virtual reality

[Drayke Newall]

On 12/31/2019 at 9:05 AM, Pussycat Catnap said:

nah...

I think it goes the other way around. If you're not a Boomer or Gen-Xer... you're too busy on your iPhone to bother looking at VR.

Older folks want to recreate a 1980s genre novel...

Younger folks want AR... They are also leaving Facebook to the Boomers...

Yep, AR all the way. I can far more foresee a time when people have glasses on (not that terrible google glass) and walk down the street customising their world rather than being tethered to a computer and consequently a 4sqm room. In Australia more and more primary schools are teaching AR instead of VR as it has far more benefits.

Going down to the park with friends to play (physical activity) a virtual FPS zombie game where the real world environment (tree's, rocks etc.) are used by the AR system as the cover. Building a building whereby the glasses show faults errors etc. Having an operation where an overlay of an MRI scan is placed on the body so the surgeon can accurately find and fix the issue in real time/vision rather than looking at an image and guessing its location.

Sure, VR probably has its place in closed off games etc., but it is more suited to a bygone era and book that has proven time and again since the 80's to not be wanted and makes people sick.

Edited January 1, 2020 by Drayke Newall

[Pussycat Catnap]

9 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Yep, AR all the way. I can far more foresee a time when people have glasses on (not that terrible google glass) and walk down the street customising their world rather than being tethered to a computer and consequently a 4sqm room. In Australia more and more primary schools are teaching AR instead of VR as it has far more benefits.

 

Yes.

I suspect it will become a popular thing once it's as easy to wear as contact lenses.

VR isolates you from the world around you, AR enhances that world.

Of course... it could end up like that famous AR video... and in the states probably will. But places like Europe and Asia will likely regulate against it:

- That phase won't last too long, and we'll end up instead in a phase in the US that has hyper-smart advertising designed to seamlessly blend in with your surroundings... That will lead to us further fragmenting as a society as even the world you actually see around you will get split into 'red vs blue' versions...

But again... in Asia and Europe they will likely regulate against that and get a more useful product...

That said... this could also be the 'branch point' where Latin America and Africa pass the northern hemisphere by... they won't have as much legacy tech - if the rapid mass adoption of cell phones in the "developing world" shows anything... it shows that lacking the old tech can sometimes make getting the new tech easier... and this time around they are just about primed to be able to get quality versions of it out of the gate... and are already building up tech hubs of software engineers that could take advantage...

 

VR though... is a dead horse...

But AR anywhere in the world that properly regulates it (neither under or over) will be a game changer...

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Bree Giffen]

The sickness in VR could easily happen in AR too. The sickness is caused specifically when holding everything still while moving your head around. So, if you had a table sitting in front of you in VR, as you move your head, the table has to remain perfectly still to your eyes. In reality, the VR headset has to track your head and move the table in the opposite direction. It has to do this in all 3 dimensions. Without 60 frames per second, the lag would cause the table to not track to your head movement and it would look like the table is moving. If your table was moving in real life as you turned your head you'd feel motion sickness, like on a boat, and you'd get sick. Ergo, in AR, if the 3D objects overlaid on the real world were to move out of sync with your head, you'd feel dizzy or motion sick, which is not a good thing when walking down the street.

Also, the Quest and Vive have cameras mounted on them for head-tracking so they can also give an AR level of awareness of your surroundings. I think both VR and AR will continue because they are essentially the next step forward and not merely iterations of the same flat screen. 

[Drayke Newall]

10 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

The sickness in VR could easily happen in AR too. The sickness is caused specifically when holding everything still while moving your head around. So, if you had a table sitting in front of you in VR, as you move your head, the table has to remain perfectly still to your eyes. In reality, the VR headset has to track your head and move the table in the opposite direction. It has to do this in all 3 dimensions. Without 60 frames per second, the lag would cause the table to not track to your head movement and it would look like the table is moving. If your table was moving in real life as you turned your head you'd feel motion sickness, like on a boat, and you'd get sick. Ergo, in AR, if the 3D objects overlaid on the real world were to move out of sync with your head, you'd feel dizzy or motion sick, which is not a good thing when walking down the street.

