orientation. Their main source is cochlear fluids, i think -- apparently this organ has very sensitive hair-live nerve fibers sensitive to motions of all kinds {such as those resulting from sound vibrations AND gravity and rotation). The organ is filled with fluid that moves the nerves, or so i remember from my intro to gen psych classes.
He used the word in Iduro, and not Virtual Light. (I don't know about Mona Lisa Overdrive, but I would doubt it, since the book is a part of the sprawl series)
:)
Btw, Iduro was way, way better then VL (I actualy got bored reading it, well a little bored). But All Tomorows Parties and Iduro really make up for it. I defenetly recomend reading all three books
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The word was in somewhat common useage in the US before gibson's book, I think...
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
It's actually two senses:
Rotational accelleration.
Linear accelleration/gravity.
Look at the inner ear and you'll see three loops at mutual right angles, embedded in the skull. At the point where they connect to the rest of the inner ear, there are nerve ending hairs protruding into the channel, similar to those that connect to the membrane down the center of the coclear spiral to sense sound. When you increase/decrease the component of the rotation of your head around the axis of one of the loops, the fluid in the loop lags behind the structure, pushing the hairs.
I think gravity/linear accelleration is measured by similar hairs with a mass on the end embedded in fluid (for damping) in the same structure - but I'm not sure.
You also have position sensors in your muscles and tension sensors in the tendons, which allow you to figure out the position of your body and the force you're exerting/having exerted on your limbs. This is in addition to the pressure sensors in your skin.
There is some question whether people have a weak magnetic directional sense. There's magnetite in some nerve cells in the same region of the nose as the nerve endings which processes smell. This spot is also is fixed to the skull and thus ideal for navigation. It might also be used to smell magnetic dust in the air. Or it might be random evolutionary morpholigic junk or a vestigial leftover of something ancient and now defunct.
The (rest of the?) sense of smell consists of a number of molecular shape detectors, plus sensore for the electric field from ions. The shape detectors seem to be part of the same system that produces antibodies: People with weak senses of smell are sometimes cured when they have a strong immune reaction (such as toxic shock), and smell becomes much more sensitive during a viral prodrome. (Ever notice that your house smells REALLY dusty and everything else smells annoyingly strong the day before the cold/flu hits?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A tank filled with a substance with the same density as you?
Wear an oxygen mask, and you'd be floating.
You think you'd feel it? Its more likely that a continuous, even, skin temperature sensation over all your body would be tuned out as noise.
Hm. Make the substance conductive, and you could electrically stimulate any part of your body...
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Corporations foster a lot of change, too. I work for an evil, AOL-aligned company run by a bunch of hardnosed businessmen. They figured out that there's money to be made in helping companies spread information to investors. Now our mission is to encourage companies to share more info with small individual investors, rather than confining things like earnings calls to big-shot analysts. My company makes money, and the public gets more information. Capitalism works in strange ways...
Why should we fund planetary probes? What good does it do to people on the Earth? If the best reason you can state is, "Discovery is important, knowledge matters," you will lose the fight. Give solid reasons of how this benefits us and you may have a chance.
Besides, let's not forget how much good has been done by advances tied to consumer products. Computers would never have gotten so cheap and powerful if they hadn't moved into the consumer arena. Lots of people benefit because of it.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions working on cures for cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer's, too. You just don't advertise those on TV like Propecia, so you may not be as aware of them.
These corporate mergers don't worry me one whit, either. In fifteen years the heirs to Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts will be buying up and dismembering most of them, just like they did in the 80's with all the conglomerates built by 1960's management geniuses. We're just seeing one side of a cycle. Remember when we all thought Japan was going to own the USA? Funny, that didn't quite work out, did it.
-cwk.
I just wanna' play Marble Madness with that thing. Stop the world, I'm gonna' throw up.
That padded seat they use in some fighter pilot training simulators. To simulate being accelerated up, it tightens the straps on your shoulders, to simulate accelerating down (or hitting something) the straps loosen or you get a punch in the butt as an airbag inflates. Same for forward/back/left/right. Apparently it's really effective. The two together should really make you heave.
I could see this technology becoming very useful from a military perspective. It could possibly be used as a training program for recruits. There is nothing like having actual battle simulations other that having virtual simulations. Soldiers coukld compete in teams against each other as recreation or step up the AI level for a more difficult enemy/scenario. On the other hand, it could be used as a very useful weapon you see...we could plant a virus in it and sell it to waring countries to train their soldiers...and once they get into the heat of battle, they all drop theirs guns and hug ;). Well, maybe it wouldn't work that way but I see this as not just a gaming technology.
Don't mock the Carmex....
Life comes not from the heart, but from the women around you.
OK, good point, but lets take it a step further.
What is it that defines a sense? Is it a mechanism for detecting stimuli to which a response is appropriate? Or something else?
Humans are able to detect changes in air pressure, there's no denying that. Is that a sense?
