December 4, 2013 • 44 mins
After so many bad incarnations over the years, is virtual reality dead? How does virtual reality potentially enhance a gameplay experience? What new innovations in VR are making the technology more attractive?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, Hi, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the show
that looks at the future and says, who can tell
what magic spells will be doing for us? I'm Lauren
(00:20):
voc Obam, and I'm Joe McCormick, and our host Jonathan
Strickland is out today because he was not feeling well. Yes,
we decided to allow him that. Yeah, but we hope
he is feeling better soon. And today we're going to
be recording without him, but he will be back next time. Yes,
And he is here very much in spirit with us.
Because Okay, so we're talking today about virtual reality. Virtual
(00:42):
reality that's the future if it's nine Yeah, according to
every single movie that came out during that entire decade, UM,
and also most of Star Trek the next generation, this
is all going to be virtual reality right here on out.
Just Max Headroom will rule us all. Yeah, Like you
were saying that Jonathan is with us in spirit, right,
(01:03):
because he wrote a couple of really great articles on
how stuff works that we have used to kind of
form the basis of our information here, um, and we
can we can link those out somewhere on the interwebs
that are easy to find. But I have never actually
used a virtual reality headset. But I hear Joe that
you have some experience with this. I have a couple
(01:24):
of times. I remember there was like a so I
was at a music festival sometime in the nineties when
I was a kid. Uh it was the Riverbend festival
in Chattanoo. Game and they had this tent there that
was like a traveling tent where they had virtual reality
set up. But I barely remember it. I just remember
I stood in line for a really long time, and
I think I got to play for like five minutes,
and it costs, you know, like all the money I had. Um.
(01:50):
I don't remember much about the experience except that it
went over my head and I was sitting in a
chair and I was using these controllers and and it
was like like a typical like game like soul controller
kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was fairly immersive. Also.
The other thing was I don't know if you remember
you remember the Virtual Boy. I do not personally, UM,
(02:10):
but I have read some really entertaining things about it
on the internet a k a. The Red Headache Machine. UM.
It was it's okay. Just imagine like one of those
things that the viewfinder the yeah, yeah, that the little
the little click aty things. Yet okay, so it's like
you strap one of those to your head, except it's
(02:31):
really big and it and it only shows you two colors,
black and red, and it causes migraines. And that sounds
like the best video game up. When when the Virtual
Boy came out, what I can't remember how old I was,
I was probably like I'm gonna guess, like seventh grade
or something. Um, And it came out. One of my
(02:51):
friends got one, and we all got together at his
house and we were like, well, we're gonna play this thing.
And the way it is at the time, like when
you're a little kid like you, you don't realize things
are bad. It's like, you know, everything is fun and
new and exciting, and even a kind of terrible experience
is like, oh man, why did I do that? It
was great? Yeah, Like I never realized there was such
thing as a bad movie. It's like I just saw
(03:13):
Operation Dumbo drop. It was great. Let's go see it again,
you know, and um, but yeah, I just thought this
thing was awesome. Meanwhile, we were like kids sitting there,
like just taking tile at all from the parents because
it was really painful to the eyes, and it was
just an awful experience of red paint the bridge of
(03:36):
your nose. Uh. The screens and these things were made
of L e d s, which was actually pretty impressive
at the time because most most video screens were being
made of l c ds liquid crystal displays, or they
were still cathode ray tubes. So so it was an
impressive technological feat. Um. But but the thing about red
(03:56):
L E d s, especially at the times that they
were it was made of this but because they were
so cheap and so bright, they were the brightest, cheapest
dilties that they could possibly make. And I don't think
that anyone thought to like install the dimmer switch in there.
They weren't. Really it wasn't This was a terrible, terrible
disaster for Nintendo, wasn't it. I think so? Well. I mean,
a couple of things to say about it. Number One,
(04:19):
it wasn't really virtual reality, wasn't. I mean, it depends
on how you define it. But actually let's refer to
Jonathan's definition in the article, because I think it's pretty good. Sure, sure,
He defines it from two points, the first being three
dimential images that appear to be life sized from the
perspective of the user. Okay, so it was kind of that,
(04:42):
I mean it was there was a lot of like
simulated three D based on these sort of red lattices
and stuff like that. Um. And but the other thing
is the ability to track the user's motions, particularly head
or eye movements, um and adjust the images on the
users display to reflect the change in perspective. And the
(05:02):
virtual boy was I mean essentially table mounted, wasn't it.
It sat on a stand like a tripod stand, and
you just put your face in you when you move around. Um.
I mean you'd move around when you get dizzy and
start falling out of the chair, but you didn't. It
wasn't supposed to be moving with you, and it wouldn't
follow you. Yeah. Yeah, you didn't strap it to your head. Okay.
(05:23):
So it was like it was a thing that a
lot of people were thinking of as virtual reality, but
it wasn't quite there. Um. What we're thinking about with
virtual reality is something that's a more natural experience, that
that stays with your face in a way, like you
you are having this experience and you're not going to
be able to just look away from it a right.
(05:45):
I think the kind of hope and dream is is
that star trek Holideck kind of thing where where you're
just immersed in a virtual environment and to the point
where you can interact with objects there and barely even
tell the fact that it's virtual. Yeah, um, hopefully, except
not with like the messy like every single time they
went to the holiday something completely terrible happened and that
moriarity took over the ship and whatever. So so without
(06:05):
without that part. Um. But historically speaking, this has been
in the works for for a really long time or
I mean, you know, a relatively long time since the
nineteen sixties anyway, And um okay, so so the very
first kind of example that we have of anything even
vaguely like this is um Morton Helligs or Helix I'm sorry.
(06:27):
Um Sinsarama, which was in nineteen sixty was a stereoscopic
um head mounted display that also involved like fans and
and and sent squirters and and stereo speakers and any
moving chair um, which overall sounds completely miserable to me personally,
although I've been on some rides at like Disney and
(06:48):
Universal Studios. That's seem a little bit similar. But I
can imagine that in nineteen sixty this wasn't actually an
extraordinarily pleasant experience. You know, in nineteen sixty there were
a lot of bad movies out there in gimmicks like
three d oh. Yeah, they could really pull you in.
And I guess this is just like the ultimate gimmick
for the sensory experience of the movie. And I'm picturing
(07:09):
like a film, probably not quite to the high quality
of Incident Price's work that that would have just just
been I don't know, like giant spiders. I'm not sure
what giant spiders smell like, but it was probably very particular.
They smell like watermelons. Actually really science fact not really.
(07:29):
Um now, okay, so so the first, um, the first
real head mounted display was created in nineteen sixty one
by phil Co Corporation. That was called the head Site.
And this was a video feed only. Yeah, head Site.
These names are only going to get more closed, um
And this was this was video it wasn't computer generated,
so so it was hooked up to a camera and
(07:51):
you could use it like in dangerous situations where you
want to send a camera instead of a person and
UM and people could use that camera to look around
or or if you hooked it up to and like
infrared camera feed on the bottom of a helicopter, the
pilot could use that to look around and figure out
what was going on. UM and UH. Later on in
the sixties, we started getting the concepts for what we
(08:16):
think of as being VR today and and that's that's
a computer generated image that is being fed through a
headset UM you know, hypothetically uh tethered to a you know,
tethered physically to a giant computer and hypothetically with some
kind of motion tracking in the headset. But he never
the guy creating this U Ivan Sutherland at the time,
(08:38):
did not come up with anything vaguely close to that
in in like physical prototype. I don't think it would
take another couple of decades and involvement from like NASA
and the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation
and the CIA before we started getting UM kind of
industrial use virtual reality stuff to help train astronauts for
(08:59):
spacewalks and uh a flight and vehicle sim kind of stuff.
And it wasn't until four that a guy named Michael
McGreevy started experimenting with using this kind of technology as
a computer interface, which is what we're really talking about
when we're talking about video games and and virtual reality,
which is kind of what we're going to move into
(09:20):
in the second half of this podcast. So uh so, yeah,
So it wasn't you know that that fascinates me that
we had had this kind of concept for a really
long time. It was never called virtual reality until after
all of that in seven when Jaren Lanier coined the term.
But but, and and and that's I think when the
media finally picked up on the fact that this existed.
(09:41):
And then all those all those horrible virtual reality movies.
What were some of them? We were talking right before
the podcast about virtuosity, which I hadn't even thought about
in decades. That was tiny, cheepy wrestle crow. Yeah, yeah,
he he plays when he's like a digital serial killer
(10:04):
and some police training module. He like escapes into the
real world, you know, struts around. I'll staying alive place
behind them. Of course he's gonna, I don't know, like
kill people with pixels. I don't remember what he did.
I do not I write. I think I've blocked this
to that just he just like walks up to you
and gives you the blue screen of death. Oh no, um,
(10:28):
it's strange days. I guess it's kind of similar to that.
