Slashdot Mirror
Biofeedback Gaming
runningwater writes "A new kind of game was debuted at the E3 expo. It is called Journey to Wild Divine. The game features a biofeedback USB interface designed to allow a player (or players) to navigate through the game using their mind power, breath, and heart rate. This is a wild and visionary concept which works so fluidly you can blow on the screen and objects move as if propelled by your breath. The game features an awesome soundtrack, including Grammy-nominated artists and spanning many genres. This is the new generation of gaming, and you have never seen anything like this before." Their site has a page with more information about the biofeedback aspect.
Obligatory MegaTokyo link
Yes...but was the game any good?
Tetris had this years ago, Tetris plus with and ear tag to measure your heartbeat then speed up the game as it beats more :-)
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Ah well.
the PowerPad and PowerGlove Nintendo put several years ago? this seems like the next step in that direction ("physical gaming")
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
1. Will the game be fun to play?
2. Will playing a biofeedback game teach you how to do things with your state of mind that are difficult to learn in other ways?
It's an intresting idea... the devil (or God) will be in the details, though.
I see a huge synergistic opportunity for the good people at Parks Medical Electronics, manufacturers of Penile Plethysmographs (be sure and scroll down to see a photo of your future "interface"):
Plethysmographs
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
"Why are you breathing so hard? Hey! Stop looking at me like that!"
So, the new generation of gaming involves blowing on a screen while listening to grammy-award winning music? ... Right. If you'll excuse me, I hear my Super Nintendo calling my name.
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
The testimonials are what you would expect from a new product but with no mention of an estimated release date or where to purchase it makes me wonder if this could just end up being a marketing tool without an actual release.
I guess I'm going to have to wait until I see something more tangible.
Snowy Angelique Maslov - http://www.snowy.org/
"We envision a world where vibrant wellness is the norm, consciousness transforms beyond fear, and people live in creative abundance in harmony with the earth."m e=Content &pa=showpage&pid=21
http://www.wilddivine.com/modules.php?na
OMG...make it stop
Personally, I'm excited about this simply for the opportunity to have an emperical means for assisting people in meditation, in their own homes. This could open up whole groups of individuals for meditation and the related philosophy or theology with which they want to associate it.
That said, I'd be particularly excited if the system could somehow be made extensible, i.e. that using a front-end software they provide you associate certain activities with normal system commands. In such a system, for example, you could perhaps script an interface to react to your GSR to control any game.
Alternately, I'd hope that they have a simple front end so that an end-user could write a program to read the same information from the sensors. This would allow us to basically create parallel games or simply meditative tools without the "storyline" or particular format of their game.
"Stumble before you crawl"
...what kind of in-game effect urination will produce? :D
Way way back(mid/late '80s), there was a game shown where you would navigate a hot air ballon through some screens using bio-feedback.
I think it was Synapse that made/demo'ed it.
I sure hope this isn't a FPS.......
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
I'm betting from new-agey up the wazoo website we're not talking biofeedback frag fests, but meditative states. I'm guessing the game part really adds nothing beyond training you into a meditative state, and that wouldn't be such a bad thing on its own. If the definition of awesome soundtrack includes John Tesh, I am defiantly not going to be a fan.
What I find most disturbing about that is that someone was willing to stare at the original long enough to make an ASCII version of it.
Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!
I'm confused. How does this relate to SCO? Please let's stick to the topic!
I can sum up a review of this game in one word,
Gay.
You want two words?
Gay, gay.
How about 4?
really, really gay, gay.
Everyone that has every run over a pedestrian in GTA, yanked the ladders out of the pools of there sims and camped at least once in UT needs to check out this.. ***cough***game***cough***
And what is with the Slashdot editors taste in music? After reading the write up I thought it was gonna be a Nine Inch Nails project, or maybe Britney Spears at the least. But this is some aboriginal dude blowing a pipe.
Wake me up when the porn industry utilizes bio-feedback. I will be all over that....
- Put a big monster just behind a corner in an attempt to scare the hell out of you.
- Wait for you to turn the corner.
- Check heart rate.
