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What Ever Happened to Virtual Reality?
bergeron76 writes "It seems like it's been ages since I heard of any advances in "Virtual Reality" technology. Was Virtual Reality just hype? Are there any new or existing projects that have made any significant inroads (aside from the first-person shooter games)?
Is total virtual immersion a worthless persuit / dead industry? If not, what are the bottlenecks that are delaying it?"
We've been through this.. the most impressive VR advancements are going on at general motors, outside of the military training programs. read more
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
I work with a guy who started up a video game company called Park Place Productions (Which Sony ended up gobbling up in a hostile takeover years ago.) He was responsible for the Madden series of football games among many other things.
At one stage he was working on a virtual reality headseat (Similar to the VirtualBoy style visor) except you wore it on your head and controlled it with two handheld sensors / input pads.
It was phenomenal, until during a demonstration with an investor, the user got tricked into thinking it was real and actually stepped backwords and fell over the couch he was standing in front of and twisted his ankle. The product did not sell.
So yes, the bottleneck is definable in one word: Liability.
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
What about the patent Sony has on the Matrix-esque technology?
I hate to retread a previous comment, but according to the movie "Jurassic Park," it was replaced by UNIX systems.
The concept of VR has amused me for a very long time. It's what makes watching movies like "Lawnmower Man" so amazingly funny in this day and age.
I've been taking a 3D modeling class, and it has about three paragraphs dedicated to VR. The content is pretty worthless - but the picture of a dolphin leaping out of a monitor towards a man who is leaning back to avoid it is completely priceless.
In all seriousness, there was a short blurb about full-room "holodeck" like simulations being used for engineering work - but it didn't go into any details. Anyone know anything more about that?
I think progress in VR is going on all the time its just not labeled as such because it is such an expansive category. If you look at the next generations of games that are coming out and the pushing of PCI-express and the new graphics cards, graphics are progressively looking closer to Reality. Now having said that that is only part of the VR question. Interacting more realisticly with that world is essential. We are seeing new steps into 3d Projection,almost holographic displays, and what I feel is the most important step experiements using brainwaves to control movement in simulated enviroments. The techologies havent collided yet into a single form but when they all catch up to each other then we will have true VR. Forget about Virtual Boy which as most of us no was neither true 3d nor Virtual Reality, also excuse the PS2 Eyetoy which are both just novelity items.
Trix are for kids!
The problem is that the concept of VR has run into the physical limitations of hardware. For example, you can play a game where you can look around and hold a gun like device and point it at people. But once you try to walk, duck, roll, etc, you run into the limits of the system quite quickly.
So while we can trick the eyes and the ears, we've still got some senses that are firmly grounded in this reality that keeps it from being totally effective. VR does have some practical applications in the medical and manufcaturing fields, but as it was envisioned for entertainment, it's not quite there.
If we can ever manage to figure out a way to connect a computer to all human sensory input, it won't really get much further. That could mean using some sort of body suit that can fake the sensations of movement, etc, or perhaps a direct interface into the brain.
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What's wrong with VR? Hmm, this was the first tech subject I ever investigated in depth, and it's kind of amusing it hasn't gotten much better after all these years. I was just ranting about this a little while ago, but I'll go more in depth here:
There are some real problems with latency. Modern operating systems have a really hard time with the idea that there are hard deadlines that must be met on a sub-100ms basis. Even some graphics programmers hold onto the myth that 30fps has anything to do with how fast the human eye can detect motion. The reality is that we detect different faults at different rates, but anything that's tied to our own sense of motion has to be accurate at somewhere around the frame rate of touch.
The frame rate of our haptic senses is something on the order of 3000 frames per second.
That doesn't mean you need to update a display at 3000fps (though ironically enough, that's approximately the frequency of the fluorescent backplane on an LCD), but it does mean that if you're trying to show someone something at the same time a touch simulator is telling them they are, frames need to interrupt-updated at a speed that even the core operating system has trouble handling.
What do I mean by touch simulators? Nothing so complex as this per-finger force feedback weirdness that pulled back on each finger as I touched a virtual cockpit back at SIGGRAPH. No, anything involving a head-mounted display and a position detector is a touch simulator; the "feel" comes from within your head and neck and the reaction is to be visually accompanied by a display of motion.