I'm a much a much better version of virtual reality,
aside from the kind of terrible part of it. Um or,
I guess, well, it's into virtual memories. I don't know,
I'm not sure if that counts or not. I know,
there are a bunch of these movies. Of course, lawnmower Man,
I don't know. Oh yeah, yeah, lawnmower Man. You gotta
(10:49):
go with what a horrible movie. And sequels there was
there was at least one sequel to that involved. Well,
so the media and movies and everything really took this
concept of virtual reality and ran with it. And we're
still suffering from that today. The fact that this technology
just got horribly, horribly overhyped. Well, yeah, I mean because
(11:11):
the computer processing, we're still catching up to a point
where we can create a headset that's that's going to
be convincingly real looking from you know, and and hey,
computers have developed a lot in the past couple of decades,
and we're still kind of like almost there, but not quite. Yeah,
not to mention just graphics bect then we're terrible. And
(11:33):
and the expectation I think was immediately that it's going
to look like um, like high quality video or something
like that, We're just like real life. Uh. It was insanity.
And and then when people really got to experience what
we were talking about with through something like virtual Boy, yeah,
which is it wasn't even really virtual reality. I mean,
even if they did what I did and then went
(11:54):
to some tent where they had a virtual reality station
set up, it had to be massively dis pointing, like
it could not have competed with what you saw in
the movies and what you assumed when you heard some
news story about it or whatever. Um. And and so
I think virtual reality is uh still suffering from this.
(12:15):
It was this big calamity of over hype and underperformance
of the hardware and and just nothing really cool about it.
And now when you think of that, or at least
when I think of it, I just grown like like, oh,
don't even talk to me about virtual reality. So virtual
reality is dead, right, Oh yeah, totally dead. That's absolutely
(12:38):
why the Oculus rift raised two million, four hundred and
thirty seven thousand, four hundred and twenty nine dollars in
their Kickstarter campaign at the end of Big Surprise. Actually,
the cool thing is that while everybody was so over
virtual reality, it was actually getting good and okay. So
(12:59):
so Palmer luck Key is the guy who, um kind
of originally created the idea for the Oculus Rift. He
was working at the time with a virtual reality exposure
therapy program that helps veterans with PTSD. Yeah and um,
but but those are those are huge expensive machines, and
he was a hobbyist who kind of wanted something that
didn't cost you know, a thousand, five hundred dollars to
(13:21):
play with on his own. Um. He he really couldn't
find anything out there in the wild that was going
to be anything like that, so he decided to to
kind of start putting something like that together for himself,
and and it really captured the public's imagination. This this
stuff isn't out yet, but they've raised some like sixteen
million in private funding and all kinds of crazy stuff
because up until now, up to and including now, real
(13:44):
virtual reality systems are kind of these weird like like
glattos looking things, I mean, like like it's it's tethered
to a huge computer. It's usually a headset that's so
heavy and bulky that your your neck wood snap if
you tried to wear it and turn your head around.
So so it's it's on a suspension. Yeah, it's it's
really not It's really not cool or pretty or portable
(14:07):
or or inexpensive in any way. Um. You know though,
though these things do exist, like you know, I want
to I want to specify that that that's absolutely a
real thing. Um. But you know, why would why would
we want this for video gaming? Why would we want
to take this out of the laboratory, um and and
out of the kind of glado setting and and turn
(14:29):
it into a video game. Well I've got a theory
about that actually. Yeah. Um, so, I don't know if
you've read about the ideas of connecting video games with
the concept in positive psychology of flow. Have you heard
of this? Uh? Not really explained to me. Okay, So
flow is a really interesting concept and it comes from
this uh psychologist named and I hope I'm doing this
(14:53):
right me Hi chick sent me hi. Um it sounds
sounds good to me. Yeah, he ain't from around here.
Apologies if that's incorrect. Yeah, but he uh, so he
comes up with this idea that is, hey, there seems
to be this really really pleasurable state that people can
(15:15):
get themselves into. And you can sort of imagine it
if you imagine like an X Y graph. So you
look at it and you imagine the X axis is,
um a person's level of skill, Okay, okay, and then
you look at the Y axis and that is the
(15:35):
challenge of a task. Okay. This is actually a problem
that I have frequently when I play video games, because
I am I kind of want to get to the
next story point, but sometimes I get very frustrated with
the technical ability that it's it's making me perform in
button combinations and whatever. Yeah, well, in that case, that
game might not be optimized for flow for or at
(15:57):
least you might not be playing it at the right
difficulty or something like that. But um so there are
different regions of this graph, right if you can imagine
different tasks, Like if you're down here at the bottom
on both that that just seems like a really boring area,
like nothing's difficult and you're not good at anything, you know.
Um And meanwhile, if you if you go over, say
(16:20):
like you're doing something that is not very challenging, but
you're really good at it. Well, that can be easy,
but it's not super engaging, right, You're not really you're
you're not teasing your brain, you're not learning and growing. So, uh,
if you go say like really high on the Y
axis but not far on the X axis, that's like
a state of of of problems of nervousness and anxiety.
(16:41):
You're not adequate and you can't do what you need
to do. Um. So that's a really uncomfortable place to
be in. But imagine you're you're up at performing very
high on on both axis. You're doing something that is
at the peak of challenge and your peak of skill,
and so you're rocking out something that's really hard. Yeah,
a lot of people have phrased this is like getting
(17:04):
in the zone, you know, or or being on a role.
It's when you're fully engaged in a task that is
consuming all of your mind. You're putting yourself fully into it,
you're getting immediate feedback, and you're doing it well. Yeah.
And so a lot of people talk about flow in
other contexts, like say artistic work. Like if you're a
(17:27):
writer and you suddenly you get a burst of energy
and you're just writing and you're going you know, or
if you're a painter or a musician, I imagine like
if you're say a jazz guitar player and you're you're
improvising and you're having a you know, a great session
with some some other players. Um, you can be in
that zone where what you're doing is at the peak
(17:49):
of your skill and you're doing it very well and
you're fully immersed in it. But apparently your reason people
play video games is that video games are very good
at encouraging a state of flow where there's a task,
where the goals are clear. Um, it fully engages your attention,
it takes it's somewhat difficult, so it takes skill to
(18:12):
do it, and it's something that you can do yeah, yeah,
and so and it and it provides sort of like
a rhythm of rewards and feedback on your performance. It's
a steady incremental accomplishment. This is what makes video games
really fun. In my opinion, And I'm obviously I'm this
idea doesn't come from me. Other people suggested it, but
(18:34):
but I think I agree with it. Oh absolutely, I
think that's that's why they can get you know, pretty
pretty addicting sometimes, right. But so there are a couple
of problems with video games that that can interrupt this
experience of flow. One of them is um distraction. Okay,
so you know, if you're if you're playing on a
TV screen across the room, other things in the room
(18:55):
can get your attention enough if the dog walks in
front of the screen, or if um if if screen
quality is poor, and or if you're getting a reflection
of from it from a light behind, or just the
simple sort of ambient awareness that you're using a TV
across the room, you know what I mean, sure that
that you're not really in the terrible town of Silent Hill,
(19:16):
and that that well, I mean, in that case, actually
that would that's pretty pretty much good for me. I'm
fine with having that level of awareness. Yeah. And the
other thing is that you're aware of your tools, and
so you're aware that you're holding a controller at least
in some ambient sense. You're low level awareness of this.
You're manipulating buttons to do what you need to do,
(19:38):
but you're not moving that you're that you're manipulating something. Yeah,
it's not as it's not as natural as maybe say
like playing a sport where you're just using your body
in kind of like full immersed involvement in the task,
which for for most people in most situations is is
a very extremely fluid, very quick moving um electrical nervous
(19:59):
reaction that is about as good as we get at stuff. Yeah,
but wouldn't it be great if you could create some
kind of video game system that is a total limitation
on distractions so you have full sensory immersion in it
to take that distraction element out, and it engages your
body as directly as possible so that you're not aware
(20:21):
of the tools you're using to participate in this world. Okay,
when you put it that way, sign me up for
like lawn mower man stuff that sounds that sounds great,
exactly so, And I think that's sort of one of
the promises of virtual reality is that in some ways
it can help you lock into this state of even
deeper because of of those things that it limits your
(20:44):
awareness of the tools. If it's good, that's the big qualification.