- If heart rate > 150 write "gotcha!!" on screen.
wasent there an episode of Cowboy Bebop along these lines?
We substituted the coffee Slashdot normally drinks with "Sandoz Crystals", Lets see if they notice the difference
Can we mate the controller with a FPS? Players could be forced to get into a "somewhat meditative" state into order to use their flamethrower. How about a controller that measures additional biometric parameters? It could incorporate an anal probe, for example, and players could be required to bring their sphincter tension within a certain range to circumnavigate obstacles.
This post is dedicated to all of those
I'm waiting for a version with seriously inteligent AI and high quality VR before I plug MY bio energy in.
"Brain Sex" has taken on a whole new meaning.
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
So, if a particular mission requires non-stop, fast action, they'll be showing a picture of the latest AMD CPU? I can't think of another way for geeks to get their breath and heart rate levels up, other than reaching for another bag of CheeseyPoofs.
Dad, why are moms and your breating so heavy?
Oh, we are just having a 1 on 1 in Doom 5!
This is a wild and visionary concept which works so fluidly you can blow on the screen and objects move as if propelled by your breath.
umm I had a biofeedback input device on my TANDY Color Computer in 1985. and it had a couple of games that allowed you to "play" them.
Whil I'm sure they have advanced cince then it is hardly visionary.
I love it when the new pup's learn old tricks they think they were the first to come up with it.
Yes it's better cince they take more than 2 inputs (heartrate and skin conductivity for "biorythim") but then I played with a ekg input device in college in 1990 also..
when they can make it so I can play quake with my thoughts THEN I'll be impressed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We're going to need Wil Wheaton & Ashley Judd to save us from this amazing game!
Ignoring the fact that this is being proposed as a game, its environment appears to be one that allows the mind to manipulate an environment.
/.)
The environment itself is rendered (hopefully in real time!) with apparent triggers throughout the game. For example wondering up to a waterfall where your heartrate increases by a small factor could trigger a dolphin jumping in the water....
This type of biofeedback is definately useful! If any folk have ever attempted meditation and reaching towards understanding of self, the lack of instant-feedback makes this process extremely difficult for the uninitiated.
Overall I see this project as a very good idea that is hopefully implemented well. Ultimately, however, I don't see this catching on as society isn't designed around relaxation and exploring ones own self.
And a shame....
-Just some crazy duck.
(wow, userid 1599 and i think this is my first post ever to
I think 'physical gaming' is much more fun to play and also more rewarding. Anyone remember Duck Hunt for NES? That game would've been pretty bad if it weren't for the fact that you could actually aim at the ducks with a gun and hit them. That totally redeemed the boring gameplay and ancient graphics. Actually I'm gonna go play now...
We think you'll agree, there have never been computer images as beautiful and as meaningful as you'll see in The Journey to Wild Divine.
I don't know, I've seen screenshots of me attacking innocent bystanders with a chainsaw in Vice City. One could derive all too much meaning from that kind of computer imagery...
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
Wonder what skills this game (or later ones down the same road) will improve?
1. ability to lessen blood pressure
2. ability to trick lie detectors
3. ability to slow breathing
They mentioned the breathing. Years ago I used to meditate a fair bit. Counted my breaths at about 85 in 35 minutes one time.
The game concept sounds interesting though. It may make some people learn far afield skills despite themselves.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
"Hey kids! You can exercise while you play video games!"
Brilliant.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Not to mention it can double as a lie detector!
Thoughts on stocks, markets and trading
I give the authors of this game +5 for creative advertising. That last sentence "is the new generation of gaming, and you have never seen anything like this before" gave it away as an advertisement though.
/. "editors"
Still, good job of slipping it past the
All I see is them talking about a game that involves biofeedback - is it your character's biofeedback you are manipulating?
If this is the case, this game is completely inane.
wild and visionary concept which works so fluidly you can blow on the screen and objects move as if propelled by your breath.
You mean I can blow on stuff. AND the stuff will move AS IF PROPELLED BY MY BREATH! This is fantastic! I can't believe what I'm hearing! Tell me I'm not dreaming! This is krell machine big! I hope humanity is ready for such power.
