Slashdot Mirror
Mountain Biking In Virtual Reality With the Oculus Rift and an Actuating Bike
An anonymous reader writes Thanks to the Oculus Rift DK2 VR headset and Activetainment B\01 VR bike, which pitches forward and back according to in-game terrain, has shifting, pedals, breaks, digital resistance control, and allows tilting into turns, users of the system feel like they're careening through a mountain biker's paradise. After working up a sweat in the simulator, the author of this article ruminates on whether or not his experience could be considered "real"; "Much of the feedback of actual mountain biking was present during my ride. Sure, the feedback could be more accurate, and there's still missing sensory information, like the wind through my hair and a certain set of forces on my body, but at what point is a virtual experience real enough to be well, real?"
masturbation
Heck, the Trixter Xdream bike beats those Lifecycle pieces of crap hands down. Anything that can improve on that is a win IMO. At least until all this damn snow melts and I can go out on a real bike.
biking, running and rowing are just the tip of the iceberg! i cant wait for them to release the YARD WORK SIMULATOR!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Sounds like a cool way to get dizzy because the acceleration effect on the inner ear will be missing.
It will be real enough when it is real. Sorry, no substitutes accepted.
nt
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
When it is real enough? When i get hired to do a `virtual` job, and get payed in real money.
I know, people are getting payed already to play games, and most office workers get payed to work with a computer. But once virtual 3D applications actually can replace physical labour, i would say: real enough.
I understand some people would love to ride when the weather doesn't permit or that it could be used for training or something but is anyone going to have the room, power or thousands of dollars to spend on one of these things?
I don't understand people thinking that this technology will trickle down to personal use cases. Or personal use price ranges for that matter.
It even breaks! It's just like a real bike!
wunner if dis werks wit the goat simulator game?
It's more expensive and less fun, woo.
... complete with gravel to tweeze out of the wounds.
It is nothing like real. Measure the calories expended - it will not be comparable at all. This reminds me of one time when Konan Obrien challenged Serena Williams to virtual tennis on the Wi, and Konan won. Yeah that's real tennis - not. :-)
(I miss the old slashdot)
How about both? Reality and virtual?
Just saying, that if you play virtual for a long time, it skews your perception of the real. At one point you'll be doing dangerous stuff simply because you're used to "falling" and not getting even a scratch.
I don't even use headphones while biking so I have all my sense fully active ...
When you ride the bike off a cliff in the game and you die for real, THEN it's "real enough". Seriously, if you want a real experience then turn off the PC, go outside and DO IT.
Sometimes the "writing on the wall" is blood spatter...
I have a huge scar on my side from mountain biking accident and spent 3 days in the hospital. Is the rift going to give him that?
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
OP is asking for "real", IMHO it cannot be done. In order to properly experience the forces on your body on a bicycle, you would have to follow the same trajectory as the real thing in a gravity field - or alternatively another experience which provides the same forces, simulating gravity. In order to do that, the simulator would basically have to be put inside a spaceship which simulates those forces. This is something we cannot do with current technology because a spaceship can only provide thrust for so long.
Then there are "VR glasses", which though I have never had the chance to try the latest models, I can say that the only 3D-like experience that technology based on two separate 2D images can provide the user, is one with a predefined focal depth which will not be perceived as true 3D by the brain, i.e. more like watching a 3D movie than being in the real thing. I don't foresee any mechanisms witih eye tracking which would simulate user controlled natural change of focus.
So "true VR" will only happen when we are somehow able to interface directly with the brain at a level that the experience is directly projected into our conscience, thus bypassing our sensory organs. Obviously we are nowhere near that type of technology and perhaps it is not even possible, so in answer to OP's question when do we get true VR, I would answer hard to say, probably not in our lifetime, and perhaps never.
I would spend fifteen mod points on this if Slashdot allowed it.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a description that simultaneously so illustrates a foreign mentality, evokes the sensations of inhabiting that mentality, and pulls you into participation -- you reach the end of this passage, having read all the odd quests that it suggests, and realize that you have just completed an odd quest every bit the match of them. In, ironically enough, an entirely non-"real" world solely of words.
I didn't think I would be sending a valentine today, but here you go, TheRealHocusLocus. Thank you for this.
After working up a sweat in the simulator, the author of this article ruminates on whether or not his experience could be considered "real";
It was a real experience of a virtual bike ride. The "player" really did have that experience. It wasn't an imagined experience, like what I've had with holodecks. It was a real experience, of a virtual thing.
"Much of the feedback of actual [...] was present during my ride[...] at what point is a virtual experience real enough to be well, real?"
When you do get actual force feedback, and you violate policies by disabling safety mechanisms, it'll still be a virtual world.
And, it'll still be real.
Even on activetainment's own website they spell it "breaks." *sigh*
OP is asking for "real", IMHO it cannot be done. In order to properly experience the forces on your body on a bicycle, you would have to follow the same trajectory as the real thing in a gravity field
Nah. All you've got to do is stimulate the nerves of the inner ear or the part of the brain that it connects to, and combine that with a system which can move you around sufficiently for the environments you're going to replicate. There's lots of times on a bicycle where the perceived feeling of motion is not that great, so this particular case is completely doable. The Japanese have done some work on diddling your sense of balance already...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
After 1/4 million miles on two wheels, it is my experience that a rider never senses any tilting in turns. You can test this theory by placing a carpenter's level across the handlebars and taking sharp turns that require an extreme lean angle. The bubble on the level will indicate that you have never left the vertical.
...omphaloskepsis often...
When you fall and you risk fucking yourself up. Otherwise its a game with no adventure or risk. That's what real means.
Likely we'll never know the answer. Until there's a way to compare your simulation to the real thing. But how could that ever happen?
You aren't really mountain biking unless you crash. Here is 75 ways to crash https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I think we are saying more or less the same thing, i.e. manipulating brain inputs directly (e.g. inner ear nerves) rather than simulating the actual real life inputs. So I agree with you :-)
When you can't tell the difference. Looong way to go.
"...has shifting, pedals, breaks, digital resistance control,..."
Breaks?
BREAKS!?!?!?
Are you fucking kidding me?
It is now 2015. We live in an advanced digital age.
And yet fuckups like this are so common people are starting to accept it as the "new spelling".
Humans are fucking morons. Slashdot Editors and article submitters doubly so.
Can we just hurry up and have a major nuclear war with Russia and destroy our entire civilisation and all advanced life on this planet while we still can? We do not deserve to be here any longer.
UNC demoed something similar in 1991 at the Siggraph Emerging Technologies display.
http://www.siggraph.org/~fujii...