The Road to Virtual Reality Will Not Be Walked Without Opposition

By
Ben Lang
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1

If you thought we were going to make our way toward immersive VR without naysayers, I’m here today to tell you that you’re unfortunately wrong.

There will always be people who are afraid of change and afraid of technology. Usually, they are hypocrites. They cry “video games are bad”, or “smartphones are ruining out society”, but they fail to acknowledge that this anti-technology approach goes against their living inside of a house, using a microwave oven, driving a car, etc.

In this same manner, you’ll find people that will believe that virtual reality is an evil thing. They’ll tell you that virtual reality ruins someone’s connection with the real world and real people, but they’ll never ask themselves whether or not that’s a bad thing.

Just this last week, the New York Times ran an article (published online and in print) about Sony’s upcoming HMZ-T1 3D head mounted display. Like any good hard-news writer, the author included an ‘opposing view’ at the end of the article. This opposing view came in the form of some snippets from Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor and author of the book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. I haven’t read Turkle’s book and want to make it clear that I won’t include her in the category of ‘hypocrites’ (that I mentioned above) before doing so. However, the way that her quotes have been used in the article from the Times certainly tries to peg her as an anti-technologist:

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Battlefield 3 Virtual Reality Simulator Episode from The Gadget Show Now Available Online! [video]

By
Ben Lang
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1

As I posted the other week, The Gadget Show put together an awesome Battlefield 3 virtual reality simulator which would be featured on their show. The only video we got initially was a teaser, and unless you live in Britain, you probably wouldn’t have access to the episode as it aired. Fortunately, The Gadget Show has posted the portion of the episode featuring the virtual reality Battlefield 3 rig to YouTube for us all to enjoy!

The episode gives a good amount of detail on the concepting and building process for the virtual reality simulator which is excellent for our purposes. I was curious to know how they were going to be tracking the player for the omni-directional treadmill and it was revealed that they were using 10 infrared sensors to accomplish this.

When the host ran through the level with the rig, he mentioned it being rather surreal and very immersive. I can only imagine that the paintball guns added an element of fear which would make one much more conscious of running out into the open. Adding real life consequences to in-game actions is a great way to enhance the intensity and immersion of a game (though some might find bruising paintball guns to be a bit harsh).

The host said he was so immersed that he actually tried to reach his hand out to drag his wounded virtual soldier away, and I’m very curious to know if this was his genuine knee-jerk reaction, or if it was just a bit of flourish for the show. Check out the full section of the show feature the Battlefield 3 virtual reality simulator right here. Do you think he was serious or just putting on an act?

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Battlefield 3 Played in a Virtual Reality Simulator [video]

By
Ben Lang
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5

Battlefield 3 is set to be one of the biggest games of the 2011 season thanks to its impressively life-like graphics and sound-design. I can tell you from experience, the Battlefield games have had some of the best sound design in the industry. Hooked up to the appropriate audio setup, you will feel like you’ve got your feet on the ground in the midst of an actual battle. Terrifying, and incredibly fun, but virtual reality it is not.

Remember when I told you the other day how awesome Battlefield 3 would be if it were hooked up with a VR rig? Well it looks like that wish is now reality.

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The World’s Best Virtual Reality — Your Brain on VR, and the Exciting World of Brain-Computer Interfacing

By
Ben Lang
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1

The abilities of the brain are absolutely amazing. Even before the idea of virtual reality was conceived, the brain has provided us a way to experience things that seem entirely real but are entirely fake. I’m speaking of dreams of course. Because our experiences are merely interpretations of input from various nerves, it couldn’t be easier for the brain to essentially simulate these inputs to give us experiences that are independent of our external reality.

To some extent, we can simulate and control these experiences consciously. It isn’t hard to think of a frightening situation, or a terrifying movie, and feel afraid. Nor is it difficult to recall someone lost but loved, and feel sad. Emotions don’t seem too hard for us, but physical sensations are tough to insight consciously. For instance, it is hard to give yourself the sensation of falling or flying, or to feel like you’re hotter or colder than you really are. Still, it’s not impossible. A brief survey of meditation techniques will show you that some people can tap into their mind’s own ability to create a false reality.

