Walking In A VR Future

neol'schmoe writes "There's a new solution to the age old problem of physical movement within a virtual world. Researchers in Japan have come up with tiles that move in concert with a user's pace and motion to allow free range of motion while literally walking in a virtual environment and never leaving a very small area in the real world."

Comments

Vendors are at Siggraph

[Skevin]

These guys are out at Siggraph Emerging Technologies, and I'm trying it for myself even as I type.

Your pace has be be quite a bit slower than the article suggests, and the compensational backwards movement of the platform throws you off. I'm laughing at the picture in the article where the guy wears the blindfold, because just now, the vendor won't let me wear one. I'm going to show STFA to them in protest in just a few seconds here...

Solomon

Video Link

[Chibi Merrow]

Not sure if anyone else pointed this out, but the actual website is here and includes a demonstration video.

Re:Video?

[stienman]

Here's a PDF paper about the omni-directional treadmill with neat pictures and good description of how it works, what it's like to use it, and limitations (turning in place, crouching, sidestepping and a few other movements often cause stumbles)

To echo your sentiment, I too would like to see videos of all these in action, both with experienced users and users who have never been on it before.

-Adam

2d treadmills, motion sickness and Redirection

[bitinglobster]

This is reply to several posts. There's been a couple inquiring about other kinds of 2-d treadmills and spheres, both of which exist (see below for links to videos and papers).

There are fundamental problems with all of these types of devices-- they 1) don't let the body handle momentum naturally and 2) don't stimulate the vestibular system in a way that is consistent with the visual or proprioceptive (the body's sense of where its limbs are) cues.

1) Momentum: On a 2-D treadmill, the omni-directional treadmill is supposedly fast enough that it allows for running. But when you are running and then change direction quickly, your body will lean into the turn to counter its momentum. Doing this on the treadmill will make you fall over. Someone once described it as "running on a slippery ice cube".

2) Vestibular cues: Our body can sense motion even without visuals or body movements. This is why some flight simulators have motion platforms [://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/vms/motionb.html]. One post above said that the treadmill should reduce motion sickness because it provides body motions as well as visuals. But a treadmill doesn't cue the vestibular system. One theory of motion sickness is that it results from a mismatch of visual and vestibular cues. In the back seat of a car, your visual cues say you are still (relative to the inside of the car) but the vestibular system says you are moving. Similarly in a IMAX theater or while playing an FPS on a big screen, your visuals say you are moving but your vestibular system says you are still. Knowing how you are moving is critical for maintain balance and even surviving. The mismatch in visual and vestibular cues interferes with your ability to balance, and that's why dizziness results.

Luckily, one can fool the vestibular system, much as we can fool the visual system. Techniques include "wash-out" on motion platforms, electrical stimulation, and Redirection. Wash-out is where the motion platform moves the user to simulate the virtual motion, but then sneaks her back to the center of the room at an acceleration that is below what her vestibular system can detect. The shifting tiles look like a fabulous idea, and I wonder if one could implement a form of wash-out on those tiles.

Links

• Nasa Ames VMS motion simulator
• http://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/vms/motionb.html

  Sphere http://www.vr-systems.ndtilda.co.uk/sphere1.htm2-D treadmills

  Omni directional treadmill http://www.movesinstitute.org/darken/publications/ ODT-UIST97.pdf

  Torus treadmill (great video) http://intron.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp/vrlab_web/torustrea dmill/torustreadmill_e.html

  Redirection http://www.cs.unc.edu/~eve/rdw/

One more thing, the problem with, as one post suggested, implementing VR in a huge wide open space (like a desert) is tracking. The computer needs to know where your head is and in which direction you are looking, very accurately and quickly, so it can draw the virtual scene from your perspective. By accurately, I mean with millimeter precision, and by quickly I mean it must update the images within tens of milliseconds of your head moving. If you focus your eyes on your figure at arms length, then rotate your head right and left, the reflex that moves your eyes to keep them locked on your finger is called the VOR (vestibular ocular reflex). It can react to head movements in 10 milliseconds.

Re:Pretty Cool

[mikael]

This was tried around 15 years ago by Virtuality. But back then, the helmets were absolutely massive, with a mini CRT monitors for each eye. At the companies peak, there were Virtuality booths close to every Underground station in central London. You could pay around 7 pounds for 20 minutes play. Although the games were simple, they were fun. One game was a first-person shooter, where you tried to shoot flying pterodactyls while trying to avoid being snatched or shooting other players.

Atari and the other console makers also jumped onto the VR bandwagon, even though the headsets were much lighter (later versions of the Virtuality helmet.

Obviously, you could do the same thing today, with consumer VR hardware, but the problem is cost. Consumers are more aware of the cost of playing in an arcade vs. playing at home. If the average game plays for one unit of currency for three minutes, and one person wants to play for three hours, thats 120 units of currency. For three months play, that amount of money would allow you to buy buy a PC + VR headset + broadband. Plus with headsets being as small and light as they are, they would very easily be stolen/broken. And that's not taking into account having to pay for parking, expensive drinks/snacks, worry about your belongings being stolen, your car being broken into, being mugged on the way home, or spend time finding a parking space.