Motion sickness is not just related to what your eyes perceive it is a myriad of factors mainly involving brain processing within miliseconds as well as the inner ear and muscle movement and the signals they are telling your brain. For AR it would be very rare to get motion sickness to the extent of VR as your body visualises the real world which is a fixed environment so 90% of the world is moving at the correct speed and correct FoV. You don't get motion sickness watching (not moving your head) a fixed spot on the wall and then see a large spider crawl across your view and vice versa with watching the spider (moving your head) with the fixed spot moving across your view. This is what AR is in theory and practically and therefore doesn't cause motion sickness.

Motion sickness is caused by the perceived effect of your brain not being able to calculate why your body is still but the scene is moving or why your moving but your surrounding environment isn't moving at the speed it should be. In a car for instance your body is still but your environment is moving and therefore your inner ear, muscles, eyes and brain have a conflict and therefore cause the sickness. Or if you have your eyes looking at your feet in the car your inner ear tells the brain that you are moving at X speed when your eyes are telling the brain that your looking at a static view and your legs aren't moving. The brain then cant process in some people why you have the feeling of moving from the ear when all other sensory systems are telling it that the body is not moving.

The reason why VR gives motion sickness is due to it being a closed system whereby 100% of the (generated virtual) environment needs to move precisely at the speed in which the eyes cannot determine the disconnect of your inner ear telling your brain your head is moving at X speed. Therefore using the before mentioned analogy it would mean that the wall, spider and the spot (including any other object in the FoV) ALL need to move at the same speed as your head does otherwise your brain can tell there is an issue due to your inner ear that senses the head moving at x speed saying to your brain that your eyes are lying. Also keep in mind that field of view also comes into play with motion sickness as the eyes have a field of view of over 180 degrees where as VR goggles have 100. Factor also into this that the quality of the scene pixel wise and that the brain processes an image within 13 miliseconds and this is therefore where the desired min. 60fps and 1080p comes into it.

This has also been looked into by researchers and they have found that AR and motion sickness is much rarer and the only effect noticed in test subjects as being slight discomfort.

https://cris.vtt.fi/en/publications/simulator-sickness-in-augmented-reality-training-using-the-micros

Edited January 1, 2020 by Drayke Newall

[Luna Bliss]

On 12/31/2019 at 8:57 AM, Lindal Kidd said:

I don't think SL could ever be a success with VR, unless they also implemented mirrors.

Too many of us enjoy looking at our own avatars.

Speaking of mirrors, they are common in VR and provide some of the coolest experiences in getting dressed. While watching your reflection in a mirror, you can touch a new article of clothing inworld with your RL hand, pull that clothing to your body, and then view how the new outfit looks in the mirror. The experience is fascinating, as it actually feels more like getting dressed in RL, and you experience the reflection in the mirror as your own because the reflected image moves along with your avatar and RL body movements.

Changing our avatar self is done a little differently in Coco VR (a VR experience of the movie 'Coco'). In order to change clothes there, while facing a mirror one picks an outfit (or new skeleton head for the upcoming venture to the Mexican 'land of the dead') from a little clothes rack and places it onto a miniature model. This causes the outfit to change on ourselves, and a reflection in the mirror demonstrates the alteration.
The Coco process for changing clothes can be viewed at the 2:28 mark: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3GMhC2zbmo

[Desiree Moonwinder]

On 12/29/2019 at 1:48 PM, Desiree Moonwinder said:

LL could leverage their installed base letting us use the same account for Sansar, but they are not. This means they are treating each as a separate asset that could be divested separately. 

LL is all over VR.  Not sure I get the point here.  I do think LL could leverage its SL user base better in Sansar, but I think the technical strategy of "new broom sweeps clean" is a good one for VR.  If LL later backports some technology into SL, great.  As previously mentioned, the VR project viewer for SL didn't work out so well.