I guess that all depends on -what you look forward to doing- in that virtual reality. And how many (and what kind of stimulating) sensor options are available.
In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
41–49 of 49 posts
Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When I got my Vive and was playing around in The Lab, and one of the experiences puts you on the side of a mountain, I stepped off a cliff edge and I could feel my heart rate increase slightly as my brain was expecting me to fall to my death. The immersion is real. Not disputing anything you're saying but I actually have this same experience playing games where you can fall and the player accelerates (particularly…
I have experienced both, and they are rather different. On the computer, I just get this sinking feeling in my stomach when falling, but there was no hesitation before jumping. In VR, my brain did not want me to step near the ledge at all. I had to probe the floor with my foot, make sure there actually is solid floor there in reality, and really will myself into moving there. In the end, I ended up making a tiny tiny…
Yeah playing The Climb sets off my fear of heights pretty well. I’ve climbed a lot in the real world and I think the lack of input from my feet actually heightens that fact as they are pretty integral to having the strength to hold yourself on.
Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#43VR/AR is still in its "our users are completely untrained" skeuomorphic UI phase. There's been a tunnel-vision focus on gaming, Virtual Reality , and immersion. The design space for HMD and body tracking UIs is much larger than skeuomorphic VR. I've liked attaching eyeballs to my hand, to explore graphs without gymnastics or manipulation. Using aphysical kind-of-planar workspaces, to permit subpixel resolution on int…
Attaching eyeballs to your hands sounds really fun actually, but we are already walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick. Not sure experiments like this would be comfortable for most people, so this is why i think everyone usually sticks to skeuomorphic UIs. But i agree that, VR-design wise, we are very primitive right now.
I've played a number or game that replaces your hand with the object you're using. Or hell, most of the time you see the vive controllers and not hands in place of your own.
Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Attaching eyeballs to your hands sounds really fun actually, but we are already walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick. Not sure experiments like this would be comfortable for most people, so this is why i think everyone usually sticks to skeuomorphic UIs. But i agree that, VR-design wise, we are very primitive right now.
I've played a number or game that replaces your hand with the object you're using. Or hell, most of the time you see the vive controllers and not hands in place of your own.
>game that replaces your hand with the object
Yeah, this is the common practice.
But by "attaching eyeballs to your hand" i though he meant decoupling the camera from HMD tracking and attaching it to the controller tracking. Like you move your hand and the view changes. Something similar to The Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth [1].
Research shows[2,3], that brain adapts to the unusual perspective quite fast. So technically, after a while, the brain should accommodate and it would start feeling "natural".
[1] https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/slendermanconnection/ima...
[2] http://www.yorku.ca/harris/pubs/adria_inducing_preprint.pdf
Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I imagine with practice anything is possible regarding VR. The mind can make anything believable if you just relax and let it happen. That's generally good advice for journeying of any kind, whether we're talking about VR, psychedelics, drumming, meditation, lucid dreaming, or reading a really good book.
It's also exceptionally good advice for nights with your partner.
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Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#46VR/AR is still in its "our users are completely untrained" skeuomorphic UI phase. There's been a tunnel-vision focus on gaming, Virtual Reality , and immersion. The design space for HMD and body tracking UIs is much larger than skeuomorphic VR. I've liked attaching eyeballs to my hand, to explore graphs without gymnastics or manipulation. Using aphysical kind-of-planar workspaces, to permit subpixel resolution on int…
Attaching eyeballs to your hands sounds really fun actually, but we are already walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick. Not sure experiments like this would be comfortable for most people, so this is why i think everyone usually sticks to skeuomorphic UIs. But i agree that, VR-design wise, we are very primitive right now.
> walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick
Yes and no. There seems a lot of confusion about that. About which design constraints are coming from which goals. Yes, for the common style of immersive gaming. But when I'm working, I'm usually down around 30 fps with high variance, running on integrated graphics.
What constitutes a "horrible" "immersion-breaking" "visual artifact"? And how much will you pay to avoid it?
