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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."
Holodeck jokes in 5...4...3...2...1...
Does it come with a 'sticky-spot' mod to simulate chewed gum on sidewalk?
Looks cool, but i can't wait to try it out. Todays VR gets you disoriented because your mind sees movement but knows that your body isn't moving. This at least lets your body move, even if you're not actually traveling...
Who do I have to blackmail to get some representation around here!?!?!?!?
Hum, looks like Holodecks are just around the corner! mmmmmm holo babes and beeeer!
when in doubt press enter and we'll figure it out later..
I didn't even realize people were working on VR still. Are the graphics getting better too? Id assume so. This thing looks like a really nifty fun invention. Of course, I'm wary since practical applications are the ubiquitous "5 years" away. Hopefully unpractical applications come sooner...I can see VR-DDR now with shifting tiles for people to dance on...
Moo.
getting exercise while gaming would be nice for once... but It sure would suck when you try to roll/duck behind something in a FPS and you fall off the tiles and bust your ankle.. There's no way they can predict and keep up that well.
?SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 42
Can it handle running, as if from a dragon?!?!?!
Is it?
Those japanese are always inventing stuff like this. I guess they got no square footage.
My American answer is to put your VR goggles on in the middle of one of our spacious fields or parks, and just run around all you want.
Drop someone in the middle of the desert with his LCD goggles and mo-cap mittens and he can VR his brains out.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Could definitely be a downer if you're the next in line for that arcade game.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
I think most of us would agree that 'age old problem of physical movement within a virtual world' has absolutely nothing to do with walking. Its waaaaay more rythmic and horizontal than ambulatory.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I like to call it a "treadmill". Sounds much better than "shifty tiles" IMHO.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
but its gonna suck the 1st time it breaks in mid-stride and sends you crashing into your rendering farm for the VR.
Ok, how do they plan on simulating momentum? Try running at full gallop and then stopping dead. Its pretty hard to do in reality. It would be easy on a treadmill that responds in the same way as the tiles above. The act of walking without the feedback that we feel from our momentum might be a little disorienting.
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
Finally, FPS games will require moving around physically... I can see the game contestants' average weight declining rapidly as this device picks up support for Doom 3, etc.
"I'm on the VR FPS diet! I just run around and pretend to shoot people for 8 hours a day."
stuff |
This really seems like the sort of technology you'd want to show video of. Is the motion smooth, if you make a quick step forward then back will you fall as it keeps trying to move forward? These are the things I'd like to know. This is an awesome technology (if it works) and could be of great use to us where I work. We're currently working with omni-directional treadmills... which leave a lot to be desires as well as make noise that sounds like a jet engine.
Can someone explain or theorize about why they use tiles instead of a uniform treadmill-like surface that can scroll on two axes?
Will this work if you have a group of people and you all scatter in different directions?
What if you jump?
Live forever, or die trying.
I think this is a great step forward in the VR developments (no pun intended). What I think is going to be really interesting to see is, in say 10 years or so, what newer VR technology does to the relative fitness of your average hardcore computer gamer. Think about it - instead of sitting in a chair, you'd actually be exercising, which would burn those pizza and Dew calories.
If that becomes the case, what would happen to the labeling of games? All games could have "calorie burn factors" printed on them, so the more intense ones would have higher "calorie burn" ratings.
Does anyone know if there are any statstics out there for what the physical impact of today's games is that are a little like this - like "Dance Dance Revolution"?
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
These tiles are neat but it seems to be making the problem more difficult than necessary. Yes a sphere wouldn't allow doing a duck and roll but most applications would probably be walking/running anyway.
Nah, they're in space, so if you turn off the "gravity generators" in the holodeck, they can just float.
Now you can apply force fields to the floating bodies to mimic the environment, like the resistance of the floor to your feet or the wind on your face, etc..
What I never got was: 1) Why did they dress up to go to the holodeck? Data would put on his whole lil Sherlock outfit.. Why bother? Cant the holodeck generate the funny hat and pipe? Is there really enough personal storage space on the Enterprise for such things? I doubt the crew of your average aircraft carrier have room for sherlock holmes outfits to play dress-up in their downtime.
and 2) they could take stuff out of the holodeck. I forget the episode, but I think it was Picard walking around when suddenly he gets hit by a snowball, and you see Crusher and his boyfiend apologizing, they just came from the holodeck after skiing on the moons of endor or some shit. Why would the holodeck allow this to happen?
Of course, the whole holo-doctor thing on Voyager just got silly.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I can already think of improvements:
1. Scale up the 4-tile model for walking, and have a 12-tile model for running.
2. Force-feedback tiles for seismic or moving-walkway effectts.
3. cushiony lifting-tiles to simulate low-g walks/runs/jumps.
Of course, can you imagine the liability issues for a manufacturer of such a product?
Very neat. I can't wait to have one. When they have it work with Unreal Tournament, I'll be sold.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
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
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
What might be interesting for uneven terrain would be something like those old "pin art" toys you could get at Headlines or Yarmo Zone. You know, the ones with 1000 pins on a rack in square formation, and you would reset them by dumping them all to the back, and then pushing something--your face or a fist or something uneven--into them, and on the other side you'd get a pin sculpture of your hand or whatever.
It wouldn't work for everything (i.e. simulated overhangs in a climbing situation), but if you had something like that on a huge scale, maybe covered with some sort of flexible surface, you could simulate some pretty interesting terrains if you had the computer determining the pin positions.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Attn all employees: Your sleeping tubes have now been upgraded, to a modestly sized bathroom, with movable tiles with VR-capability! You will live in a virtual mansion! Note: All employees will receive an annual $10,000 deduction for VR-Mansion maintainence fees.