A sense of temperature? Maybe it's just another manifestation of the sense of touch, or maybe it's related to touch in the same way as taste is to smell.
What about a sense of time? We can detect the passage of time, does that count as a sense?
What about thirst and hunger, are those sensations the result of a sense?
So is that 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11 senses in all?
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
1: "Hey, look at this lump of metal...you can see your bones through it!" 2: "Is it safe?" 1: "oh, yeah, sure it is..i`ve been doing it for months!" 2: "cool! worth risking it, anyway. i mean, its a computer game after all"
Wow, this is great. It could be hooked up to emacs, and used whenever somebody wrote the words <FLASH> or window.open, the user would experience a sensation of nausea. This would simulate the end-user's experience quite nicely...
The Virtual Motion MotionWare API will be implemented in 3 parts.
That sounds closed-source. Will they also release a LGPL version of the code? IANALU, but I don't think linux takes dll's.
I'm sure it would be advantagous for them to release the source for their driver anyway -- they have the device patented, and the same geeks who refuse to run closed source software also like cool toys
--
The shareholder is always right.
Simulating an inner ear is a start, but if they could simulate Pamela Anderson (Lee?)'s pussy, oh man, I'd never leave my room!
Why does this remind of that movie Existenz by cronenberg? or for example Strange Days? It seems stimulating the inner ear would fake your brain. And screwing with your senses could prove to be a very disorientating (not to mention scary) experience. Like someone else said, the inner ear is connected to your brain very closely. And you really don't want to screw with that. On the other hand i welcome these things. I could prove to be a step forward into computing.
It's been a while since I dealt with this study, but here are a few different reasons for VRD, or Virtual Reality Dissonance, the problems with people not being able to handle various 3D visuals:
The screen can be 75fps, but if it takes more than about 50ms (1/20s) to register an intended move from peripherals to environment, user can get woozy. (Since we're talking about a write-device, instead of a read-device like a head-tracker, it may have different effects but I bet it still would cause suffering.)
A small monitor does not cover a lot of the wide area of the user's view. The THX movie theatre standard has constraints that a certain number of degrees of arc from left to right be covered by screen; this is for a sense of immersion. Sit closer to a smaller screen, pending the next item...
3D algorithms assume a certain "viewing frustrum," where a given angle of view is assumed. From the angle of view and the size of the monitor, that means the viewer's eyes should be at a specific distance from the monitor. The rendered perspective should match that perspective, or subtle bearing cues the brain has learned are not acting properly. Regardless of the focus, the brain will work to refocus to correct the perspective. Try sitting closer or further away.
One dropped frame at 72fps can tear your brain out of your skull, if it's pretty accustomed to watching the continuous motion of smooth acceleration. Turn off your Apache server or whatever else is chewing unpredictable CPU.
Some people just can't sit in a car if they aren't anticipating the road bumps and curves with their eyes. Same goes for simulations, only more so. If you like roller-coasters, you don't have a strong cochlear sympathy; your brain can decide whether to trust gut or ear or eye on command.
Some people just don't get ill even on the wrong setup. Who knows why?
[
Do you think that something similar could be done to simulate the sense of touch? It is possible to hook up a VR world along with a finger movement detecting glove, but all the designs I've seen for simulating the sense of touch have been with hydraulics. Do you think it could be simulated touch to run a little current through the fingertips? I think it would be a lot easier to do than hydraulics, not to mention faster.
I think it could work. You'd need a good multichannel DAC to run all of the emitters, but I think it could be tested for very little money.
This is a public domain idea, anyone wanting to implement it can feel free to do so, provided it's not already been done or patented by someone else.
The problem is this website which not only encourages
;) Seriously,
trolls - it demands them. They need to...
1) Remove the label "coward" it is meaningless unless
Taco and friends will say it to your face outside of
any legal jurisdication or with no witnesses present.
Think about it, when you post, the first flame/troll
comes straight from Slashdot. Thanks, assholes.
2) Allow people to search "lowest scores first". Not
only does this partially reverse the subversive act
of censorship, it also allows the "good" moderators
to rectify the stupidity of the "bad" moderators
(without having to search through every freaking
comment to find the -1's and such).
3) Eliminate anonymous moderation (it is far more
"cowardly" than anonymous posting). Screw this
"meta moderation" open it up and let's see who's
saying what. Also, let any registered users with
no posts in a thread moderate that thread. Maybe
a carrot like that would get me to register again.
4) Fuck the kharma whores. There is absolutely no
reason why the "good" posters should post at 2
(their drivel is no better than unregistered
posters). All posts should start at 0. The
benefit of registration should be letting people
know who you are and your website/e-mail if you
so desire. Plus you can moderate! (Warning:
sarcastic use of exclamation point.)
5) Moderate this to -5... asswipe!
How do I sort through all the "just plain bad"
posts to get to the truly bad posts? Moderation
should be from +5 to -5. This way I can skip
through all the "on topic" talk and head straight
to posts about Natalie Portman petrified naked and
turned to stone.