Now I'd imagine that bad VR is actually even worse
than a normal video game because you're hyper aware of
the tools because they're making you nauseous. Excuse me, nause
ad nauseated? Yes, well, I mean they might make you
nauseous as well. If I don't know, somebody's watching you
(21:05):
smell really bad or something. I'm not sure. I'm not
sure how that would work out. But but do you
see what I'm saying there? Like, the virtual reality has
to be extremely good I think before these benefits start
to become manifest right. So okay, so so what are
we talking about when we're talking about VR VR equipment
being really good? Uh? I want to offer up one
(21:27):
thing that I think is one of the most important,
which is the low latency effect. So latency is it
shows up when so you imagine you're wearing a VR
headset and it is displaying to your eyes what you're
supposed to be looking at. And ideally what it should
do is track your head so that when you turn
your head, it's just as if you were turning your
head in real life. Right, it renders out the image
(21:49):
that's that's over to your right or over to your
left or above or whatever, so that as you move
hypothetically instantaneously or near instantaneously. But um, yeah, but the
problem is that this this is like massively process or
intensive right to track you like this, and that if
you move quickly, I mean just you're you're creating a
(22:10):
problem there that if you move your head too fast,
how's it going to keep up? Um, your eyes don't
really have a problem with this usually, but it can
be really unpleasant to wear a headset and you're supposed
to turn and you see frames dragging lagging behind. That
just gave me like physical shivers. That sounds so incredibly
(22:30):
not fun. I'm sure. Yeah, it's just headaches and nausea
and you want to take it off. So in order
to have a really good VR experience, you've got to
get that latency level down. And this is one of
the biggest hurdles, right because the human the human brain
actually processes things a little bit faster than we can
see than we tend to fill in blanks. Um really
(22:51):
before we get to to to the next thing, that's
that's in the corner of our vision. And uh and
and what it equals out too, is that that really
any anything more than a fifty millisecond difference in in
latency is going to be problematic. It's it's it's noticeable. Yeah. Um,
so I read an interesting article from this July from
(23:13):
the computer scientists and roboticist Steve Laval. Yeah, he's actually
one of the kids working with Occulus Rift right now. Yeah,
And so what he said is basically that sixty milliseconds
of latency is the considered the upper limit most of
the time, but that he himself notices a lag effect
when latency is greater than forty milliseconds um, and so
(23:37):
that's difficult. Uh. He actually he cites the work of
Michael A Brash. A Brash, I'm not sure how to
pronounce that. Ah, yeah, he works for he works for Valve.
I I think he might also be he's been involved
with Oculus a little bit, but I'm not sure if
he's actually on the team or not. Yeah, but a
Brash claims that VR developers really should aim for seven
(23:57):
to fifteen milliseconds just to be safe. Um, so where
are we today? Well, um, here's a here's a quote
from Laval's article. Basically, what he says is that a
game running at sixty frames uh four, game running at
sixty frames per second, the latency when using the Oculus
RIFTED development kit is typically in the range of thirty
milliseconds to fifty milliseconds um, including time for sensing, data
(24:21):
arrival over USB sinsor function, game simulation, rendering, and video output.
That's a lot of work and the computers having to do.
I mean that's not bad. I mean that's that's faster
than I can do those calculations personally, So I'm pretty impressed.
But um, And then he points out that, uh, basically
that other things can drive the latency up even more,
(24:43):
but still that latency is a lot better than it
used to be now. He also mentions the interesting innovation
of predictive tracking, which what that would do is it
would measure the angular acceleration of your head and it
would try to predict actually the next frame instead of
just waiting to see what you do and then showing
you start rendering out stuff that it suspects that you're
(25:06):
going to be looking at next, and so if you
start to turn your head, it says, well, you're probably
going to turn it about this far, and I know
that the next frame I should serve you is this um.
And so current algorithms can they can already predict like
forty two uh sorry, twenty to forty milliseconds into the
future with good accuracy. Um, and that could in theory
(25:26):
cut down on the perceived latency to the user to
less than twenty milliseconds, and that's really good. Yeah. Yeah,
But so the oculus rift is sort of where it's
at today in terms of VR technology, and they're basically
the only um you know, like I said, they're still
in development, but but the only proposed consumer level I
(25:46):
mean that they're pricing is looking at like something like
three dollars when it finally does come out of development,
which is nothing for for a virtual reality heads. Where
did they? Where did they come from? Like I just
became aware of them when suddenly they were a huge success. Okay,
So so this this fellow Palmer Lucky who I mentioned
a little bit earlier in the podcast, who's like twenty
(26:07):
or twenty one years old right now. UM, it's pretty annoying, right, UM. Actually,
I think I think he probably has because because he
was a huge VR hobbyist. UM went around the age
of like sixteen or so, he got really into virtual
reality equipment as a hobby and UM decided in to
(26:29):
launch a Kickstarter for a d I Y kit and
he was aiming to make like a hundred of these
things to be sold to other hobbyists. Um, but uh,
he got the attention through this of John Carmack, who
you know, who's the co founder of ID software, like
lead programmer on like Wolfenstein three D and Doom in
the Quake series, like kind of big important dude and
(26:49):
video games. Um and and and John Carmack asked for
a prototype, and Palmer Lucky was like, yes, please take
a prototype, sir, thank you. Um and Karmack just ran
with it. He demoed it with Doom three at three
and um it exploded in the press. Um. Valve got
ahold of a prototype as well, and Gabe Newell and
(27:11):
Michael A. Brash agreed to appear in the kickstarter video
because just everyone was so kind of enchanted and and
uh odd by the fact that that this kid was
putting this thing together. Um. So so yeah, you know,
we've we've talked a little bit about what it does
to solve some of the classic virtual reality problems. But um,
but the the headset itself is you know, it's a
(27:33):
it's a head mounted display. You can wear it. It's
it's light enough for a person to wear. It's got
these two LCD screens that that sit an inch or
so away from the user's eyes, and they render the
image out from slightly different angles. UM, and also kind
of put the images through this this warp filter around
the edges and then correct it partially with lenses that
are directly in the headset. And furthermore, uh, pack the
(27:58):
screens pixels more tightly in the center of view than
on the edges. And all of this really replicates the
you know, how human eyeballs, how round, imperfect, weird human
eyeballs see stuff. And and then yeah, and then you've
you've got the stuff that we were talking about. And
in these accelerometers that are detecting pitch yawn role and
(28:19):
they're furthermore and even cooler starting to work on gays tracking. UM,
so that so that not only the motion of your
head but also the motion of your eyes will help
this computer start to figure out where you're going to
look next and what it needs to render. So it's
in it's in development right now. UM. A lot of
people are playing around with it, and and it's it's exciting.
(28:41):
I'm I'm really you know, they still don't have a
release date, but uh, I think I think that that
even beyond video games, that could have some really wonderful applications. Yeah.
So okay, so the Oculus Rift kind of has a
lock on the VR headset market these days right now
there where it's at, and it's pretty from what I've
(29:03):
never used one, but I've read accounts online and I've
watched your videos of people using them, and it's hilarious
because they're just overwhelmed. Yeah, people say this thing is
really cool. Yeah yeah, I mean everyone, and it works.
Of course, it works best if you've got stereoscopic vision,
but um, but you can you can use it if
you if you only have one eye too. I mean,
(29:24):
it'll be a little bit flatter, and I've I've heard
that it's um, perhaps a little bit more potentially nauseating,
but but but not but not really discernibly, I mean
not so much that you've that the people who are
playing with it would have wanted to put it down. Um. Yeah, okay,
so we're kind of dealing with the first thing there
is that that sensory control, like total sensory immersion. Um.
(29:49):
And of course the sound has to be good too. Yeah,
but it's it's still working within existing game consoles. They're
they're really planning on releasing this as a peripheral to
work with any game console and so you know, you'd
be working with whatever controller that game at any particular
game has been designed for. So there's less of what's
(30:10):
called the merging of action and awareness with that, right,
because if you're still using these tools that you have
to be aware of as as tools and you're not
engaging your whole body in the same way, that that's
not quite that total level of immersion that we would
like to go for. It's not, although it will get
better when you start using, um using things like a
(30:32):
like a like a remote or um, you know what,
one of those wands or the connect. The connect could
be a terrific addition for this. Yeah. Or if you
if you go with like the nineties movies, you've probably
got like gloves, right, like VR gloves. You just put
these things on. They look like like chain mail or something,
and I mean one can only hope that they're like
covered in like in like fox skeleton bones or something.
(30:54):
They give you a virtual Freddy Krueger hands whatever it is. Um. Yeah, Okay,
so there's that option, And but I want to talk
about something that I think is really ambitious and cool,
which is total body movement virtual reality. Okay, so how
does how does this work? Well? Uh, the first one
I want to throw out there, I'm not really going
to talk about this much, but the Virtue Spear, which
(31:15):
is essentially a VR hamster ball. It's a big sphere
you go inside and you run like a hamster and
there you go, and you're and you're wearing like big
clunky goggles and and I all of the photos that
I've seen of this thing, it does not help that
the that the very nice um uh participant using it was,
you know, like some nice gentleman from the early eighties
(31:39):
with like a terrible mustache, and and it's I'm just
it doesn't really look sexy, is all I'm saying. Okay, Well,
another option one that actually this is also caught on
on Kickstarter VR treadmills, like the Virtue x Omni VR
treadmill VR treadmills. I'm picturing something like a like like
that run zombies and kind of app except except on
(32:02):
a treadmill and you can see the zombies. Well it's
not like a straight treadmill. Actually, these are omnidirectional treadmill.
So what it is is It's like, imagine you're kind
of in this weird cylinder thing that's got a rail
on it to keep you from falling out, and then
you wear special shoes that interact with the floor of
the treadmill and basically you walk. You slide as you walk,
(32:24):
so you're you're walking, You're using your whole body on this,
but the apparatus keeps you in place as you go. Um,
and this allows you to use your legs to move
throughout a game environment. I have some pies of it
where people are running through playing some first person shooter
and their movement in the game is based on the running,
which is amazing to me because, boy, you can get
(32:46):
some exercise this way. Yeah. I was about to say
that's a little bit terrifying for me personally, because I'm like,
I would be really bad at Halo if I had
to run, or maybe you just be better at running.