I'm looking at a laptop's desktop. It's obviously a display panel. And not my wooden desk. And that's fine. When looking at my HMD "desktop", it's also obviously a panel. And not my office. And that's also fine. Using emacs isn't fighting slimey zombies. Usually.
Paper novels can be immersive. Even if you sometimes notice turning a page.
The design goal "avoid reminding the user they're wearing an HMD" is a very challenging one. It prunes the design space, discouraging many things. Camera passthrough AR. Lag. Different objects having different lag. Visible boundaries in display space. And so on.
For example. If you mostly care about text, then you want to see unblurred pixels, which means only the center half of the lens-blurred display is useful. Passthrough AR can provide balance even at low fps. So it can be shown beyond the center. Which creates a visible boundary in display space. And that's fine. And if when you turn your head, some graphical elements slowly chase others across the screen, that's fine too. So now you can run on old Intel integrated graphics. It's a different point in design space from fighting zombies in a warehouse. And it has different design constraints.
So when people say "VR requires X", that's worth translating as "SteamVR games require X". And it can be fun to consider other things you can do with a tracked head mounted display.
Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Attaching eyeballs to your hands sounds really fun actually, but we are already walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick. Not sure experiments like this would be comfortable for most people, so this is why i think everyone usually sticks to skeuomorphic UIs. But i agree that, VR-design wise, we are very primitive right now.
> walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick Yes and no. There seems a lot of confusion about that. About which design constraints are coming from which goals. Yes, for the common style of immersive gaming. But when I'm working, I'm usually down around 30 fps with high variance, running on integrated graphics. What constitutes a "horrible" "immersion-breaking" "visual artifact"? And how much will…
>The design goal "avoid reminding the user they're wearing an HMD"
There is a difference between design decisions based on "striving to achieve presence" and design decisions based on "not make people vomit". And high fps with good tracking is closer to "not make people vomit" group.
I agree that it's okay to break presence to do something (i would trade presence for fun for example) and let user push the limit if he can handle it, but you have to understand that VR is already a niche market, so devs usually are just playing it safe.
Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#48I 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…
If you try both the vive and the rift you'll see that the default for the rift is fake hands that mimic yours. It's cool but I personnally couldnt get fooled. I prefer the vive controllers.
Re: In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick Yes and no. There seems a lot of confusion about that. About which design constraints are coming from which goals. Yes, for the common style of immersive gaming. But when I'm working, I'm usually down around 30 fps with high variance, running on integrated graphics. What constitutes a "horrible" "immersion-breaking" "visual artifact"? And how much will…
>The design goal "avoid reminding the user they're wearing an HMD" There is a difference between design decisions based on "striving to achieve presence" and design decisions based on "not make people vomit". And high fps with good tracking is closer to "not make people vomit" group. I agree that it's okay to break presence to do something (i would trade presence for fun for example) and let user push the limit if he…
> There is a difference between design decisions based on "striving to achieve presence" and design decisions based on "not make people vomit". And high fps with good tracking is closer to "not make people vomit" group.
A goal of avoiding visible lag, requires a mechanism of predictive tracking, which has an undesired side-effect of judder, which can be far more sickening than the original lag, which motivates a mitigation of higher fps and lower variance, which requires a stronger GPU.
A goal of wide fov (absence of tunnel-vision "comfort mode"), increases user sensitivity, especially during rapid head and spatial motion, increasing needed performance and user discomfort risk.
A goal of avoiding visual artifacts, discourages introducing visual artifacts which increase user comfort. A goal of visual seamlessness, discourages segmenting the display to permit separately optimizing for task and comfort, compromising both, motivating mitigation.
With current hardware, "presence" and comfort are conflicting objectives. Optimizing for presence, is why we're pushing the envelope on comfort. But there's been a lack of community awareness of just what tradeoffs are being made, and why, and of alternatives and opportunities. In part because of the niche economics you mentioned - if SteamVR doesn't support it, why think about it? But happily, improving hardware will make the issue mostly go away.