Many people have occurences of something called Lucid Dreaming in which they are able to take control of their dreams, and make conscious decisions within them. I’m able to lucid dream from time to time, and often my favorite thing to do is to fly or sky dive. To my surprise, my mind properly simulates the feeling of excitement/adrenaline/falling that one would associate with flying through the sky. The mind is arguably capable of being the world’s best virtual reality system; so how do we tap into it?

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Sony HMZ-T1 Photo Gallery and Full Specs. Does it look Stupid, or Awesome? I Can’t Decide.

By
Ben Lang
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4

I can’t quite decide whether or not I think Sony’s HMZ-T1 HMD looks really cool, or really stupid. They’re certainly trying to get make it look futuristic, but the problem with “modern” design is that it is the quickest to become “retro” just a few years down the road. In 5 years when we look back at the HMZ-T1, I’m willing to be we’ll think that it looks silly.

A futuristic looking design is almost assuredly going to have a polarizing effect on people; it will be loved and hated, and few people will likely fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I’ve gathered up the highest quality photos of the HMZ-T1 that I could find so you can decide for yourself. I also found two shots of the HDMI pass-through-box which comes with the HMZ-T1 but has remained quite elusive up to this point. Also note that the cable that runs to the HMZ-T1 is almost always understated (or completely removed) in these photos, so don’t forget that you’ll have a wire dangling from the headset while its in use. And one more thing before I drop the gallery for your perusal — notice how all of the controls have been hidden on the underside of the HMD:

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Sony’s HMZ-T1 Head Mounted Display Launching Early in the US?

By
Ben Lang
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2

The HMZ-T1 head mounted display from Sony is supposed to be launched, according to Sony Japan, on 11/11/11, alongside another much anticipated product. Although most marketing materials that we’ve seen have agree with this 11/11/11 date, it seems that US gamers and display hobbiests in the US will be able to get their hands on the futuristic looking HMZ-T1 more than two weeks early.

According to the device’s product page at SonyStyle.com, which is accepting US pre-orders for the HMD, the HMZ-T1 (aka “personal 3D viewer”) will become available “on or about 10/26/2011, a full 16 days prior to the Japanese release date.

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Augmented Reality Will Soon Be Convincingly Modifying Your World

By
Ben Lang
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1

Augmented reality is, at the moment, the novel concept of being able to superimpose something virtual onto your existing world. We’ve seen some neat, but ultimately useless, informational overlay applications from augmented reality, but nothing quite useful yet. Many of the alternate reality applications that you’ll find on phones today do little more than use the accelerometer/gyro/mangnometer/GPS data in your phone to adjust the informational overlay on your screen as you move and tilt. More advanced concepts use special tags to help track a particular place and then superimpose something virtual on that location.

Thanks to some incredibly smart work happening in the augmented reality field, AR is about to become a practical part of your life. You’re about to see how, using no sensors except for a camera, alternate reality will soon have the necessary performance for some actually useful (and admittedly, really cool) implementations.

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Why Isn’t Nintendo Harnessing the Virtual Reality Capabilities of the Wii?!

By
Ben Lang
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1

Why Nintendo hasn’t embraced this is completely beyond me. Johnny Chung Lee, a human-computer interaction researcher, developed an ingenious head tracking system that works with the Wii — a system which has an install base of more than 80 million units. Lee’s setup allows the head of the player to be tracked, which means that the system can adjust the images on the screen to the movement of the player, creating a portal into a virtual world (skip ahead to 2:45 if you want to bypass the explanation and see it in action):

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Make Your Own Head Mounted Display With an Android Phone

By
Ben Lang
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0

Don’t have $799 to drop on Sony’s upcoming HMZ-T1 head mounted display? Back in 2009 Recombu.com made this video showing how you can make a cheap DIY display out of nothing but plastic goggles, cardboard, and an Android phone:

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Sony’s HMZ-T1 Head Mounted Display Launches 11/11/11, VR Gaming Integration Down the Road?

