IMACOMPUTA
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So laser quest?
Laser quest + AI (bosses?), various scenery/backdrops, visual feedback, who knows what else.
So laser quest?
Have you used VR before? Even using just the Hydra (which is nowhere near the capabilities of this), it's INCREDIBLY immersive, as well as incredibly functional. Trying to track individual fingers A). wouldn't work at all with this, and B). would be compute heavy trying to not only keep track of those fingers, but also map virtual fingers to in game. To be clearer, it's much easier for a game to say "If hand is touching object, pressing X grabs it" than it is to say "If all fingers are around object, and squeezing, perform a bunch of collision calculations to grab and pull it", not to mention it'd be harder for you to maintain your grip.
It's pretty much how VR is done at the moment, it's a natural limitation of the tech. It's either that, or let it drag behind you like a tail.
GOOD NEWS, THOUGH - Valve is turning their concentration on adapting their Steam Link tech to make VR wireless. I honestly expect it'll take them a decade of research, but valve has a propensity of surprising the shit out of people.
If this works as well as I picture it will (eventually), you could have a classroom with 20 people in it all walking in different directions and not hitting each other, as long as it's the same computer controlling what they're all seeing.Even in a VRcade (love the name) it still seems impractical. You'd need at least a classroom sized space for each person and only allow walking. although I could envision a nice dungeon crawler with this approach. That is why I think you need to do a combinations of approaches. Have forward movement automatically done with a button press, while everything else tracked 1-to-1 with real movement.
... and John Carmack speaks about the superiority of inside-out tracking all the time in lectures
This is dexmo:
The spider-like appendages are break points. They don't pull back on your fingers (that's a big no-no) but rather prevent your fingers from moving forward. By tracking the position of your fingers in 3D space using forward kinematics, you can watch for collision between them and in-game objects, and cause the breaks to kick in when they intersect. By doing this, you can feel objects that don't exist - spheres and walls and such.
The obvious problem at the moment is durability and that touch with this thing is binary - you don't feel texture, merely only blunt "existence" or "non-existence."
But it's an incredibly cool first step. This stuff is cheap, too - they had planned to sell them at $100 for a pair. They went into hibernation a while back to let their concept cook a bit more.
Do you have any link to some of these? I worked on a VR research lab for almost 4 years and then (I left 5 years ago) outside-in tracking devices were the most reliable with difference. In fact the best professional solutions sold today are almost all outside-in tracking systems (take a look at the intersense website for example). Of course they also have some practical problems that make these solutions unfeasible for being used at home, the ultrasonic tracking system we used for example was a 2x2 meters sensor grid hanged from the ceiling that tracked a 9x9 meter volume with millimeter precision.
Even being an outside-in supporter I think inside-out solutions are better suited to home spaces I just want to read why Carmack says those are better.
Have you ever tried to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed? Even if you are being very careful, over a distance, you will assuredly veer off course into a weird direction, even without you knowing. This is because our visual information is the single most important tool we use to determine our orientation as we move through space. While, true, we have other senses that help us determine where we are (this is called proprioception), our eyes are the primary thing we use to orient our bodies while we walk.
With this in mind, you can take advantage of this and curve your display (have it rotating slightly as you walk) to direct your person into walking in concentric circles. This is called redirected walking, and it actually works:
The people walking in these curved paths would swear they walked in a straight line. The obvious problem with redirected walking is that your computer has to know where you are in relation to walls to help direct you into the room. Hence it had the same problems inside-out tracking used to have - you'd have to meticulously set up your environment so your computer would know the parameters of your room to get you walking in circles.
Valve's positional tracking lighthouse does this for your computer automatically.
Have you ever tried to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed? Even if you are being very careful, over a distance, you will assuredly veer off course into a weird direction, even without you knowing. This is because our visual information is the single most important tool we use to determine our orientation as we move through space. While, true, we have other senses that help us determine where we are (this is called proprioception), our eyes are the primary thing we use to orient our bodies while we walk.
With this in mind, you can take advantage of this and curve your display (have it rotating slightly as you walk) to direct your person into walking in concentric circles. This is called redirected walking, and it actually works:
The people walking in these curved paths would swear they walked in a straight line. The obvious problem with redirected walking is that your computer has to know where you are in relation to walls to help direct you into the room. Hence it had the same problems inside-out tracking used to have - you'd have to meticulously set up your environment so your computer would know the parameters of your room to get you walking in circles.
Valve's positional tracking lighthouse does this for your computer automatically.
.It's actually outlined in the OP why they are better. Regardless, let's put it this way: we have a millimeter precision in a 15x15 area, with angle accuracy that is just as good. Ultra sonic would be good for finding the location of an object, but not necessarily the tilt or rotation of that object. This has both, and is super freaking cheap AND usable for home scenarios.
