Computer Game Predicts Player Moves

willatnewscientist writes "A couple of Hungarian researchers have developed a computer game that knows when you're going to press the 'jump' button ... 2 seconds before you do it. The researchers use neural networks to analyse several type of biofeedback signal — heart rate, EEG and skin conductance — and discovered that skin conductance alone is enough to predict a jump up to 2 seconds beforehand. They say the technique could ultimately be used to make aircraft controls that respond more quickly to a pilot's actions. But it could also be used to create so-called 'frustration games' that respond to a player's actions before they occur."

Comments

Must be an easy game..

[Chris_Jefferson]

I play plenty of games where I'm positive I have no way of knowing if I'm going to jump 2 seconds before, unless I can somehow tell where enemies are going to move in advance.. which would be very interesting. I'd be interested to know how long in advance they can detect button presses on more 'twitch' games.

Re:Must be an easy game..

[dreddnott]

My thoughts exactly. Games of Unreal Tournament and the like are won by decisions made in 100 milliseconds. Waste 50 extra milliseconds not pulling the trigger and your brains get splattered all over by the guy sitting across from you (or the Godlike bot). If I start "flowing" enough my conscious mind doesn't even get in the way (hence the 'twitch' appellation), that's how I come out on top. Economy of thought. Doesn't work as well in CTF with team damage on...

Matrix

[jadin]

Oracle: I'd ask you to sit down, but, you're not going to anyway. And don't worry about the vase.
Neo: What vase?
Oracle: That vase.
Neo: I'm sorry--
Oracle: I said don't worry about it. I'll get one of my kids to fix it.
Neo: How did you know?
Oracle: Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything? If you know that the game knows you're going to jump, will you still do it?

Human consciousness

[Menoyoda]

This sounds like the experiments done by Benjamin Libet, in which he found that actions are initiated by the brain before one consciously decides to perform them.

Re:Bring on the Frustration Game

[scribblej]

There was a game back in the day - Suspended, by Infocom. It remains one of the scariest games I have ever played.

Anyhow, it had difficulty options, and the hardest difficulty setting was "Impossible."

Turns out it /actually/ is impossible -- if you select it, then three moves into the game the sun goes supernova, destroying everything.

Human reaction time is about 1/4 of a second

[Colin Smith]

It takes much longer than that to think. Bright young things are maybe 1/5 of a second.

If I start "flowing" enough my conscious mind doesn't even get in the way (hence the 'twitch' appellation), that's how I come out on top. Economy of thought. That's how the martial arts masters work. No thought involved. And it's why even if you know and understand the techniques intellectually, you'll still get your arse handed to you by a street thug if you haven't practised several times a week, for years.

Interestingly the flinch reaction is actually faster than the regular reaction time, about twice as fast, 0.15s but the response is hardwired into the brain, you can't do anything about the flinch itself. Many karate "blocks" are responses based on what to do after flinching.