Maybe I would be better at running, but it probably
wouldn't be exactly the same as like actual running, but
you'd still be like engaging your muscles in one way
or another, even if it's kind of a natural. But um,
(33:08):
obviously what you'd be going for is the most fluid
and natural experience possible to try to get this thing
yet again, to to make you less aware of the
tools you're using, to sort of engage your body naturally,
to make you feel at one with the task you're doing. Sure, okay,
do they have anything that's approaching that that star trek
holidect of of just being able to move around in
(33:29):
a free space. Well, there is the Oh, there's the
Cave thing, the Cave program, right right, Yeah, okay, So
so the University of Illinois and Chicago designed this UM.
This it's a CAVE stands for Cave Automatic Virtual Environments UM,
which is also abbreviated to CAVE. I'm not really sure
why cave isn't the title, and that's the anyway, UM,
(33:49):
it's a it's it's a room that uses rear projection
tech to project on on all six surfaces that the
floor of the ceiling, in the four walls, and so
you can hypothetically, i mean, especially now that we've got
fancy um uh, you know, infrared motion tracking kind of
connect sort of stuff. You can you can track a
(34:10):
person's motion in the room, and if you've got really
good computers hooked up to it, let them look around
a virtual environment. But that's still I mean that's not
really immersive. I mean it's on a wall. I think
that probably at a certain point it's not fooling you
a whole lot. Yeah it sounds cool. Oh yeah, no,
totally cool. I mean, if anyone wants to invite me
to come over and play with their incredibly expensive your
(34:33):
projection room, then I'll do that. Yeah. How about Project
holid Deck. Have you heard about that? I have not.
What's that about? Well? Okay, so Project Holidayck is Uh,
it's this virtual reality project set up out of the
USC Games program. Okay, and basically what they're going for
is three D full body virtual reality. Alright. UM, so
imagine to set up like this, You've got this place
(34:56):
space area, so it's a flat floor area, and you've
got players within it, and what they wear is a
headset and that would be an Oculus Rift that's what
they use. Um. They also use a PlayStation move to
provide head tracking data to interface with the headset. Uh.
They use PlayStation eye cameras to track movement of the
(35:18):
PlayStation move wand within the play space. Uh. And then
they've got hand controllers, which are the six sense razor
Hydras and then what you do is you become an autonomous,
free moving agent within a virtual space while you move
about in an actual space. Alright, So so depending on
(35:39):
the size of the room, that's going to limit the
type of game that you can play. Yeah, well it's
mostly it's going to be limited by the field of
the tracking cameras that you're using to keep track of
your position. But so the way I saw this working
was it was a couple of guys and they were
um playing a game in this space, but what was
(36:01):
going on in the screen was they were playing game
where they were manning the battle stations of a virtual airship. Yeah,
so they're on this airship and to say they're like cannons,
and then you've got to run over here and say,
you've got like a you're sort of like a swashbuckler.
So you've got maybe like a pistol and a sword,
and you use these wands to control those things. But
(36:22):
you also moved to the stations and you are moving
about freely. And what it and the game actually the
hardware tracks your movement in the real world and takes
you from station to station wherever you go, and so
your movement in the real world is mirrored by your
movement in the game, So that's pretty cool. But the
point you bring up is a good one. The space
(36:42):
is limited, so it doesn't mean you can run around anywhere.
You'll notice, like the the way that game is structured,
it's like you're on the deck of an airship, so
it sort of limits. Like it's sort of like those
old rail shooter games. Kids. Yeah, you're you're not gonna
you're not gonna be able to set a game up
like that and and have um, you know, you can't
(37:02):
play Madden and that experience or I mean it or
it would be a really short game of can't keep running, right,
But you know, if if you're exploring a house, um,
then you could totally do that in that kind of environment.
Oh yeah, now I could. I imagine you could move
sort of room to room with this if you just
suspend disbelief for a moment, like you moved to the
(37:23):
edge and it's like you're in this room. Yeah, and
then you'd have freedom of movement within that room. Still,
I think that's really cool. What they're going for is
that you know, you are a self contained, moving entity
in this virtual world. And you're really moving. Yeah. I
like it. I like the idea, and I like where
they're going with it. Um. So, so where where else
(37:44):
do we think this is going? I mean, well, I
have a question about so. Obviously, I think the cool
thing is that virtual reality is actually getting good now,
right that we have the computer processing power and furthermore,
just the like the clear public interest. Yeah. Um, and
so that's novel, you know, it's not just type. It's
actually I think now like the media sort of under
(38:06):
hyping it because they've been burned, but the horrible VR
hype of the nineties. Uh, and they might not even
be realizing how cool the oculus rift is and and
all this stuff like that and all its potential. Um.
But I do have a question like is this sort
of thing really going to show up in the average
gamers home. I mean, you might go out and buy
(38:27):
a PlayStation or an Xbox or a we um, but
are you really going to buy VR hardware for your house? Especially?
I wonder that if if you're you're trying to incorporate
full body movement, say with like an omnidirectional treadmill or
an open space sort of three D free play zone,
I don't know how that's going to fit in most
(38:47):
people's houses or within their budget. Sure, yeah, well, I mean,
you know, they're they're talking about the Oculus Rift being
a three piece of hardware, but that's not taking into
consideration that, um, the game develop it meant for that
kind of thing is probably going to knock the price
of games up. Um. So you know, and and games
are already what like six seventy bucks a pop. Uh,
(39:08):
And so I would say that that's probably going to
be something for more hardcore gamers and the hobbyists who
are particularly interested in it, not for the common player yet.
Or I had another interesting idea this may well you
will judge if it's interesting. I can't say. Um and
interesting to me? What if we saw a revival in
(39:31):
the arcade culture because of virtual reality. I mean, arcades
used to be a cool You'd go there, you'd play
the big, you know, huge sure sure games that you
couldn't get a hold of or couldn't afford. You know,
you could put up a quarter on the machine, but
you weren't gonna be able to to go get your own.
Yeah whatever, there's not really much of that left today.
(39:51):
If there is it's it's mostly a kind of I
think nostalgic or retro or or something so so outlandish,
like a like they never really got Dance Dance Revolution
up to a point where it was very playable at home,
so right, so something niche like that. Yeah, I can
imagine VR arcades becoming a thing. Like you and your
(40:11):
friends go out, you pay, you split the tab for
two hours of VR space time, and you do something
like this. You you say, you play with the group
in a free play zone with total body movement, or
you each get to use your your VR treadmills, and
you know, you like you combine your your exercise time
with your friends, you know, with your shoot him up
(40:32):
time with whatever it is you're playing. I mean, I
still very occasionally go out to laser tags, So I
can totally see that, see that becoming a thing. Um So,
I don't know, I think that that actually be kind
of cool, that that idea seems fun to me. Yeah.
And and either way, you know, whether whether this really
picks up as as a video game movement or not,
the fact that I mean this this has tremendous applications
(40:55):
and in medicine and industry. Um, Yeah, we haven't even
talked about like the real stuff you can do with
VR that's not just games. Yeah, because I mean, this
is a terrific toy, but I mean, you know, it's
it's like we're talking about earlier. NASA has been using
virtual reality to train its astronauts on space walks for
for a couple of decades, because I mean, as much
(41:16):
as you can put someone in a space suit underwater,
there's really only so much of of of the realism
of space that you can transmit through that kind of experience.
Um And also on the I talked about UM that
psychological therapy UH center that that Palmer Lucky you worked in,
where you know you can you can genuinely help people
who've got um you know, some some kind of major
(41:38):
fear about something get over that. And that's that's wonderful.
Um Or training training doctors for for surgery something like that,
if if they can, if they feel like they're working
on a patient, but they don't have to actually experiment
on a patient, then that's pretty cool. Um Or. You know,
I've been reading some things about some industrial applications, like
(42:00):
you know, if you if you create a virtual model
of a car or a building. Then you can you
can walk around and it see how it's functioning. See um,
see whether it's working or not without having to actually
build something really expensive and potentially full of fail Yeah
in architecture, I guess sure. Yeah yeah or um. Cannon
(42:22):
actually put out a industry level virtual reality augmented reality
headset this year that has like a hundred dollar price tag,
but is pretty useful for for people who want to
get that that sense of how an object works in
virtual space without having to you know, so that so
that you can just create the computer model of it
and get a really good look at it without having
(42:44):
to to build it first. That's awesome. Yeah, okay, yeah,
well I think that just about wraps us up for today. Uh.
I have enjoyed talking about virtual reality number one because
of how horrible it was, and number two, how big
of an upset this is that it's finally cool. Yeah
that that that's when something has been that far down,
(43:04):
it's it's even more beautiful when it comes this far up.
I really want to use an Oculus rift. I haven't
an I would love to get that opportunity. So hey,
if y'all are listening, hook me up. Find me put
face any out there, anyone out there who's a developer,
let us know. Okay, well that does it for today. UM.
