In the early 90's, I met an inventor named "Barrett Haines" who showed off his patent (or application) on what looked like an "Iron Maiden" that worked with arrays of surface strain gauge sensors distributed throughout the interior of the enclosure.
It (the device) seemed comical at the time, but, it was explained to function in a near identical manner as what you've described. At that time (in VR history), an actual prototype wasn't practicable, nor existed, a system for the interface to drive in real-time.
Seemed weird and radical, at the time, and, I'm wondering IF I have any documentation about it or took video of his presentation in my unprocessed archives?
Wow fascinating! The (now expired) patent on this tech was written in 2000 at the start of Linden Lab. I'd love to read more about this one... and yeah, sounds like the same motivation I had, which was to build a 'headset' that somehow used regular CRT monitors.
I’ll bet there’s a lot of interesting work done in the adaptive tech space for quadriplegics with similar approaches to proprioceptive feedback… very interesting work.
When mimicking physical space and weights, I wonder if the body has the same response or not? Do users muscles (and neurons) grow with this kind of simulated use?
I’ve heard that visualization, and even dreaming can improve athletic performance, for instance.
Yes, 'visualization' improves performance and muscle strength through recruiting parallel nerve fibers for a test. Straining against a limit is a bit different tho, and I suspect will reveal other pros/cons if better tested.
The problem with VR, right now, seems not to be the hardware.
Even the graphics capability of the cheap Quest3 HMDs are good enough in terms of the displays, and they are borderline good as regards GPU capability. (and improving the GPU in terms of is compute and memory would not be difficult.)
We have immersion. (Though more could be better, yes :)
The problem is that although we already have tiny persistent spaces available for VR (1) there is little content (2) there is little agency in them (especially in terms of creation), and (3) there are no extensive+continuous environments that allow people to explore (spatially.)
These problems were solved by Philip, with SL.
Unfortunately, the era of VR and the heights of SL never overlapped.
And, sadly, the SL VR UI - that someone(?) created - never worked seamlessly, leaving much functionality unworkable.
This seems, to me, to be the biggest missed opportunity in all VR.
Creating within/for SL is easy, AND the system is amazingly powerful.
Horizon Worlds is _unbelievably_ backward in comparison. VR Chat is difficult to explore and to create for (and yet is still popular).
Bigscreen does not include creation, and consists of isolated rooms.
None of them have an economy.
I think the metaverse would be here, if only SL were fixed up, just a bit :)
With appreciation to Philip, for an amazing experience over many years with SL in the pre consumer-VR days.
"Your eyes get the visual feedback they expected, which feels very much like turning your head! And because your head isn’t actually moving at all, the secondary system your body uses - the vestibular system mentioned above - doesn’t report the slightly different version of the rotation that makes you sick."
Right. Except that the brain expects to get vestibular feedback. Preventing the user from moving does not shut down the vestibular sense, so the brain receives unexpected and controversial feedback. Even the position sensation is wrong unless the user is lying in VR also. The conflict between the senses remains—and becomes even worse. It will also lead to a conflict between the visual and proprioceptive signals.
Furthermore, other factors might cause cybersickness, such as the screen door effect, vergence accommodation conflict, the lack of gaze-contingent parallax, and even the optical features of the virtual reality environment. Also, instead of tracking and measuring the head movements, the system has to estimate the intended movement, which may not be precise. The group of 20 subjects is too small to evaluate how the idea will work for many users.
Wow. This is super cool. I could imagine a capsule (like the one in THE MATRIX), where people lie in "fixing gel". Electrodes on their bodies detect the intention to move (similar to those used in EEG). The image is provided by a VR headset, and the haptic feedback could perhaps be solved with ultrasound. It would be revolutionary if such a fully immersive VR system were built.
Philip very interesting no nausea not a small time deal as far as I'm concerned Bob
In the early 90's, I met an inventor named "Barrett Haines" who showed off his patent (or application) on what looked like an "Iron Maiden" that worked with arrays of surface strain gauge sensors distributed throughout the interior of the enclosure.
It (the device) seemed comical at the time, but, it was explained to function in a near identical manner as what you've described. At that time (in VR history), an actual prototype wasn't practicable, nor existed, a system for the interface to drive in real-time.
Seemed weird and radical, at the time, and, I'm wondering IF I have any documentation about it or took video of his presentation in my unprocessed archives?
Wow fascinating! The (now expired) patent on this tech was written in 2000 at the start of Linden Lab. I'd love to read more about this one... and yeah, sounds like the same motivation I had, which was to build a 'headset' that somehow used regular CRT monitors.
I’ll bet there’s a lot of interesting work done in the adaptive tech space for quadriplegics with similar approaches to proprioceptive feedback… very interesting work.
When mimicking physical space and weights, I wonder if the body has the same response or not? Do users muscles (and neurons) grow with this kind of simulated use?
I’ve heard that visualization, and even dreaming can improve athletic performance, for instance.
Really interesting work Philip
Yes, 'visualization' improves performance and muscle strength through recruiting parallel nerve fibers for a test. Straining against a limit is a bit different tho, and I suspect will reveal other pros/cons if better tested.
The problem with VR, right now, seems not to be the hardware.
Even the graphics capability of the cheap Quest3 HMDs are good enough in terms of the displays, and they are borderline good as regards GPU capability. (and improving the GPU in terms of is compute and memory would not be difficult.)
We have immersion. (Though more could be better, yes :)
The problem is that although we already have tiny persistent spaces available for VR (1) there is little content (2) there is little agency in them (especially in terms of creation), and (3) there are no extensive+continuous environments that allow people to explore (spatially.)
These problems were solved by Philip, with SL.
Unfortunately, the era of VR and the heights of SL never overlapped.
And, sadly, the SL VR UI - that someone(?) created - never worked seamlessly, leaving much functionality unworkable.
This seems, to me, to be the biggest missed opportunity in all VR.
Creating within/for SL is easy, AND the system is amazingly powerful.
Horizon Worlds is _unbelievably_ backward in comparison. VR Chat is difficult to explore and to create for (and yet is still popular).
Bigscreen does not include creation, and consists of isolated rooms.
None of them have an economy.
I think the metaverse would be here, if only SL were fixed up, just a bit :)
With appreciation to Philip, for an amazing experience over many years with SL in the pre consumer-VR days.
"Your eyes get the visual feedback they expected, which feels very much like turning your head! And because your head isn’t actually moving at all, the secondary system your body uses - the vestibular system mentioned above - doesn’t report the slightly different version of the rotation that makes you sick."
Right. Except that the brain expects to get vestibular feedback. Preventing the user from moving does not shut down the vestibular sense, so the brain receives unexpected and controversial feedback. Even the position sensation is wrong unless the user is lying in VR also. The conflict between the senses remains—and becomes even worse. It will also lead to a conflict between the visual and proprioceptive signals.
Furthermore, other factors might cause cybersickness, such as the screen door effect, vergence accommodation conflict, the lack of gaze-contingent parallax, and even the optical features of the virtual reality environment. Also, instead of tracking and measuring the head movements, the system has to estimate the intended movement, which may not be precise. The group of 20 subjects is too small to evaluate how the idea will work for many users.
It seems that if this worked correctly, anyone could have the safest and most realistic sex! That would be worth Billions!
Wow. This is super cool. I could imagine a capsule (like the one in THE MATRIX), where people lie in "fixing gel". Electrodes on their bodies detect the intention to move (similar to those used in EEG). The image is provided by a VR headset, and the haptic feedback could perhaps be solved with ultrasound. It would be revolutionary if such a fully immersive VR system were built.
yep, exactly!