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In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

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Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same Again proving the point that VR has no actual use case.

Sorry to break it to you but many games (like first person shooters) currently have no depth perception and would be greatly enhanced by it. Literally every 3D game you play today can and will be enhanced in VR because of this reason.

[deleted]

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#12
post #4

From a couple decades of gaming experience, you don't need much more than eyeballs, fingers and a little bit of forearm. I am convinced people who talk about immersion in VR have never been addicted to any game. It doesn't take that much to lose yourself inside of one. After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same once you're fluent with the controls.

Feet help. Feet & legs help a lot. FEAR is a game that really underscored this to me - and every game I see it in afterwards just adds evidence for it. Required? No. But adds to immersion a LOT.

Reminds me of the Jurassic Park PC game where you could look down and check out your character's gender.

Given that you had to enter pin codes by setting the hand to pointing mode and move around with the mouse, i wonder how it would translate to a VR experience today.

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#13
post #4

From a couple decades of gaming experience, you don't need much more than eyeballs, fingers and a little bit of forearm. I am convinced people who talk about immersion in VR have never been addicted to any game. It doesn't take that much to lose yourself inside of one. After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same once you're fluent with the controls.

> After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same Again proving the point that VR has no actual use case.

VR games that allow you to physically move around are immersive in a way that is unprecedented, IMO, even with very simplistic graphics.

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#14

I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match. I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring. Having spent many hours in both vive and rift, while I prefer vive in general, the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.

I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match. A laser-hatchet hand and a disembodied floating mecha-claw that respond snappily are ultimately more real than a "realistic" arm that moves like a cartoon.

BTW. I recall an experiment that found that to get someone to associate a virtual hand with their real one, the researchers had to prick the real hand at the same time as the person see the virtual hand getting a prick.

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#15
post #4

From a couple decades of gaming experience, you don't need much more than eyeballs, fingers and a little bit of forearm. I am convinced people who talk about immersion in VR have never been addicted to any game. It doesn't take that much to lose yourself inside of one. After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same once you're fluent with the controls.

> After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same Again proving the point that VR has no actual use case.

I don’t think this is true. In a gaming context VR provides more immediacy of immersion, much greater presence and wider accessibility. These factors also make VR a compelling case outside of gaming for all sorts of tasks.

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#16

I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match. I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring. Having spent many hours in both vive and rift, while I prefer vive in general, the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.

One interesting aspect is the difference between displaying yourself and others in VR.

For yourself you do not want to show body parts that cannot be tracked correctly because of the jarring effect of the mismatch, as you say. But for showing other people you can get away with more, so for example you can show full arms even if the elbows are not exactly in the right place (as long as they are not unphysical of course.)

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#17
post #4

From a couple decades of gaming experience, you don't need much more than eyeballs, fingers and a little bit of forearm. I am convinced people who talk about immersion in VR have never been addicted to any game. It doesn't take that much to lose yourself inside of one. After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same once you're fluent with the controls.

> After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same Again proving the point that VR has no actual use case.

I said they are "the same" only in terms of how your brain can immerse/rewire itself to understand those new controls as if they were artificial limbs. Even with the same level of fluency, some controls are definitely better than others depending on the domain.

So VR is definitely not pointless. Motion tracking for your head/arms/feet unlock many applications that are previously hard or impossible (e.g., 3D sculpting using mouse/tablet vs a motion controller).

But it's not always better than mouse/keyboard input for let's say typing or shooting a target. Having more irrelevant degrees of freedom makes it harder to master your input controllers, even if you already had a lifetime of practice with it in the real world (e.g., I am okay with doing parkour levels of movement with WASD/Space but won't ever try it with my real limbs even though in theory I know how to climb over a real world fence).

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#18

In deep trance states, the body progressively fades away and you perceive what would ordinarily feel like body sensations as other things, as the mind loses its frame of reference to cause and effect. All experience thus gets created by mind. I imagine with practice anything is possible regarding VR. The mind can make anything believable if you just relax and let it happen.

I have been obsessed with similar thoughts.

I am learning VR Development in my free time just to explore this. I want to make a VR guided meditation program, to help beginning mediators reach deeper states than they would normally be able to.

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#19

I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match. I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring. Having spent many hours in both vive and rift, while I prefer vive in general, the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.

I'm a little confused by your post.

> I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring [.....] the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.

Neither of the things mentioned here are specific to Vive or Rift.

A Rift game can give you arms that contort into impossible poses, just like a Vive game can give you visible hands. It's just software and whatever the author of whatever game you're playing decided to do.

Did you play a game worked in both Vive and Rift, and the versions were different or something?

Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match. A laser-hatchet hand and a disembodied floating mecha-claw that respond snappily are ultimately more real than a "realistic" arm that moves like a cartoon.

BTW. I recall an experiment that found that to get someone to associate a virtual hand with their real one, the researchers had to prick the real hand at the same time as the person see the virtual hand getting a prick.

By the same token, if you want someone to associate a virtual elbow with their real elbow, you'd better not be having it do stuff your real elbow isn't doing. Better off just not having the elbow.
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