If you all want to read more, you can go
(43:26):
to f w thinking dot com where we've got videos, podcasts,
blog posts. You can also check us out on social
media on Facebook and Twitter. UM. We look forward to
hearing from you and we will talk to you again
in the future. For more on this topic in the
future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to
(43:59):
you by two Toyota Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, Hi, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the show
that looks at the future and says, who can tell
what magic spells will be doing for us? I'm Lauren
(00:20):
voc Obam, and I'm Joe McCormick, and our host Jonathan
Strickland is out today because he was not feeling well. Yes,
we decided to allow him that. Yeah, but we hope
he is feeling better soon. And today we're going to
be recording without him, but he will be back next time. Yes,
And he is here very much in spirit with us.
Because Okay, so we're talking today about virtual reality. Virtual
(00:42):
reality that's the future if it's nine Yeah, according to
every single movie that came out during that entire decade, UM,
and also most of Star Trek the next generation, this
is all going to be virtual reality right here on out.
Just Max Headroom will rule us all. Yeah, Like you
were saying that Jonathan is with us in spirit, right,
(01:03):
because he wrote a couple of really great articles on
how stuff works that we have used to kind of
form the basis of our information here, um, and we
can we can link those out somewhere on the interwebs
that are easy to find. But I have never actually
used a virtual reality headset. But I hear Joe that
you have some experience with this. I have a couple
(01:24):
of times. I remember there was like a so I
was at a music festival sometime in the nineties when
I was a kid. Uh it was the Riverbend festival
in Chattanoo. Game and they had this tent there that
was like a traveling tent where they had virtual reality
set up. But I barely remember it. I just remember
I stood in line for a really long time, and
I think I got to play for like five minutes,
and it costs, you know, like all the money I had. Um.
(01:50):
I don't remember much about the experience except that it
went over my head and I was sitting in a
chair and I was using these controllers and and it
was like like a typical like game like soul controller
kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was fairly immersive. Also.
The other thing was I don't know if you remember
you remember the Virtual Boy. I do not personally, UM,
(02:10):
but I have read some really entertaining things about it
on the internet a k a. The Red Headache Machine. UM.
It was it's okay. Just imagine like one of those
things that the viewfinder the yeah, yeah, that the little
the little click aty things. Yet okay, so it's like
you strap one of those to your head, except it's
(02:31):
really big and it and it only shows you two colors,
black and red, and it causes migraines. And that sounds
like the best video game up. When when the Virtual
Boy came out, what I can't remember how old I was,
I was probably like I'm gonna guess, like seventh grade
or something. Um, And it came out. One of my
(02:51):
friends got one, and we all got together at his
house and we were like, well, we're gonna play this thing.
And the way it is at the time, like when
you're a little kid like you, you don't realize things
are bad. It's like, you know, everything is fun and
new and exciting, and even a kind of terrible experience
is like, oh man, why did I do that? It
was great? Yeah, Like I never realized there was such
thing as a bad movie. It's like I just saw
(03:13):
Operation Dumbo drop. It was great. Let's go see it again,
you know, and um, but yeah, I just thought this
thing was awesome. Meanwhile, we were like kids sitting there,
like just taking tile at all from the parents because
it was really painful to the eyes, and it was
just an awful experience of red paint the bridge of
(03:36):
your nose. Uh. The screens and these things were made
of L e d s, which was actually pretty impressive
at the time because most most video screens were being
made of l c ds liquid crystal displays, or they
were still cathode ray tubes. So so it was an
impressive technological feat. Um. But but the thing about red
(03:56):
L E d s, especially at the times that they
were it was made of this but because they were
so cheap and so bright, they were the brightest, cheapest
dilties that they could possibly make. And I don't think
that anyone thought to like install the dimmer switch in there.
They weren't. Really it wasn't This was a terrible, terrible
disaster for Nintendo, wasn't it. I think so? Well. I mean,
a couple of things to say about it. Number One,
(04:19):
it wasn't really virtual reality, wasn't. I mean, it depends
on how you define it. But actually let's refer to
Jonathan's definition in the article, because I think it's pretty good. Sure, sure,
He defines it from two points, the first being three
dimential images that appear to be life sized from the
perspective of the user. Okay, so it was kind of that,
(04:42):
I mean it was there was a lot of like
simulated three D based on these sort of red lattices
and stuff like that. Um. And but the other thing
is the ability to track the user's motions, particularly head
or eye movements, um and adjust the images on the
users display to reflect the change in perspective. And the
(05:02):
virtual boy was I mean essentially table mounted, wasn't it.
It sat on a stand like a tripod stand, and
you just put your face in you when you move around. Um.
I mean you'd move around when you get dizzy and
start falling out of the chair, but you didn't. It
wasn't supposed to be moving with you, and it wouldn't
follow you. Yeah. Yeah, you didn't strap it to your head. Okay.
(05:23):
So it was like it was a thing that a
lot of people were thinking of as virtual reality, but
it wasn't quite there. Um. What we're thinking about with
virtual reality is something that's a more natural experience, that
that stays with your face in a way, like you
you are having this experience and you're not going to
be able to just look away from it a right.
(05:45):
I think the kind of hope and dream is is
that star trek Holideck kind of thing where where you're
just immersed in a virtual environment and to the point
where you can interact with objects there and barely even
tell the fact that it's virtual. Yeah, um, hopefully, except
not with like the messy like every single time they
went to the holiday something completely terrible happened and that
moriarity took over the ship and whatever. So so without
(06:05):
without that part. Um. But historically speaking, this has been
in the works for for a really long time or
I mean, you know, a relatively long time since the
nineteen sixties anyway, And um okay, so so the very
first kind of example that we have of anything even
vaguely like this is um Morton Helligs or Helix I'm sorry.
(06:27):
Um Sinsarama, which was in nineteen sixty was a stereoscopic
um head mounted display that also involved like fans and
and and sent squirters and and stereo speakers and any
moving chair um, which overall sounds completely miserable to me personally,
although I've been on some rides at like Disney and
(06:48):
Universal Studios. That's seem a little bit similar. But I
can imagine that in nineteen sixty this wasn't actually an
extraordinarily pleasant experience. You know, in nineteen sixty there were
a lot of bad movies out there in gimmicks like
three d oh. Yeah, they could really pull you in.
And I guess this is just like the ultimate gimmick
for the sensory experience of the movie. And I'm picturing
(07:09):
like a film, probably not quite to the high quality
of Incident Price's work that that would have just just
been I don't know, like giant spiders. I'm not sure
what giant spiders smell like, but it was probably very particular.
They smell like watermelons. Actually really science fact not really.
(07:29):
Um now, okay, so so the first, um, the first
real head mounted display was created in nineteen sixty one
by phil Co Corporation. That was called the head Site.
And this was a video feed only. Yeah, head Site.
These names are only going to get more closed, um
And this was this was video it wasn't computer generated,
so so it was hooked up to a camera and
(07:51):
you could use it like in dangerous situations where you
want to send a camera instead of a person and
UM and people could use that camera to look around
or or if you hooked it up to and like
infrared camera feed on the bottom of a helicopter, the
pilot could use that to look around and figure out
what was going on. UM and UH. Later on in
the sixties, we started getting the concepts for what we
(08:16):
think of as being VR today and and that's that's
a computer generated image that is being fed through a
headset UM you know, hypothetically uh tethered to a you know,
tethered physically to a giant computer and hypothetically with some
kind of motion tracking in the headset. But he never
the guy creating this U Ivan Sutherland at the time,
(08:38):
did not come up with anything vaguely close to that
in in like physical prototype. I don't think it would
take another couple of decades and involvement from like NASA
and the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation
and the CIA before we started getting UM kind of
industrial use virtual reality stuff to help train astronauts for
(08:59):
spacewalks and uh a flight and vehicle sim kind of stuff.
And it wasn't until four that a guy named Michael
McGreevy started experimenting with using this kind of technology as
a computer interface, which is what we're really talking about
when we're talking about video games and and virtual reality,
which is kind of what we're going to move into
(09:20):
in the second half of this podcast. So uh so, yeah,
So it wasn't you know that that fascinates me that
we had had this kind of concept for a really
long time. It was never called virtual reality until after
all of that in seven when Jaren Lanier coined the term.
But but, and and and that's I think when the
media finally picked up on the fact that this existed.
(09:41):
And then all those all those horrible virtual reality movies.
What were some of them? We were talking right before
the podcast about virtuosity, which I hadn't even thought about
in decades. That was tiny, cheepy wrestle crow. Yeah, yeah,
he he plays when he's like a digital serial killer
(10:04):
and some police training module. He like escapes into the
real world, you know, struts around. I'll staying alive place
behind them. Of course he's gonna, I don't know, like
kill people with pixels. I don't remember what he did.
I do not I write. I think I've blocked this
to that just he just like walks up to you
and gives you the blue screen of death. Oh no, um,
(10:28):
it's strange days. I guess it's kind of similar to that.