What the hell is wrong with the (pardon the joke) hyperventilating story submission?
Either that was written by a PR person or somebody needs to take a 12-step course in Corporate Whores Anonymous.
That one ep of TNG, with the game from the pleasure planet, the whole crew got hooked on it.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
That's what it looks like. No thanks.
And he still spelled goatse.cx wrong, too.
...you can blow on the screen and the enemy runs away covering their nose avoiding your bad breath
d035 7hi5 100k 1ik3 4n l337 5i6 2 j00 ?
I used software set up with an EEG (which measures brainwave activity), and the goal was to make the fishes on the screen more tranquil by relaxing myself. This game seems like it may train people to be more anxious constantly. (I'm not dissing the idea, which is really cool.)
navigate through the game using their mind power,
Wouldn't this discriminate against idjits?
The coolest voice ever.
You run over pedestrians in GTA? What a horrible example for our children.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I've been working in some psychology research labs for some time now. One the professors I've worked with studies neurofeedback, i.e. monitoring the electrical activity of the brain with electrodes attached on the head. I've actually helped training a bunch of kids to move a cursor on a screen simply by getting them to be concentrated on moving it wherever it had to be at that moment. ( some info here and here. It's not excluded at all that in the near future, we'll be able to gain control of computer interfaces with a little help from such devices. It's my first post on /. , nice ;)
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
Well, I must say this seems very interesting. I am hoping this will be as good as it sounds. Hell, this might start a whole new genre in gaming. Can you imagine this technology being placed in a First-Person Shooter? Where your calmness actually affects your accuracy in using a sniper rifle. Or where being able to move faster depends on how your heart-rate is reacting. I think this could be the next step in a new generation of gaming. Where how you act effects your game play, and how focused you are. Imagine being in Unreal and being able to "know" if someone is near you, and (because of the senses) being able to react so fast you can aim at them and head shot before they can notice...
-Annon Kaies Zi
Look at the 'biofeedback' this game has. Every geekgirlfriend wants!
_I_ always drive only the speed limit, on the roads, and obey traffic signals in GTA. Yes, I'm gay.
Please stop projecting your personal fantasies on everyone else...
this would work great in a sniper-type fps
being a real sniper requires control of your pulse and breathing... try a look at a biathlon event? you ski like crazy... then with your heart and breath racing, you're supposed to find the calm to shoot targets... training your control over your pulse and breath seems like a natural plug-in for a video game with biofeedback
or maybe some deer hunter type game too
totally turns the new age message behind this idea on it's head, but i think the grand theft auto crowd would get behind this sooner than the new age crap
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Biofeedback, eh?
I've seen these devices, they usually measure minute changes in the physical state of a person. Like they mention heart rate, others, facical temperature. All they simply are, is joysticks that are sensitive to other types of inputs rather than fingers and hands.
I mean it will be cool and all, but not truly thought propelled. There is a learning curve with these devices. The one I saw had a headset that you had to get good with to use it effectively, because you had to train your facial muscles to contract to control the character.
Bah.
Great, a new game you can't solve if you're a smoker. What kind of message is this sending to the kids?
graspee
Did they forget the military? (Keep pushing a soldiers buttons with an offshoot of this until you can't push'em anymore)
How about hackers that want to really screw with your mind?
How about cult leaders that require this type of game to "enlighten" someone?
How about game makers that really want to start toying with the user's emotions?
This game teaches you how to alter your mind and focus?
I listened to the MP3 from their web site and it seems that song's theme was much like the way people in Boulder Colorado(Where the game is being developed) think. The song has repeated many-a-time:
Why do we kill people who kill people To show people that killing people is wrong?
Anti Capital punishment.
What might the themes of the future versions of these games teach our children? Our soldiers? Our next generation?
It makes me think of the episode on Star Trek the next Generation where the people of the ship were controlled by a mind altering game that was designed to break into the human mind and control it.
...is your PC or Mac.
C'mon guys, where's the goddam Linux version????
I will be all over that....
just don't ask me to clean up
From the blurb:
...oh, wait...
"This is a wild and visionary concept which works so fluidly you can blow on the screen and objects move as if propelled by your breath."