But the display is always, always, always late! Look at the monitor. Now move your head and eyes, look at whatever's 90 degrees off to the right. For a noticable sub-second interval, you went blind, so that your brain would not need to contend with this blurry streaky mess. To be immersive, VR systems need to detect your motion, synthesize the appropriate blur-frames, and (hardest of all) have a convenient stable frame in front of you as you're escaping motion-blindness.
Everything head-mounted fails this just brutally.
There are vague successes in VR, of course. Driving simulations work fantastically, but it's not like driving is a massively natural feat for our brains to have adapted to in the first place. Screens on every window clean up the above quite neatly. And the phobia work functions because the fears operate on such a low level that your brain isn't able to employ resources such as "heh, that spider's moving wrong". These are useful and impressive successes, but in terms of general purpose "you are elsewhere" mechanisms -- until latency is dealt with appropriately, this will continue to be broken tech.
--Dan
My graphics card can output stereo images for feeding into a true 3d headset.
I was under the impression Direct 3d is geared towards allowing this kind of configuration, and games using it can automatically benefit.
The only part I see lacking is the gloves and complete immersion kits (Yes I know there are gloves, but I haven't seen them pushed anywhere apart from zzz.com.ru).
VR is with us already, its just not looking like Tron.
liqbase
The primary advantage AR has over VR is that AR uses the parts of the body that aren't just the eyes and ears: proprioception, vestibular perception, and othe cues that old-fashioned VR just can't handle. The disjunct between vestibular information and visual information that you get in VR is the source of the motion-sickness that often accompanies it.
VR, like a lot of early 'cyberspace' mythology, was built on an unrealistic rejection of the body, and a fantasy of "pure mind."
Anyone ever notice while reading Snow Crash that Stephenson never described how users work their avatars? He mentions goggles and lasers that track the user's eye, but stuff like the ubiquitous VR gloves or even a damn joystick, not a blip. I don't think this is an oversight, btw, but more a very clever example of what NOT to write.
Terminate and stay resinous.
Porn moved VCRs
Porn moved DVDs
Porn is holding up the BluRay / HD-DVD release
Porn moved BBSs
Porn moved the internet.
I'm not advocating it. I am saying that there are a lot of people that don't notice these things until they find a new way to get porn.
My mom says I'm cool.
Bullshit. That's like saying Enterprise killed the lauching of Titans in Cape Canaveral.
Here's a few questions for you all:
1.) How many of you actaully played anything based on Virtual Reality? (If no, did you ever even have an OPPORTUNITY to play VR?)
2.) Of those of you that have, did you actually have any fun?
3.) Did any of you enjoy paying $5 for a minute of entertainment?
4.) Did VR bring you an interesting gaming experience that you couldn't have enjoyed better?
5.) Was it anything like Hollywood?
Here, I'll answer my own questions:
My opinion on Virtual Reality was soured BEFORE the VB actually came out. Frankly, the Virtual Boy was a lot better experience. It had a good stereoscopic display, *and* the games could still be fun because they used tried-and-true controls we all loved. The
"Derp de derp."
With today's GFX accelerators, you'd think they could take all that old hardware (data gloves, dual-screen headsets) and pump all the latest graphics through in 'true' 3D.
In general.
We don't have VR for the same reason that websites aren't authored in Shockwave--it's massive overkill for the vast majority of things it might be applied to. The useful applications of VR are very specific, niche apps, and the rest it could be used for can't possible afford the equipment to make it work well.
Given that, there's little demand to work out the technical wrinkles that make it practical and cost effective. Do you really want to jack in just to check your mail?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
It was an IBM 486 DX100 w/16 megs of RAM. But what made it an Elysium, were the 2 graphics cards (2 motorola 601e processors on each card w/8 megs of tex ram on each card too), the HMD, and the 2/6DOF magnetic tracking devices from polhemus (i.e. Fastrack) one on the HMD the other on the "pointing device", a handheld input device with 4 grip sensors that would read in pressure from finger grips in values of 1-255. You could use it to simulate a hand opening or closing.
And now my point...The school I attended/worked at used to give tours and show off this new VR tech by showing them the Elysium. Remeber the stock city model that came with 3DS Studio for DOS? My buddy put that in VR and we would show that to the "tourists". It didn't happen often put I distictly remember a few of the people getting Vertigo when they "flew" to one of the top of the buildings and looked down. They would fall right on their asses in the middle of the room, while wearing the HMD. VR is kinda dangerous in that respect.