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Cycling while watching a TV can be a little dangerous, especially if you are watching a race, or something else from the first person perspective. The problem is that you will unconsciously lean into turns. With a wind trainer this isn't too much of a problem, but if you are riding rollers, it can hurt. Trust me.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
"But in the Latin alphabet, "Jehovah" begins with an "I."
Not sure if anyone else pointed this out, but the actual website is here and includes a demonstration video.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Moving tiles means there are gaps. Gaps means things can be wedged into those gaps. Now what happens when you're running in VR land and wedge your foot into the fast-moving tiles? Suddenly, not being able to see your real-world foot doesn't sound so good ...
Anonymous Kev
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or you could get a bunch of your friends to dress as zombies and imps, and head over to the nearest paintball venue...
have the management turn all the lights off, and the main rule is that you cant use both the paintball gun and the flashlight at the same time.
Future story:
"The % of obese people ages 18-26 has decreased significantly with the simultaneous releases of GTA5:VRRiot and MallWalker1:ShoppingFury"
How did they handle this in the world of the Matrix?
Oh yeah, plug it into the brain directly and you can worry about simulating kinesthesia and proprioception at the root of the problem.
Once we do that we'll look back at this and think, boy what a silly circuitous solution.
...but it was rather half-baked. It was a passive system that involved a fixed array of spheres on some kind of (possibly low-friction) surface that a person would walk on. Fill up a shallow pan with a layer of marbles and you'll have an idea of what it would look like.
:)
I hadn't solved the problem of how to create the proper amount of resistance, so if it were implemented as designed, it probably would have been something like walking on ice. Also, I hadn't entirely worked out how to get data from the grid for feedback to the imaging components of the system.
Just one of those things you come up with when you're not paying attention in class.
Here's the game for you.
Hall Runner
"Sprint down halls as if you were some type of madman.
What could be better? Watch out for the bugs or tentacles, though! They can hurt!
Ouchy! Fun for several!"
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It would be very interesting to see if accelerations are dealt with properly with these things. In walking, not only do we have the "push-off" force which gets us going in some direction (push back -- with one's foot/leg -- to move forward, push left to go right, etc.) but we also have "stopping" forces (put one's foot down in front to decelerate the body's forward movement, etc.).
Presumably, with some sort of feedback algorithms, it'll be relatively easy to hold these things in place when one wants to move forward, etc. However, how are the tiles to know that you want to _stop_ "moving" (or seem like you want to)? Normally, if you stop walking, you definitely get a tactile feeling to it -- your body decelerates, your feet want to slip forward, etc. But on tiles, where your body may not have actually moved in the first place, simulating this stopping would require accelerating you in the direction opposite to the original (presumed by the tiles) movement. Might one simply get used to this sort of "movement without consequences"?
Would be a parent's dream!
Just hope your kids like you and don't enjoy the company of ravenous lions! :D
Oh wait they should hold this advancement back until all those things are working perfectly just like the real world and then they should release it all at once. Wait, thats not how progress works you fucking whiney bastard.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
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
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.
For me, I recently pulled out my old Doom WADs when the Doomsday (aka jDoom) engine was ported to Linux. And after about 20 minutes of insane play, I had to go outside and recover from severe nausea.
Now, the original Wolfenstein used to give me major problems but Doom wasn't an issue. So I poked around the options and discovered a setting to change the field-of-view from 95 degrees down to 90 degrees. And lo and behold, no more chunder rumbles.
Now it might just be that the frame rate changed because the amount of geometry being rendered was slightly reduced, but my money would be that because I sit far back from the screen with the keyboard out in front of me, my view onto the virtual world beyond the screen needs a narrower field of view than someone who is sitting with their eyeballs an inch from the monitor. The perceived world through the screen should reasonably match the expectations given the viewers position if it is to be believable and I wonder whether that nausea is caused by a mismatch between the perceived world when rotating the camera.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
(Sarcasm Begin.) Unless you use force fields like Star Trek! The force fields could cancel the artifacts! F=ma. Or put the whole thing in a spaceship in outer space and have your spaceship accelerate/decelerate to compensate for the artifacts!(Sarcasm End.)
Mathematics is not a crime.
This would work for straightline-movement only, though. For things like spinning you would need to either control the balls individually, or at least in groups significantly smaller than the whole surface. (Or spin the whole base.)
The feedback for the motors then can be maintained by optical tracking of the movements of the person, or by torsion sensors in the axes.
That reminds me of the fellow the other day who referred to a new method being different from "traditional cloning".
I remember when creating traditional cloning was an ages old problem.
But for the opposite use: Stand on a tile and it carries you to a real world location. Or for Seven League Boots: Tile moves as you step on another moving tile, so your walking speed is increased.
Unlike doing this on an escalator, you could do it in any horizontal direction. Which would also mean the tile system should be involved in helping everyone avoid collisions.
You might also not need a shopping cart. Just place a basket on a leash on a tile. Avoiding snap-the-whip motions would be interesting. Might be easier to just have loaded tiles follow an individual, although the tiles would have to know whether they are carrying a person or merely an unstable load.
This has been done - I believe it was called the "CyberSphere" or something equally passe - anyhow, it was created by a guy in the UK, he actually got a lot of press for it. Something he had to invent was a manner of casting the plastic panels that made up the sphere - it was quite large, and the panels had to be a special shape to hold up to the weight of the sphere, as well as a person stepping around on the inside. It was supported by an air bearing - though I think a mechanical friction link (like an old mouseball) was used for movement detection (although, today one could sense it optically). One of the big problems, which I think killed it - was the fact that in order to make the ball rigid enough, the weight increased to such a point that you could walk inside it, but when you stopped or changed directions, the momentum of the ball continued in the direction you were going, causing awkward moments at best, falls at worst...
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