My gosh, that's amazing! All I had to do was click on "Hi-Bandwidth QuickTime Movie" and their server got blown away too!
How do they do that!?
My
Limekiller
I am a troll?
Whoever the lamebraine was that moderated me, did he even look at the sight in question?
Do it and then apologize. And maybe then I will forgive you.
Myst would have been a game. But this?
This isn't even a tech demo. It is something more nefarious. It is like a quasi-religion of some sort with aboriginies on the pipes.
Sort of...with the Mindlink controller. They were supposed to come out with biofeedback software for this device but the project was canceled. Ah, those were the days...
You'd need some electrodes and a converter to plug in the device you're controlling ( such as a PC ). Since this kind of stuff is almost exclusively used in research, they are still pretty expansive. The frequency of the brain waves depends on which brain waves you want to monitor. We were using attention-specific frequencies but people could use frequencies correlated to other brain activities, depending on what they want to do. ( I don't know which ones we specifically used, sorry. ) And it was rather inconstant indeed... I guess human brains would need an upgrade ;)
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
The Matrix Reloaded game has a "Focus" bar which allows your character to do matrix like moves, slow down time and such. It would be cool if you really had to calm yourself down and focus with the bio feedback device.
Sounds like Osmose and old Silicon Graphics Sponsored art piece.
http://www.immersence.com/osmose/osmose.htm
I had a go it was kinda fun but not as amazing as people said. I no longer fear death was one quote from a wired article. I think deep breathing for long periods was starving their brains of oxygen.
for the commodore 64 you controlled a baloon with your heart rate or some such nonsence......
Personally, anytime I see somebody feels they need "testimonials" to convince me that something is worth my time I get skeptical.
"The damned press kept reporting on the flaws in our product as well as the positive aspects, so here are letters from whichever people only enjoyed the experience."
I've played this game.. the graphics suck, it's basically just green lines on a black screen. There didn't seem to be any sort of plot at all. I think the name of the game was EKG.
I'm sorry - as the real Anonymous Coward I really must apologize. The rest of these guys hacked my account. I've changed my password to b0n3r, so the thread should end now.
I usually urinate on her, then kill her. The worst thing I've ever seen on that game, though, was head-soccer. What happened was I took off a guy's head with a shovel, and started kicking it around the street. I eventually hit a preist with it, and he kicked it back to me. That went back and forth for a bit, then he pulled a gun and robbed me!
Good times.
Actually I really think that the Brainfingers technology is headed in the right direction.. Sensors need more development though, I don't want to have to shave my head to use it. :/
Bio Feedback is key to learning how to control the various Brain waves that the device monitors, If I had a few extra Grand($ 2,050 + shipping)laying around I'd get the Brainfingers device! well that and a HDTV!
Wow, is there actually someone out there on /. who doesn't recognize this at first glimpse???
/. I guess it's part of /.'s "cultural heritage" by now and thereby should at least be known to every poor sucker out there (Lets split the pain, shall we? :-)
Its the ever-so-disturbing Goatse.cx Click at your own discretion (and probable loss of sanity as well...)
@Moderators: I know this thing is usually linked to by trolls and the like. And, though I hate to admit it, it has become kind of (in)famous on
One quart of 10W30? We must be talking one big pussy.
If you die in The Journey, do you die in real life?
I've liberally coped from Mr. Hartford's archived website.
People Meter
Published by Aminetics
People Meter was a biofeedback device for the Amiga. It measured galvanic skin response via two metallic Velcro straps hooked up to a small hardware module which plugged into the joystick port. Included software allowed the user to monitor his stress level via analog meters, digital meters, changing the color of the user interface (MoodBench), and even play through a digitized video clip based on stress level. It was bundled with an arcade game called "Stress 'n Bake", loosely based on an "I Love Lucy" episode where a bakery goes haywire and assembly line workers struggle to keep up with the constant stream of wedding cakes. A particularly evil part of the game was that as your stress level went up, the game actually got harder to play.