I always thought that was the most interesting part of donning an HMD, the disorientation you felt after wearing it made it intimidating for the average Joe. And it came with warnings telling you to not wear it for more than 15 mins at a time. I took me a few hours of use, to get over the initial disorientation an HMD causes to your senses.
That is what killed VR. HMD technology is not for average computer users. Plus you can get epileptic seizures. It's the same thing that killed the Captin Power TV show.
You know, I hear this quite often from people who have played the orignal (Virtuality 1000) "Dactyl Nightmare" - that the point of the game was no fun. Often, when I played it when all four pods were filled, I could see the other players (well, their "avatars") kinda looking around, but not doing anything. It was like they didn't have a clue what the game was about.
I will give you a clue - the pterodactyl was a small (though important) portion of the game.
The whole point of the game was "virtual paintball" - or what is today called a "fragfest" (albeit with much better graphics, sound, etc and many more players). The idea was to run around on the platforms, down the stairs (to the center platform), and using the "levitator disks" (or whatever they were) to manuever between the upper platforms - running around and shooting the other players. All the while, the 'dactyl was circling - and if you heard "he's coming!" in your headset, that was a clue to get under some cover somewhere (like under one of the arches or something), look up and around and try to shoot the bastard from the sky before he picked you up and dropped you to your doom!
I found the game to be very fun, but only when I was playing with people who knew what the hell the game was about. Yes, the equipment was very heavy and cumbersome. Yes, the resolution sucked (but at least it the field of view was large enough to immerse you - ie, 60 degrees horizontal). Yes, the tracking was laggy (and in cases, nausea producing. But the game...
More than once I played it and in five minutes had a great workout - DDR is probably the only current game today that could match it...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Yeah, but surely the Super Whiz-Bang Mega-GPU Graphics Cards of 2005 can keep up?
Actually, what I recall of VR helmets from back in the day is that they gave me a headache from having the screens so close to my eyeballs. Or perhaps it was because the 3D perspective wasn't quite right and my eyes tried to compensate by refocusing, and the headache came from the resulting eyestrain. In any case, I couldn't use the 3D goggles for more than 15-20 minutes at a time.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I mostly agree - I've played "Dactyl Nightmare" in the same type of getup that you described. I found myself near the edge of a platform and had a hell of a time turning around without falling off, the way I had to twist my torso, hit the button, twist again, and so on, all the while wrapping myself tigher in the cables left something to be desired... There was one very cool bit about the whole experience though - looking at your own arm and seeing an arm that wasn't your own, with a gun in your hand. The graphics were silly, the game got a 1 out of 10 for fun, but the notion that an attempt was made to fool yourself into seeing your very body in a different way was pretty cool, IMO. That and the 50 pound helmet that wanted to pull forward and cover up my field of vision were the only things that left any "impressions" ;)
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
In the late 80's/early 90's, I was all about VR. I devoured "The Media Lab" by Stuart Brand, about MIT's media lab, etc. Then I was a psych major at Cornell who focused on perception. I was going to post largely the same information that you just did. So instead I will add an interesting anecdote.
;)
;)
Yes, latency is the main bitch here, but there are a few extra bits of interesting info. One is that your nervous system already has its own latency "lag", and you are already adapted to it. The upshot is that it is possible to adapt to a bit more latency incurred by extra hardware. This has been shown in military virtual cockpit simulators that attempt to present a lot of information to a fighter pilot with a 3D display inside a helmet, as if he can "see through" the hull of the aircraft. The negative is that once you leave that environment, adjusting to the "normal" real-life latency leads you to get nauseous sometimes
Another interesting phenomenon of perception is that if you are walking in a curve with a large enough radius, you will not be able to tell (if blindfolded... or wearing a 3D VR HUD) whether you are walking in a straight line or not. So in theory you can have a fully-navigable VR system inside, say, a hangar, that tricks you into thinking you are walking forever in a straight line (i.e., in any direction in the world) when in actuality you might be walking in large figure 8's on the hangar floor. This of course conjured images in my head of real-life Holodecks and whatnot, but it's interesting nevertheless
But will the money which has already been bitten the first time round be made available again?
Watch LCD technology. It will reach a point where slapping together relatively inexpensive and lightweight glasses or even helmets will be very affordable.