I'm a much a much better version of virtual reality,
aside from the kind of terrible part of it. Um or,
I guess, well, it's into virtual memories. I don't know,
I'm not sure if that counts or not. I know,
there are a bunch of these movies. Of course, lawnmower Man,
I don't know. Oh yeah, yeah, lawnmower Man. You gotta
(10:49):
go with what a horrible movie. And sequels there was
there was at least one sequel to that involved. Well,
so the media and movies and everything really took this
concept of virtual reality and ran with it. And we're
still suffering from that today. The fact that this technology
just got horribly, horribly overhyped. Well, yeah, I mean because
(11:11):
the computer processing, we're still catching up to a point
where we can create a headset that's that's going to
be convincingly real looking from you know, and and hey,
computers have developed a lot in the past couple of decades,
and we're still kind of like almost there, but not quite. Yeah,
not to mention just graphics bect then we're terrible. And
(11:33):
and the expectation I think was immediately that it's going
to look like um, like high quality video or something
like that, We're just like real life. Uh. It was insanity.
And and then when people really got to experience what
we were talking about with through something like virtual Boy, yeah,
which is it wasn't even really virtual reality. I mean,
even if they did what I did and then went
(11:54):
to some tent where they had a virtual reality station
set up, it had to be massively dis pointing, like
it could not have competed with what you saw in
the movies and what you assumed when you heard some
news story about it or whatever. Um. And and so
I think virtual reality is uh still suffering from this.
(12:15):
It was this big calamity of over hype and underperformance
of the hardware and and just nothing really cool about it.
And now when you think of that, or at least
when I think of it, I just grown like like, oh,
don't even talk to me about virtual reality. So virtual
reality is dead, right, Oh yeah, totally dead. That's absolutely
(12:38):
why the Oculus rift raised two million, four hundred and
thirty seven thousand, four hundred and twenty nine dollars in
their Kickstarter campaign at the end of Big Surprise. Actually,
the cool thing is that while everybody was so over
virtual reality, it was actually getting good and okay. So
(12:59):
so Palmer luck Key is the guy who, um kind
of originally created the idea for the Oculus Rift. He
was working at the time with a virtual reality exposure
therapy program that helps veterans with PTSD. Yeah and um,
but but those are those are huge expensive machines, and
he was a hobbyist who kind of wanted something that
didn't cost you know, a thousand, five hundred dollars to
(13:21):
play with on his own. Um. He he really couldn't
find anything out there in the wild that was going
to be anything like that, so he decided to to
kind of start putting something like that together for himself,
and and it really captured the public's imagination. This this
stuff isn't out yet, but they've raised some like sixteen
million in private funding and all kinds of crazy stuff
because up until now, up to and including now, real
(13:44):
virtual reality systems are kind of these weird like like
glattos looking things, I mean, like like it's it's tethered
to a huge computer. It's usually a headset that's so
heavy and bulky that your your neck wood snap if
you tried to wear it and turn your head around.
So so it's it's on a suspension. Yeah, it's it's
really not It's really not cool or pretty or portable
(14:07):
or or inexpensive in any way. Um. You know though,
though these things do exist, like you know, I want
to I want to specify that that that's absolutely a
real thing. Um. But you know, why would why would
we want this for video gaming? Why would we want
to take this out of the laboratory, um and and
out of the kind of glado setting and and turn
(14:29):
it into a video game. Well I've got a theory
about that actually. Yeah. Um, so, I don't know if
you've read about the ideas of connecting video games with
the concept in positive psychology of flow. Have you heard
of this? Uh? Not really explained to me. Okay, So
flow is a really interesting concept and it comes from
this uh psychologist named and I hope I'm doing this
(14:53):
right me Hi chick sent me hi. Um it sounds
sounds good to me. Yeah, he ain't from around here.
Apologies if that's incorrect. Yeah, but he uh, so he
comes up with this idea that is, hey, there seems
to be this really really pleasurable state that people can
(15:15):
get themselves into. And you can sort of imagine it
if you imagine like an X Y graph. So you
look at it and you imagine the X axis is,
um a person's level of skill, Okay, okay, and then
you look at the Y axis and that is the
(15:35):
challenge of a task. Okay. This is actually a problem
that I have frequently when I play video games, because
I am I kind of want to get to the
next story point, but sometimes I get very frustrated with
the technical ability that it's it's making me perform in
button combinations and whatever. Yeah, well, in that case, that
game might not be optimized for flow for or at
(15:57):
least you might not be playing it at the right
difficulty or something like that. But um so there are
different regions of this graph, right if you can imagine
different tasks, Like if you're down here at the bottom
on both that that just seems like a really boring area,
like nothing's difficult and you're not good at anything, you know.
Um And meanwhile, if you if you go over, say
(16:20):
like you're doing something that is not very challenging, but
you're really good at it. Well, that can be easy,
but it's not super engaging, right, You're not really you're
you're not teasing your brain, you're not learning and growing. So, uh,
if you go say like really high on the Y
axis but not far on the X axis, that's like
a state of of of problems of nervousness and anxiety.
(16:41):
You're not adequate and you can't do what you need
to do. Um. So that's a really uncomfortable place to
be in. But imagine you're you're up at performing very
high on on both axis. You're doing something that is
at the peak of challenge and your peak of skill,
and so you're rocking out something that's really hard. Yeah,
a lot of people have phrased this is like getting
(17:04):
in the zone, you know, or or being on a role.
It's when you're fully engaged in a task that is
consuming all of your mind. You're putting yourself fully into it,
you're getting immediate feedback, and you're doing it well. Yeah.
And so a lot of people talk about flow in
other contexts, like say artistic work. Like if you're a
(17:27):
writer and you suddenly you get a burst of energy
and you're just writing and you're going you know, or
if you're a painter or a musician, I imagine like
if you're say a jazz guitar player and you're you're
improvising and you're having a you know, a great session
with some some other players. Um, you can be in
that zone where what you're doing is at the peak
(17:49):
of your skill and you're doing it very well and
you're fully immersed in it. But apparently your reason people
play video games is that video games are very good
at encouraging a state of flow where there's a task,
where the goals are clear. Um, it fully engages your attention,
it takes it's somewhat difficult, so it takes skill to
(18:12):
do it, and it's something that you can do yeah, yeah,
and so and it and it provides sort of like
a rhythm of rewards and feedback on your performance. It's
a steady incremental accomplishment. This is what makes video games
really fun. In my opinion, And I'm obviously I'm this
idea doesn't come from me. Other people suggested it, but
(18:34):
but I think I agree with it. Oh absolutely, I
think that's that's why they can get you know, pretty
pretty addicting sometimes, right. But so there are a couple
of problems with video games that that can interrupt this
experience of flow. One of them is um distraction. Okay,
so you know, if you're if you're playing on a
TV screen across the room, other things in the room
(18:55):
can get your attention enough if the dog walks in
front of the screen, or if um if if screen
quality is poor, and or if you're getting a reflection
of from it from a light behind, or just the
simple sort of ambient awareness that you're using a TV
across the room, you know what I mean, sure that
that you're not really in the terrible town of Silent Hill,
(19:16):
and that that well, I mean, in that case, actually
that would that's pretty pretty much good for me. I'm
fine with having that level of awareness. Yeah. And the
other thing is that you're aware of your tools, and
so you're aware that you're holding a controller at least
in some ambient sense. You're low level awareness of this.
You're manipulating buttons to do what you need to do,
(19:38):
but you're not moving that you're that you're manipulating something. Yeah,
it's not as it's not as natural as maybe say
like playing a sport where you're just using your body
in kind of like full immersed involvement in the task,
which for for most people in most situations is is
a very extremely fluid, very quick moving um electrical nervous
(19:59):
reaction that is about as good as we get at stuff. Yeah,
but wouldn't it be great if you could create some
kind of video game system that is a total limitation
on distractions so you have full sensory immersion in it
to take that distraction element out, and it engages your
body as directly as possible so that you're not aware
(20:21):
of the tools you're using to participate in this world. Okay,
when you put it that way, sign me up for
like lawn mower man stuff that sounds that sounds great,
exactly so, And I think that's sort of one of
the promises of virtual reality is that in some ways
it can help you lock into this state of even
deeper because of of those things that it limits your
(20:44):
awareness of the tools. If it's good, that's the big qualification.