One side effect of biofeedback gaming is that the player will have to learn to control their physiology to play the game. In other words, games like this (while overly sedate to some) will train people to be healthier. So first, we have video gaming to improve memory retention, visual response rate and eye hand coordination, but now they'll be reducing stress and blood pressure by practice.
I think this can be a good thing.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
While measuring heartrate, you could tie that to a "Sanity" meter (not unlike Eternal Darkness's).
Sample scenario:
I don't know about you, but that sounds like something I'd like to try. You have to keep your cool whilst in wild, scary situations.
Think about in context with the upcoming Call of Cthulu game.
Developed by ClearCode Enterprises, a development firm based entirely in Clearwater, Florida, the Wild Divine allows users to explore their "reactive minds" in search of evil space aliens named Xenu. It is equipped with a pulse reader and polygraph machine, designed to ensure the most truthful exploration of one's soul.
In other news, Scientology acquires Sierra Entertainment.
Bladder pressure.
Speaking as one who, back in the days, used to be able to play Atari games until the scoreboard rolled over to zero. Eventually it became a matter of how long I could hold off bodily functions, and whether I could run to the bathroom and back without losing all my reserve lives.
You can be sure there won't be a Linux version. It is really a shame that an innovative concept like this is pigeon-holed by the worst common denominator.
Why is it that right brained thinkers, designers and artistic types don't seem to care about whether everyone will be able to experience their creation? Is it just the path of least resistance?
Used to be, there was this cool place in Seattle called Entros. For a while there was one in San Francisco, too. Now they are gone, with no trace save a "demo" web site.
It was a restaurant/bar that had about five entertainment areas around it. The entertainment areas were always cool and different.
The most famous was "Interface", where one person wears a blindfold and a camera, and the other person sits in front of a screen watching what the camera sees; using two-way radio, the second guy tells the first guy where to go and what to do. "Go left, step forward, reach down, no, left, no, LEFT, feel for the ball, YOU TOUCHED IT! GO BACK!" Within a set period of time you had to accomplish certain tasks. If you got them all done, you were allowed to enter the victory lounge. I never got to see that lounge...
Anyway, they had a sort of game show where you had to compete to see who was the calmest. They would hook up the players to biofeedback, and then they would do various things to try to shake the players' calm. For the winner, it played a recorded voice saying something like "YOU ARE THE BUDDHA".
I miss Entros.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Moving around with the EEG while shooting with both hands must have been great :) The expansive devices I was talking about surely were necessary to have better accuracy in research, but it's pretty cool to see that you did fine with a little bit of hacking. I've already heard of other research projects on attention using racing games to develop the attention capacities of kids too. :)
Seems like this idea is really starting to catch on people : science, games, GUIs, etc. Now if you think about it, you can figure out easily that in a couple of years, it might be possible to wear some clothes ( hats for neurofeedback, t-shirts for biofeedback, etc. ) including remote interaction capabilities. For example, if your biofeedback t-shirt doesn't record any heartbeat, it could send a message to a phone prompting a 911 call ; if you wear a neurofeedback hat and want to change the channel on your TV, just think about it
Maybe it's getting farfetched, but I considere this to be some kind of telekynesis...
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
...will be a plug-in for the urinals in Duke Nukem3D.
Instead of just pressing the 'use' button to activate them, you'll be able to really urinate!
Now THAT would be useful for those all-night gaming sessions when you're 2 litres of soda to the wind and in need of a pitstop.
"Sometimes you have fun, and sometimes the fun has you"
Does it work with Mozilla?
I mean, I hear the audio of "This is Chris Bailey..." Then, nothing. Very Zen.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
As far as I can see, we've got pre-rendered doors every ten metres that you open by reaching a different heart-rate, skin-response, and so on. Oh boy! Sometimes the door opening is disguised as making the boat move, sometiems as making the crystal ball light up, but really...
When console controllers were equipped with analog triggers for the first time, did someone say "now we can have a revolutionary game where some of the tasks require the player to hold the right trigger just the right amount while holding the left trigger a different amount?" No. They said, now we can let the player fire faster or slower, hit the brake harder or softer, or any number of other natural analog processes we haven't been able to control up until now. A game where the only challenge is to guess how hard to hold the triggers would be stunningly boring. A metaphor is needed, some sort of consistent meaning for the pressure. Otherwise the whole thing is just a novelty.