I totally agree with the points made about the games, but let's not forget the cost. The best VR helmet back in those days available to consumers was the VFX1. I owned one. It cost me about 900 bucks. That ain't cheap by anyone's standards and if I hadn't(still am) been such a nerd, I wouldn't have forked over the money. I did get my money's worth out of it though. Endless experimentation. The only decent game for it was Descent.
I really think the cost held it back as much as the lack of games and the big heaviness of it all. Watch those LCD prices and technologies, the day is coming...
who the hell plays quake with *just* the mouse? might as well play the piano with my nose...
Yes. The Quake II engine has been ported to the CAVE, so you can play Quake2 in there. It's pretty novel, but not really all that great. There is a Quake3 level viewer too, but the full game engine was never completed.
The hardware driving the cave, btw, is pretty insane. Also completely obsolete. "Cassatt" is an SGI Onyx2 "Reality Monster" with 12 CPUs and two InfiniteReality2 graphics pipes. It was truly wicked when it was first installed, but now it's getting a bit old.
Heh, I think I just had a flashback to circa 1995-96... Around then VRML was a hot fad, as the web was really taking off, and there were all sorts of browser plug-ins. ...all of which sucked. Hard.
They amounted to crappy wireframe renderings of rooms, perhaps some objects, and usually some (literal) avatars of other people. The software must have been unoptimized, because even simple 16 color wireframe models were godawful slow. The controls were hard to use, and immersion was nil. Still, it was supposed to be a "hot" thing that was going to take off. At the time the notion of a video card with 3D acceleration was just beginning to materialize. Most everybody had plain old 2D framebuffers. And pentiums. With like 32 megs of ram. ouch.
Anyway... back then it was still novel to have high speed internet connections in the dorms, and when we discovered CUSeeMe (or however it's spelled) that pretty much drew all our attention away from the crappy VRML.
Having been a veteran of the VR push in the early 90's I can actually add something to the discussion for a change. I will start with my relevant background, and then illustrate in my observations why VR died, at least with regard to arcade games. I worked for a company called Alternate Worlds Technology back in or about 1992. We had two products, the main one being a VR arcade unit featuring a custom version of Wolfenstein 3D. The controls featured a Head Mounted display ( from flight research ) with a polhymous tracker on it, and featuring a 3 button joystick for movement and gun control. The HMD offered pseudo stereoscopic video ( one vga signal with fresnel lenses to add perspective to the visuals ) that was fairly good. The Polhemous device was an EM tracker, that allowed you to rotate based on the turn of your head. The product was marketed at least at one point under the name of the Reality Rocket. As far as what problems we identified with the VR world, they were pretty simple. 1) No one wants to wear a helmet. Especially if someone else has worn it before them. They find it unsanitary, and I can't blame them. None of the HMD designs could alleviate this concern. Hairnets and wetnaps were provided, but in general that just made things worse. 2) The HMD's could be good and expensive, or cheap and bad. The helmets we used were awesome, but ran 10k. The cheap one's for homes were crappy ( shutterglasses, etc. ). 3) Most VR producers were using wireframe graphics, and not textured ones. Look at the Virtuality products for an example. Everything looked like Sense8's World Toolkit stuff. Think Autocad drawings that fly. As far as I know, our game was the only one at the time using textured graphics. 4) The wand and other such devices were a pain to use. We used a Spaceball 2000 for our business product, and it was pretty good, but it took a lot of practice to get used to it. The Spaceball was essentially a grapefruit sized sphere mounted on a curved stationary pad with a bunch of buttons. Essentially the idea with it was that you press it in whatever direction you want to move virtually. When describing it to people, the explanations almost always resorted to descriptions of how your head would move if someone smacked it on the side. Not a great conversation to have with a perspective customer. Add to that that the equivalent of a left click button was where the nose would be if the sphere was a head, and...well you get the picture. 5) VR Arcade consoles were too expensive. They were trying to sell our stuff for about 80k, of which a significant amount went to the parts and license fees. I think the virtuality product ran for well over 100k. Arcades at the time were spending 4k on the most expensive arcade units, so 80k was well out of their comfort level. And in general, if you can't afford to put it in an arcade, you aren't going to make it in the home. Anyway, that company stopped giving me cashable checks, and I moved on with life. I think VR stopped paying it's checks in general and the computer world has moved on it's way as well. But it was fun while it lasted. Paul Hurley