Super-accurate positional tracking was never really the problem with swordfighting simulations. The lack of feedback is the biggest issue - when your opponent blocks there's nothing to actually stop your real-world motion, so how can it handle you doing something you shouldn't be allowed to do?If anybody ever dreamed of a light saber demo with the wii, valve's tracker makes it possible today.
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The OP is talking about occlusion as the main problem with outside-in tracking but ultrasonic tracking systems don't have that problem.
The tilt and rotation of an object aren't a problem for ultrasonic systems as they are almost always mixed with an inertial system like what valve is doing with its HMD.
Does somewhere talk about resolution or are you guessing about it having mm precision?
So are you saying ps move has rotational drift for example? the biggest problem is positional drift and its completely gone with an ultrasonic tracker.Those inertial systems are, more than likely, going to be subject to drift, just as the Wiiremote would be if it did not have the inside out tracking.
That's true. I'm not discussing about if they are more suitable or not, they are not, I'm just questioning the rational behind saying they are better.Also, I imagine those ultrasonic systems are neither cheap nor small, of which (comparably) this is both.
Thanks, I'll try to find it.It mentioned the MM accuracy somewhere today, it's in one of the articles. I don't remember which one.
Does somewhere talk about resolution or are you guessing about it having mm precision?
"It's a tracking technology that allows you to track an arbitrary number of points, room-scale, at sub-millimeter accuracy 100 times a second."
This is a concept Oculus has been high on for a while. I've done work with it, too - it is really cool stuff. This is definitely something big. Here's a cool representation of it:
The path on the left is what the user thinks he is walking. The path on the right is what he actually walks.
Its not really up to Valve. This is on the developers. Valve has simply opened up the possibility for it.Wow, this would be monumental if Valve could do this.
All in all, its really cool that Valve has tackled this tracking issue(more or less), but I think its benefits for our normal gaming and viewing experiences will still be limited to seated, or at least stationary experiences. You cant just expect that everybody will have a large enough room, you wont be able to move quickly in-game(walking only) and you are still tethered to the PC so cabling is an obvious concern. It also raises some safety concerns. One journalist hurt himself in one of the 'moving around' Morpheus demos. And that was a controlled environment(though granted, he still said he loved it!).
I think you'd very quickly start to run into walls, unless its a very relaxed and leisurely experience that allows you to constantly remind yourself of reality. If you're engaged in the world, and honestly, in VR, you often will be(especially as it gets better and better), you're going to very quickly lose track of reality. Even if all you're doing is side stepping or dodging or turning, you'll end up moving around quite a bit. I think even in an open 15x15 space, which I would suspect only a small minority of people will actually have(especially to play a game in), you'll be hitting the boundaries quite a bit. We can easily cover a 2ft distance in a single step, and that's without being hyperactive due to adrenaline pumping or whatever! For me, in about a 5x9 useable area, it would be completely unfeasible. And I suspect many people's PC setups are not in big, open spaces. This is all speaking nothing of the cabling problems.That's why I propose the compromise of a hybrid solution. Use a run button for forward movement and tracking for everything else. All the turning, dodging, sidestepping... would be done 1-to-1 by tracking. You wouldn't move very far in the real world and the game could use this redirecting trick to make sure that little movement stayed in the center of your movable area.
If you inadvertently get next to the real world boundary then a wall appears before you in game notifying you that you need to back up a couple of steps. This setup would allow the use of a variable amount of space for the movable area. At the minimum amount you'd constantly see the barrier walls and would have to consciously constrain your movements. At the full 15' x15' area you'd rarely see the barrier.
I read about fear of running into walls, but also what about furniture? A 2ft high glass coffee table in the area is an instant 'no way in hell should you try this' dealbreaker alone. Even a wooden coffee table would be bad enough(can a system warn you of knee-high objects at all?). Plus couches, endtables, lamps, entertainment centers(wanna run into your $1000 TV?), desks, beds, stairs, blah blah blah.Great write-up! I knew about most of the stuff, just not that Valve was already that far along with it. Amazing. Potential game changer. Not just for VR either.
Like Seanspeed I can't see people walking around their living room, I'd be too afraid for damage or injury no matter how safe people say it is, but it mitigates a number of problems with using it in real life settings, and perhaps above all means people don't have to install cameras in their living room.
Its positional tracking in the literal sense, so it will pick up the positions regardless of movement.does inside out tracking allow for absolute positioning information, or just accurate movement tracking? i.e does it know that controller A is 2ft to the left and 4inches above controller B, or does it just know that controller A moved 2 inches forward?
Just that one of the impressions was that the positional tracking of the HTC controllers wasn't perfect when trying to pick something up.
Pretty sure that's not how it works. It's looking at the constellation on your walls for position - to avoid issues with occlusion.
PS Move works, because the PS knows exactly how big the ball is.
But a dot projected onto a wall at X distance, will be a different size.