Call me when I have to adjust my heart-rate to keep my dragon under control in the next Panzer Dragoon. There's a challenge that would teach you how to stay calm under intense pressure.
You're in a VR simulation, with graphics the quality of the newest FF games, all rendered in realtime. Now, you have a girl......and a um.......stimulation monitor firmly clamped on your um........input device. Your breathing intensifies and she speeds up in response, or with a personality upgrade, decides to do something really kinky that she thinks will put you over the edge.
Yeah that whole concept is kinda explicit....but think of the VR pr0n possibilities. I guarantee that I would own one if it was available....I'd never admit it....but I'd own one, and so would the rest of /.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Seems like many of these biofeedback devices are like lie detectors. Wonder if the game has a scenario like "accounting scandal" followed by "calm down fast".
The following is a proposed definition of hubris: Posting a story on Slashdot with the following quote: "...and you have never seen anything like this before."
Someone on Slashdot has always, always seen something like this before, even if they haven't.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
This sounds just like MindDrive from 1995. Not exactly new.
At Siggraph in the late nineties there was a small booth where you could try out some bio-feedback games. You simply put your finger in a clasp and simply 'thought' about where you wanted something on the screen to move. I remember a canyon game where an aircraft flew down a canyon and had to turn left/right and go up/down to avoid rocks, kinda like a 1st person perspective zaxxon. At the start the movement was very jittery but it soon smoothed out, presumably as it adapted to your feedback. although I kept crashing into a wall as soon as a booth babe walked by. Anyway it was one of the coolest things I'd every seen and I registered to get my hands on an SDK to plug it into a VRML viewer I was working on at the time but I never heard back from them.
this has nothing to do with mind control. you can unwind the string around your head keeping your aluminum foil brainscan defense shield in place.
Oooh... these people are right out of a Cowboy Bebop episode... Brain Scratch.
^_^
- Twilight1
Along with helping increase the realism of games by using the heart rate, I think thi opens new doors for AI. You could have AI in fps games react to your vitals. For example, chasing affter you if your heart is racing. :)
I like the idea of using heart rate for features though. Like maybe you get special abilities with a fast heart rate in mmorpgs. The good thing is that geeks will get some exercise by trying to get their heart racing
New game my arse. 1981,
1. Radio Shack bio feedd back monitor
2. CoCo 2
3. Buy the software (don't remember name was inside front cover of rainbow magazine)
yawn, lets get some alpha brain wave monitors going here. new idea my arse.
I recall playing with a Rs-232 interfaced biofeedback system in the early 90s. The sample app was a skiing race game.
We were investigating it for hands free operation of some soldier mounted equipment, but determined it was too distracting, and wouldn't work well in combat situations (duh!).
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Already been thought of loooong ago (eg. 20 years ago)
I give you... *drum roll* The MindLink for the Atari 2600!
...that this game blows
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
... "concept which works so fluidly you can blow on the screen" ...
If that's true, I really hope that the screen is equipped with a decent set of wipers!!!
You could have software which advertises products and then measures your unconcious reactions to see if you are affected. Its like the most sophisticated market research validation tool ever.
On the other hand it would be cool......
WHAT IF MY COMPUTER TELLS THE POLICE IM STONED????
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
cant wait until this gets introduced into the next revision of the www.realdoll.com
How would the game react when i fart? Does my heart beat slow down when i fart, or does it accelerate?
/*Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain-- NO-- man invented language for the deep hidden urge to flirt..*/
Will it be affected by odour?!
I dont wanna try any way...
The lunatic is in my head
It has already been done for FPS as an MIT research project. Check out where the player avatar's size depends on your heartrate, the avatar also jumps if you are startled
Brainball is a biofeedback game where the person who relaxes the most wins- an interesting contrast to most games where the most competitive person usually wins
Also have a look at AffQuake for a biofeedback mod of quake II
I wonder how it deals with really slow heart rates. My resting rate is between 44 and 48 which makes me a chronic bradycardic (or at least on drugs j/k).