By
Ben Lang
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8

Sony is launching a head mounted display (HMD) come 11/11, and it’s likely to be one of the highest quality and most consumer-available HMDs to date.

The HMD, for which Sony is already taking pre-orders, will go on retail for $799. Before you scoff at the price, let’s take a minute to see exactly what you’re paying for:

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Omni-directional Treadmills Could Allow You to Roam Virtual Environments

By
Ben Lang
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4

An omni-directional treadmill is just like your traditional gym treadmill, except instead of only being able to go forward, you can move in any direction. There are a number of ways to achieve such omni-directional locomotion, but the resulting machine would be excellent to let virtual reality users to literally stroll around in a virtual environment.

Allowing players to move and interact with a virtual environment in a natural way is one of the key components to creating an immersive virtual world. To date, all input for mainstream gaming has been done with some sort of controller. To walk forward in an FPS, you’re probably pressing forward on a control stick. Even motion controlled games have little or no support for moving your player by actually walking. In the case of the Wii and Kinect, this issue arises because of the small area in which the player is tracked. Even if the tracking area were larger, you’d inevitably run into walks or other objects.

An omni-directional treadmill would let you walk, or even run through massive virtual spaces. Oh and did I mention that omni-directional treadmills already exist? Yeah, actually the first patent for the omni-directional treadmill was awarded all the way back in 1996! See an omni-directional treadmill in action:

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Quantum 3D Helps Train Solders with VR [videos]

By
Ben Lang
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1

Quantum 3D says that “infantry training simulation is here today”, and they’ve got a video showing how they use virtual reality to help soldiers train for the battlefield. Tell me parts of this don’t play like a video game trailer:

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Following the Road to Virtual Reality

By
Ben Lang
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4

virtual reality kinectToday begins my journey cataloging the Road to Virtual Reality. I actually started a very similar blog 2 or 3 years ago, but it quickly faded away because we were still far from anything that could be considered mainstream virtual reality. Today I fire up the blog again because I have a personal interest in virtual reality and the implications it will have.

The time feels right now to start tracking the journey to virtual reality as a number of important technologies are being developed and starting to hit the main stream. These technologies, that are being deployed or are in development, are all stepping stones toward virtual reality. Eventually I see these technologies coalescing into what will be known as virtual reality. A few of these technologies are as follows: motion gaming (Wii/Wii Plus, Xbox Kinect, Playstation Move, etc.), voice control (Apple’s Siri, Android Voice Actions, etc.), and AR gaming (augmented reality) which is found on sensor-rich devices like smartphones and tablets.

We’ve got the technology to make pseudo virtual reality today, and you can actually find examples of it all over the place; it just hasn’t hit the mainstream yet.

It should be apparent from the list I made above, but the first place that we’re likely to see mainstream interactive virtual reality is in video games, and something that we haven’t quite seen yet… interactive movies. These are obvious places because the experience that the creators of games or movies are attempting to convey will see vastly increased immersiveness and richness of the medium if they are able to connect to the audience at a level that is far beyond what we see today.

The idea of ‘suspension of disbelief’ is thrown around a lot when we’re talking about immersion in a medium. In games and movies, suspending your disbelief is necessary to get into the world that is being shown to you. The promise of ‘true’ virtual reality is that we won’t have to suspend our disbelief… we’ll be nearly convinced that what we’re seeing, hearing, feeling, is real — with only the idea that the world we’re perceiving isn’t real to keep us from fully believing. And yes, this does have implications, for better or for worse, about the nature of reality and virtual reality. You’ll find some people who think virtual reality is the devil because it might take people away from the ‘real’ world. You’ll find others who embrace living in a virtual world because it holds the promise of utopia for all. But that’s all a long way off!

For the time being, virtual reality will not be ‘true’ VR, but rather a tool to enhance immersiveness and interactive experience.

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