Now I'd imagine that bad VR is actually even worse
than a normal video game because you're hyper aware of
the tools because they're making you nauseous. Excuse me, nause
ad nauseated? Yes, well, I mean they might make you
nauseous as well. If I don't know, somebody's watching you
(21:05):
smell really bad or something. I'm not sure. I'm not
sure how that would work out. But but do you
see what I'm saying there? Like, the virtual reality has
to be extremely good I think before these benefits start
to become manifest right. So okay, so so what are
we talking about when we're talking about VR VR equipment
being really good? Uh? I want to offer up one
(21:27):
thing that I think is one of the most important,
which is the low latency effect. So latency is it
shows up when so you imagine you're wearing a VR
headset and it is displaying to your eyes what you're
supposed to be looking at. And ideally what it should
do is track your head so that when you turn
your head, it's just as if you were turning your
head in real life. Right, it renders out the image
(21:49):
that's that's over to your right or over to your
left or above or whatever, so that as you move
hypothetically instantaneously or near instantaneously. But um, yeah, but the
problem is that this this is like massively process or
intensive right to track you like this, and that if
you move quickly, I mean just you're you're creating a
(22:10):
problem there that if you move your head too fast,
how's it going to keep up? Um, your eyes don't
really have a problem with this usually, but it can
be really unpleasant to wear a headset and you're supposed
to turn and you see frames dragging lagging behind. That
just gave me like physical shivers. That sounds so incredibly
(22:30):
not fun. I'm sure. Yeah, it's just headaches and nausea
and you want to take it off. So in order
to have a really good VR experience, you've got to
get that latency level down. And this is one of
the biggest hurdles, right because the human the human brain
actually processes things a little bit faster than we can
see than we tend to fill in blanks. Um really
(22:51):
before we get to to to the next thing, that's
that's in the corner of our vision. And uh and
and what it equals out too, is that that really
any anything more than a fifty millisecond difference in in
latency is going to be problematic. It's it's it's noticeable. Yeah. Um,
so I read an interesting article from this July from
(23:13):
the computer scientists and roboticist Steve Laval. Yeah, he's actually
one of the kids working with Occulus Rift right now. Yeah,
And so what he said is basically that sixty milliseconds
of latency is the considered the upper limit most of
the time, but that he himself notices a lag effect
when latency is greater than forty milliseconds um, and so
(23:37):
that's difficult. Uh. He actually he cites the work of
Michael A Brash. A Brash, I'm not sure how to
pronounce that. Ah, yeah, he works for he works for Valve.
I I think he might also be he's been involved
with Oculus a little bit, but I'm not sure if
he's actually on the team or not. Yeah, but a
Brash claims that VR developers really should aim for seven
(23:57):
to fifteen milliseconds just to be safe. Um, so where
are we today? Well, um, here's a here's a quote
from Laval's article. Basically, what he says is that a
game running at sixty frames uh four, game running at
sixty frames per second, the latency when using the Oculus
RIFTED development kit is typically in the range of thirty
milliseconds to fifty milliseconds um, including time for sensing, data
(24:21):
arrival over USB sinsor function, game simulation, rendering, and video output.
That's a lot of work and the computers having to do.
I mean that's not bad. I mean that's that's faster
than I can do those calculations personally, So I'm pretty impressed.
But um, And then he points out that, uh, basically
that other things can drive the latency up even more,
(24:43):
but still that latency is a lot better than it
used to be now. He also mentions the interesting innovation
of predictive tracking, which what that would do is it
would measure the angular acceleration of your head and it
would try to predict actually the next frame instead of
just waiting to see what you do and then showing
you start rendering out stuff that it suspects that you're
(25:06):
going to be looking at next, and so if you
start to turn your head, it says, well, you're probably
going to turn it about this far, and I know
that the next frame I should serve you is this um.
And so current algorithms can they can already predict like
forty two uh sorry, twenty to forty milliseconds into the
future with good accuracy. Um, and that could in theory
(25:26):
cut down on the perceived latency to the user to
less than twenty milliseconds, and that's really good. Yeah. Yeah,
But so the oculus rift is sort of where it's
at today in terms of VR technology, and they're basically
the only um you know, like I said, they're still
in development, but but the only proposed consumer level I
(25:46):
mean that they're pricing is looking at like something like
three dollars when it finally does come out of development,
which is nothing for for a virtual reality heads. Where
did they? Where did they come from? Like I just
became aware of them when suddenly they were a huge success. Okay,
So so this this fellow Palmer Lucky who I mentioned
a little bit earlier in the podcast, who's like twenty
(26:07):
or twenty one years old right now. UM, it's pretty annoying, right, UM. Actually,
I think I think he probably has because because he
was a huge VR hobbyist. UM went around the age
of like sixteen or so, he got really into virtual
reality equipment as a hobby and UM decided in to
(26:29):
launch a Kickstarter for a d I Y kit and
he was aiming to make like a hundred of these
things to be sold to other hobbyists. Um, but uh,
he got the attention through this of John Carmack, who
you know, who's the co founder of ID software, like
lead programmer on like Wolfenstein three D and Doom in
the Quake series, like kind of big important dude and
(26:49):
video games. Um and and and John Carmack asked for
a prototype, and Palmer Lucky was like, yes, please take
a prototype, sir, thank you. Um and Karmack just ran
with it. He demoed it with Doom three at three
and um it exploded in the press. Um. Valve got
ahold of a prototype as well, and Gabe Newell and
(27:11):
Michael A. Brash agreed to appear in the kickstarter video
because just everyone was so kind of enchanted and and
uh odd by the fact that that this kid was
putting this thing together. Um. So so yeah, you know,
we've we've talked a little bit about what it does
to solve some of the classic virtual reality problems. But um,
but the the headset itself is you know, it's a
(27:33):
it's a head mounted display. You can wear it. It's
it's light enough for a person to wear. It's got
these two LCD screens that that sit an inch or
so away from the user's eyes, and they render the
image out from slightly different angles. UM, and also kind
of put the images through this this warp filter around
the edges and then correct it partially with lenses that
are directly in the headset. And furthermore, uh, pack the
(27:58):
screens pixels more tightly in the center of view than
on the edges. And all of this really replicates the
you know, how human eyeballs, how round, imperfect, weird human
eyeballs see stuff. And and then yeah, and then you've
you've got the stuff that we were talking about. And
in these accelerometers that are detecting pitch yawn role and
(28:19):
they're furthermore and even cooler starting to work on gays tracking. UM,
so that so that not only the motion of your
head but also the motion of your eyes will help
this computer start to figure out where you're going to
look next and what it needs to render. So it's
in it's in development right now. UM. A lot of
people are playing around with it, and and it's it's exciting.
(28:41):
I'm I'm really you know, they still don't have a
release date, but uh, I think I think that that
even beyond video games, that could have some really wonderful applications. Yeah.
So okay, so the Oculus Rift kind of has a
lock on the VR headset market these days right now
there where it's at, and it's pretty from what I've
(29:03):
never used one, but I've read accounts online and I've
watched your videos of people using them, and it's hilarious
because they're just overwhelmed. Yeah, people say this thing is
really cool. Yeah yeah, I mean everyone, and it works.
Of course, it works best if you've got stereoscopic vision,
but um, but you can you can use it if
you if you only have one eye too. I mean,
(29:24):
it'll be a little bit flatter, and I've I've heard
that it's um, perhaps a little bit more potentially nauseating,
but but but not but not really discernibly, I mean
not so much that you've that the people who are
playing with it would have wanted to put it down. Um. Yeah, okay,
so we're kind of dealing with the first thing there
is that that sensory control, like total sensory immersion. Um.
(29:49):
And of course the sound has to be good too. Yeah,
but it's it's still working within existing game consoles. They're
they're really planning on releasing this as a peripheral to
work with any game console and so you know, you'd
be working with whatever controller that game at any particular
game has been designed for. So there's less of what's
(30:10):
called the merging of action and awareness with that, right,
because if you're still using these tools that you have
to be aware of as as tools and you're not
engaging your whole body in the same way, that that's
not quite that total level of immersion that we would
like to go for. It's not, although it will get
better when you start using, um using things like a
(30:32):
like a like a remote or um, you know what,
one of those wands or the connect. The connect could
be a terrific addition for this. Yeah. Or if you
if you go with like the nineties movies, you've probably
got like gloves, right, like VR gloves. You just put
these things on. They look like like chain mail or something,
and I mean one can only hope that they're like
covered in like in like fox skeleton bones or something.
(30:54):
They give you a virtual Freddy Krueger hands whatever it is. Um. Yeah, Okay,
so there's that option, And but I want to talk
about something that I think is really ambitious and cool,
which is total body movement virtual reality. Okay, so how
does how does this work? Well? Uh, the first one
I want to throw out there, I'm not really going
to talk about this much, but the Virtue Spear, which
(31:15):
is essentially a VR hamster ball. It's a big sphere
you go inside and you run like a hamster and
there you go, and you're and you're wearing like big
clunky goggles and and I all of the photos that
I've seen of this thing, it does not help that
the that the very nice um uh participant using it was,
you know, like some nice gentleman from the early eighties
(31:39):
with like a terrible mustache, and and it's I'm just
it doesn't really look sexy, is all I'm saying. Okay, Well,
another option one that actually this is also caught on
on Kickstarter VR treadmills, like the Virtue x Omni VR
treadmill VR treadmills. I'm picturing something like a like like
that run zombies and kind of app except except on
(32:02):
a treadmill and you can see the zombies. Well it's
not like a straight treadmill. Actually, these are omnidirectional treadmill.
So what it is is It's like, imagine you're kind
of in this weird cylinder thing that's got a rail
on it to keep you from falling out, and then
you wear special shoes that interact with the floor of
the treadmill and basically you walk. You slide as you walk,
(32:24):
so you're you're walking, You're using your whole body on this,
but the apparatus keeps you in place as you go. Um,
and this allows you to use your legs to move
throughout a game environment. I have some pies of it
where people are running through playing some first person shooter
and their movement in the game is based on the running,
which is amazing to me because, boy, you can get
(32:46):
some exercise this way. Yeah. I was about to say
that's a little bit terrifying for me personally, because I'm like,
I would be really bad at Halo if I had
to run, or maybe you just be better at running.
