New Approach To Virtual Reality Shocks You Into Believing Walls Are Real (vice.com)

A team of researchers from Germany's Hasso-Plattner Institute is trying to find an effective way to trick the mind into thinking a virtual object or wall is real. They have developed a new device that "sends little electric shocks to sensors on your arms that stimulate your muscles whenever you press against a wall or try to lift a heavy object in virtual reality," reports Motherboard. From the report: The team's main goal was to create this illusion as cheaply as possible. Their contraption, seen in the video above, consists of little more than an electric muscle stimulator stuffed in a backpack, the sensors, and a Samsung GearVR device accompanied by motion trackers. In other words, if you've been turned off by the clunky headsets of the contemporary VR experience, this probably won't do much to win you over.

Comments

Walls of Flesh

[ferret4]

Yeah I can see this being used to stimulate other muscles when they bump into softer objects under more interesting simulations real soon. I doubt that'll "turn off" too many VR users.

But you can't lean on it. . .

[Zobeid]

But you still can't lean against that virtual wall, or set a real object down on that virtual table -- things I've attempted while using the Vive, with predictably humorous results.

Side effects

[Solandri]

Side effects include users developing an aversion to picking up objects or touching walls in real life.

They're already failures

[Jason1729]

The team's main goal was to create this illusion as cheaply as possible.

Do it properly in R&D. Then see if you can do it cheaper or otherwise reduce costs through scale once you know what you're doing. By focusing too much on cost upfront, you will miss important avenues of research.

These people have already failed.

Re:They're already failures

[thegarbz]

These people have already failed.

Get a grip. Not all R&D is about creating something perfect. Not all results of R&D can be scaled and cheapened due to production.

An incredibly large portion of R&D is focused on cost. Producing something that is priced out of the market on arrival for something which has a goal of being in every household is what would be a failure.

Re:I don't know about believing the walls

[Vairon]

That depends on what you consider a shock. The original article never used the word shock. Shock is a term that vice.com decided to use. If you read the original article http://plopes.org/project/hapt... it says the electrical stimulations are not painful. Their devices simply stimulate certain muscles to simulate the weight or hardness of different objects.

Re:I'll be shocked ...

[Kergan]

I'll be shocked when I can believe the virtual reality business is a real thing instead of just hype.

Just wait until VR Porn popularizes it.

Re:I don't know about believing the walls

[Rei]

Agreed that it's a bad description. But the original also points out the weaknesses of their approach. It's a lot easier to give a third party the view of the person in the VR experience being perfectly constrained by walls than it is to give the person themselves that, for two reasons: one, protracted stimulation (aka they're feeling a wall) draws attention to the stimulation itself (tingling), and two, because it's done by activating opposing muscle groups, the force feels inverted, like someone's pulling their hand away with a magnet. So they were messing around with "visual means" to convey the concept, like "soft walls" that let your hand penetrate a bit, and "electric" walls to make it look like it's a force field pulling you away.

Neat concept, but not exactly right. Also, it goes without saying that any attempt to, say, lean on such a virtual wall will go badly ;)