I wonder if it would be like cheating, I'd have a steadier hand, and more precise senses...all the better to snipe you with.
Brain Scratch, anyone? Do everyone a favor and don't accept any pamphlets from these guys.
Anyone else get a creepy cult-like feeling from those web pages? I almost expect to see a reference to auditing or something.
When are they going to develop a Strip Poker XXX with a biofeedback interface?
And you have to really good to play GTA that way. Anybody can push their big toe down on that little lever on the floor, doing it the right way takes real skill.
www.other90.com
This device has been around for a long time.
From the website:
"How works MindDrive sensor mouse
Thanks to special metal-plastic materials the sensor weighs only just 18 grams. It includes 6 electronic pick-up that read 70 different types of bio-electrical signals coming from nervous, respiratory and circulatory systems. Now is possible to carry out medical-scientific applications for monitoring and diagnosis, as well as therapeutical, creative, didactic and entertainment ones already known, on which pluck artistical drawing, musical composition, truth-machine, and enjoying videogames such as ski, bowling and flipper driven with thought. Moreover with the new powerful development titles M S D K (MindDrive Sofwtare Development Kit) and M T K (MindDrive Tool Kit) is now possible to create customized programs in C / C++ code or straight in easy VisualBasic code."
Heya Mike, thanks for the compliment! I'm one of two software developers that are working on the Cyberlink Brainfingers technology. In early May we were featured in a special on the Discovery channel called "KAPOW! Superhero Science" where I demonstrated playing the videogame "Oni" using our Cyberlink product and our latest game-enabled software. We've developed software that, using the Cyberlink, can emulate mouse and keyboard macros to allow you to play off-the-shelf games in a novel way. The program is supposed to air again either in June or July. Is that how you found out about us?
:) I can fire 100 milliseconds faster than I normally can using a mouse button. An average person takes about 300 ms to react to something. Using the Cyberlink I can react in 200 ms, sometimes even faster if I'm really "in the zone". It doesn't seem like much, but it can make a significant difference in fast paced games, especially with instant-fire type weapons.
:)
:)
I had a couple points I wanted to address regarding your post:
1) We are working on providing a more cost effective version of the Cyberlink that would appeal to the mainstream market. Right now the technology is used primarily for people with physical disabilities but we are currently working on allowing it to be used with games. You can actually fire weapons more quickly using a Cyberlink headband than you can by clicking a mouse button in some cases. Its pretty trippy to use it with a game like Unreal Tournament because as soon as you think about pulling the trigger, you probably already have.
2) We are also taking part in a newly forming "Game Accessibility" committee being headed up by Thomas Weston of Pin Interactive. Our charter involves helping to make games easier to use for people with disabilities. An article about the subject can be found under the title Game Accessibility on the International Game Developers Association website.
How does that apply to you? Well, a lot of very good technology that is designed for people with disabilities ends up in the mainstream consumer market before long. The television remote control is a fine example of such a technology. The Cyberlink (brainfingers) technology originally was part of military research to allow pilots to fly and otherwise control aircraft using brainwaves at the Wright Patterson Airforce base. A scientist working on the project eventually left to form the company Brain Actuated Technologies which I found out about and then went to work with them due to the work that was done at Patterson.
Out of curiousity, if a device was available to the general public that allowed people to play video games using brain control, how much would people be willing to spend for something like that? Does the idea of such a thing freak people out?
Take care all.
Michael McIntosh
Senior Software Developer
Brain Actuated Technologies, Inc.
http://www.brainfingers.com
Do you realize what this kind of interface could mean for quadriplegics? Kids with cerebral palsy? Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve? And all those people with stress-induced medical problems?
Wow, that was a really good story.
neat cheat.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
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Everything old is new again.
Back in 1983, maybe 1984, I read about a Star Wars based game that used galvanic response. You put your hand on the game pad, and then tried to raise Luke Skywalker's X-wing fighter out of the Dagobah swamp.
I'm not sure that there was anything to the game beyond that -- I don't know of anybody who actually had the game. Truth be known, it may have never made it to market (imagine that!).
..smacks of neo-hippie agitprop.