Maybe I would be better at running, but it probably
wouldn't be exactly the same as like actual running, but
you'd still be like engaging your muscles in one way
or another, even if it's kind of a natural. But um,
(33:08):
obviously what you'd be going for is the most fluid
and natural experience possible to try to get this thing
yet again, to to make you less aware of the
tools you're using, to sort of engage your body naturally,
to make you feel at one with the task you're doing. Sure, okay,
do they have anything that's approaching that that star trek
holidect of of just being able to move around in
(33:29):
a free space. Well, there is the Oh, there's the
Cave thing, the Cave program, right right, Yeah, okay, So
so the University of Illinois and Chicago designed this UM.
This it's a CAVE stands for Cave Automatic Virtual Environments UM,
which is also abbreviated to CAVE. I'm not really sure
why cave isn't the title, and that's the anyway, UM,
(33:49):
it's a it's it's a room that uses rear projection
tech to project on on all six surfaces that the
floor of the ceiling, in the four walls, and so
you can hypothetically, i mean, especially now that we've got
fancy um uh, you know, infrared motion tracking kind of
connect sort of stuff. You can you can track a
(34:10):
person's motion in the room, and if you've got really
good computers hooked up to it, let them look around
a virtual environment. But that's still I mean that's not
really immersive. I mean it's on a wall. I think
that probably at a certain point it's not fooling you
a whole lot. Yeah it sounds cool. Oh yeah, no,
totally cool. I mean, if anyone wants to invite me
to come over and play with their incredibly expensive your
(34:33):
projection room, then I'll do that. Yeah. How about Project
holid Deck. Have you heard about that? I have not.
What's that about? Well? Okay, so Project Holidayck is Uh,
it's this virtual reality project set up out of the
USC Games program. Okay, and basically what they're going for
is three D full body virtual reality. Alright. UM, so
imagine to set up like this, You've got this place
(34:56):
space area, so it's a flat floor area, and you've
got players within it, and what they wear is a
headset and that would be an Oculus Rift that's what
they use. Um. They also use a PlayStation move to
provide head tracking data to interface with the headset. Uh.
They use PlayStation eye cameras to track movement of the
(35:18):
PlayStation move wand within the play space. Uh. And then
they've got hand controllers, which are the six sense razor
Hydras and then what you do is you become an autonomous,
free moving agent within a virtual space while you move
about in an actual space. Alright, So so depending on
(35:39):
the size of the room, that's going to limit the
type of game that you can play. Yeah, well it's
mostly it's going to be limited by the field of
the tracking cameras that you're using to keep track of
your position. But so the way I saw this working
was it was a couple of guys and they were
um playing a game in this space, but what was
(36:01):
going on in the screen was they were playing game
where they were manning the battle stations of a virtual airship. Yeah,
so they're on this airship and to say they're like cannons,
and then you've got to run over here and say,
you've got like a you're sort of like a swashbuckler.
So you've got maybe like a pistol and a sword,
and you use these wands to control those things. But
(36:22):
you also moved to the stations and you are moving
about freely. And what it and the game actually the
hardware tracks your movement in the real world and takes
you from station to station wherever you go, and so
your movement in the real world is mirrored by your
movement in the game, So that's pretty cool. But the
point you bring up is a good one. The space
(36:42):
is limited, so it doesn't mean you can run around anywhere.
You'll notice, like the the way that game is structured,
it's like you're on the deck of an airship, so
it sort of limits. Like it's sort of like those
old rail shooter games. Kids. Yeah, you're you're not gonna
you're not gonna be able to set a game up
like that and and have um, you know, you can't
(37:02):
play Madden and that experience or I mean it or
it would be a really short game of can't keep running, right,
But you know, if if you're exploring a house, um,
then you could totally do that in that kind of environment.
Oh yeah, now I could. I imagine you could move
sort of room to room with this if you just
suspend disbelief for a moment, like you moved to the
(37:23):
edge and it's like you're in this room. Yeah, and
then you'd have freedom of movement within that room. Still,
I think that's really cool. What they're going for is
that you know, you are a self contained, moving entity
in this virtual world. And you're really moving. Yeah. I
like it. I like the idea, and I like where
they're going with it. Um. So, so where where else
(37:44):
do we think this is going? I mean, well, I
have a question about so. Obviously, I think the cool
thing is that virtual reality is actually getting good now,
right that we have the computer processing power and furthermore,
just the like the clear public interest. Yeah. Um, and
so that's novel, you know, it's not just type. It's
actually I think now like the media sort of under
(38:06):
hyping it because they've been burned, but the horrible VR
hype of the nineties. Uh, and they might not even
be realizing how cool the oculus rift is and and
all this stuff like that and all its potential. Um.
But I do have a question like is this sort
of thing really going to show up in the average
gamers home. I mean, you might go out and buy
(38:27):
a PlayStation or an Xbox or a we um, but
are you really going to buy VR hardware for your house? Especially?
I wonder that if if you're you're trying to incorporate
full body movement, say with like an omnidirectional treadmill or
an open space sort of three D free play zone,
I don't know how that's going to fit in most
(38:47):
people's houses or within their budget. Sure, yeah, well, I mean,
you know, they're they're talking about the Oculus Rift being
a three piece of hardware, but that's not taking into
consideration that, um, the game develop it meant for that
kind of thing is probably going to knock the price
of games up. Um. So you know, and and games
are already what like six seventy bucks a pop. Uh,
(39:08):
And so I would say that that's probably going to
be something for more hardcore gamers and the hobbyists who
are particularly interested in it, not for the common player yet.
Or I had another interesting idea this may well you
will judge if it's interesting. I can't say. Um and
interesting to me? What if we saw a revival in
(39:31):
the arcade culture because of virtual reality. I mean, arcades
used to be a cool You'd go there, you'd play
the big, you know, huge sure sure games that you
couldn't get a hold of or couldn't afford. You know,
you could put up a quarter on the machine, but
you weren't gonna be able to to go get your own.
Yeah whatever, there's not really much of that left today.
(39:51):
If there is it's it's mostly a kind of I
think nostalgic or retro or or something so so outlandish,
like a like they never really got Dance Dance Revolution
up to a point where it was very playable at home,
so right, so something niche like that. Yeah, I can
imagine VR arcades becoming a thing. Like you and your
(40:11):
friends go out, you pay, you split the tab for
two hours of VR space time, and you do something
like this. You you say, you play with the group
in a free play zone with total body movement, or
you each get to use your your VR treadmills, and
you know, you like you combine your your exercise time
with your friends, you know, with your shoot him up
(40:32):
time with whatever it is you're playing. I mean, I
still very occasionally go out to laser tags, So I
can totally see that, see that becoming a thing. Um So,
I don't know, I think that that actually be kind
of cool, that that idea seems fun to me. Yeah.
And and either way, you know, whether whether this really
picks up as as a video game movement or not,
the fact that I mean this this has tremendous applications
(40:55):
and in medicine and industry. Um, Yeah, we haven't even
talked about like the real stuff you can do with
VR that's not just games. Yeah, because I mean, this
is a terrific toy, but I mean, you know, it's
it's like we're talking about earlier. NASA has been using
virtual reality to train its astronauts on space walks for
for a couple of decades, because I mean, as much
(41:16):
as you can put someone in a space suit underwater,
there's really only so much of of of the realism
of space that you can transmit through that kind of experience.
Um And also on the I talked about UM that
psychological therapy UH center that that Palmer Lucky you worked in,
where you know you can you can genuinely help people
who've got um you know, some some kind of major
(41:38):
fear about something get over that. And that's that's wonderful.
Um Or training training doctors for for surgery something like that,
if if they can, if they feel like they're working
on a patient, but they don't have to actually experiment
on a patient, then that's pretty cool. Um Or. You know,
I've been reading some things about some industrial applications, like
(42:00):
you know, if you if you create a virtual model
of a car or a building. Then you can you
can walk around and it see how it's functioning. See um,
see whether it's working or not without having to actually
build something really expensive and potentially full of fail Yeah
in architecture, I guess sure. Yeah yeah or um. Cannon
(42:22):
actually put out a industry level virtual reality augmented reality
headset this year that has like a hundred dollar price tag,
but is pretty useful for for people who want to
get that that sense of how an object works in
virtual space without having to you know, so that so
that you can just create the computer model of it
and get a really good look at it without having
(42:44):
to to build it first. That's awesome. Yeah, okay, yeah,
well I think that just about wraps us up for today. Uh.
I have enjoyed talking about virtual reality number one because
of how horrible it was, and number two, how big
of an upset this is that it's finally cool. Yeah
that that that's when something has been that far down,
(43:04):
it's it's even more beautiful when it comes this far up.
I really want to use an Oculus rift. I haven't
an I would love to get that opportunity. So hey,
if y'all are listening, hook me up. Find me put
face any out there, anyone out there who's a developer,
let us know. Okay, well that does it for today. UM.
If you all want to read more, you can go
(43:26):
to f w thinking dot com where we've got videos, podcasts,
blog posts. You can also check us out on social
media on Facebook and Twitter. UM. We look forward to
hearing from you and we will talk to you again
in the future. For more on this topic in the
future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to
(43:59):
you by two Toyota Let's Go Places
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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