Surely the occlusion problem can be solved by using a wavelength that passes through people/objects. I'm not sure on the health implications though.
I think you'd very quickly start to run into walls, unless its a very relaxed and leisurely experience that allows you to constantly remind yourself of reality. If you're engaged in the world, and honestly, in VR, you often will be(especially as it gets better and better), you're going to very quickly lose track of reality. Even if all you're doing is side stepping or dodging or turning, you'll end up moving around quite a bit. I think even in an open 15x15 space, which I would suspect only a small minority of people will actually have(especially to play a game in), you'll be hitting the boundaries quite a bit. We can easily cover a 2ft distance in a single step, and that's without being hyperactive due to adrenaline pumping or whatever! For me, in about a 5x9 useable area, it would be completely unfeasible. And I suspect many people's PC setups are not in big, open spaces. This is all speaking nothing of the cabling problems.
It would be cool to see stuff like this implemented as perhaps alternative controls, for those who do have the space, or maybe for things like a VR arcade or something, but I think most consumers will be better served by developing regular old seated or mostly stationary experiences for primary controls.
Is it just a one-time act, though? I mean, if you only ever do it once in a play session, its a one-time act. If its a regular mechanic, then you'll likely be doing it many times over the course of your session. There's no reason to think that it will necessarily balance out. It will all be dependent on the situation. Maybe you side step 6 times to the right and only 2 times to the left over the course of 10 minutes. That still leaves you 8ft to the right of where you were, which, if you started from the center, means you'd have reached the boundary at some point. Stepping forward, backwards, even turning involves a step and a bit of movement often enough, its all going to lead you all over the place as you play. Not immediately, but soon enough. And this all assumes you've got a full 15x15 area to work with, which most people probably wont.The most movement you'd do would be to sidestep or dodge. That's a one time act. You are not going to be side stepping in a straight line for 5 ft. and in all likelihood if you sidestepped one way to avoid something, you'll sidestep the other way the next time you need to avoid that thing. In fact game AI could be turned to make you do exactly that.
But a dot projected onto a wall at X distance, will be a different size.
Is it just a one-time act, though? I mean, if you only ever do it once in a play session, its a one-time act. If its a regular mechanic, then you'll likely be doing it many times over the course of your session. There's no reason to think that it will necessarily balance out. It will all be dependent on the situation. Maybe you side step 6 times to the right and only 2 times to the left over the course of 10 minutes. That still leaves you 8ft to the right of where you were, which, if you started from the center, means you'd have reached the boundary at some point. Stepping forward, backwards, even turning involves a step and a bit of movement often enough, its all going to lead you all over the place as you play. Not immediately, but soon enough. And this all assumes you've got a full 15x15 area to work with, which most people probably wont.
Redirection only works if you don't have a frame of reference. If you can see the barrier then that gives you that reference so you can walk directly away from it.And what happens when you do get to the boundary? You take a step away, but you're still only one step away from that boundary again. So you take multiple steps away. Well, by the same nature that allows for redirectional walking, are you really going straight the other way? Or are you also moving slightly forwards/backwards while doing it, in a slightly horizontal(seen from above) direction?
Your solution sounds interesting and I'd love to try it. I'm just not convinced it will be all that viable as a sort of standard movement scheme for people's home VR solutions. Especially with PC's still commonly the domain of bedrooms and offices and not the larger rooms of the house.
In regards to the effect of tricking your brain into thinking you're walking in a straight line when in actual fact you are walking in a curve, I wonder what other clever brain hacks could be used.
The rubber hand illusion shows how the brain can quickly be fooled into thinking that a fake rubber hand is actually your own. In VR it might be possible to induce the same effect as the video below by using vibration in the controller rather than a brush tickling your skin. Maybe at the start of a game, designers could have a virtual cell phone vibrate along wth the physical controller you are holding to induce the effect. Although I suppose the rumble of a machine gun would do the same thing.
Then when you see other objects like foliage brushing your virtual arm, it might feel real to you.
http://youtu.be/sxwn1w7MJvk
The fact that this can more or less hijack our walking is incredibly awesome. I have a DK2 and I'm fully aware of how completely and utterly it takes over your vision, but never thought of how it could take over everything else. I have noticed however that when playing Elite, if I look down at my hand, even though it's off by about 10 inches, my brain is still completely convinced that not only is that my hand that I'm looking at, but also that it's where my hand is.
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Another piece of the puzzle is complete. Hopefully after reading the OP people can understand what the Wii brought and how that tech has evolved to what Valve has today. Motion control is finally 1:1.
This is what Tactical Haptics reactive grip was trying to do. Their KS failed, but they are still working on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBB_OFMJ-Go
Haven't heard anything about them from GDC though.
Cool post, doesn't the Wii U gamepad have some sort of positioning sensor that uses magnetism and the earth or something?
What if the lasers hits your eyes?