Using saccade-tracking to trick VR users into walking in circles, giving the illusion of "infinite walking"

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/04/twisty-little-passages.html

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Because stumbling around a room wearing a VR headset isn’t awkward at all!

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I hope it can also warn you if non-conscious alien spiders try to creep up on you during the saccades.

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Man this sounds like a recipe for nausea or worse. Ever run on a treadmill for a while and then afterwards it feels like you’re walking very fast? I wonder what it’ll feel like after walking in a circle for fifteen minutes while your eyes register a straight line…

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You might like this article by danah boyd then:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-rift-sexist.html

Apparently there may be some gender differences in how we experience VR…

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I’ve thought a lot about getting VR, but since I have bad knees, the walking, running, jumping part isn’t for me.

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I’d guess there’s a sweet-spot for this technology in experience types and the audience’s age/sex/vestibular characteristics. I’m completely cut out of noise-canceling headphone tech because the experience gives me nausea.

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There are quite a number of applications that you can do seated. The Playstation PSVR, in particular, seems more suited to seated play than standing.

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Now I can actually be in motion while I get motion sick.

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There was a demo of a similar technique in the emerging tech area at last year’s (?) SIGGRAPH, and it was pretty compelling. For those concerned about motion sickness: the reason motion sickness occurs is because of the conflict between the vestibular system and what the eyes are seeing. When the motions of the head and body actually match what is happening within the headset, sickness is generally not a problem. This technique should go a long way towards solving the motion sickness problem of VR, for certain types of applications.

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Yup, walking in a straight line is just the VR experience people have been asking for.

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Yes, it’s a funny line, but it really is!

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What an exceptionally cool hack of the human visual system!

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I think my old boss had mastered a career style saccade hack in which despite what felt like constant forward motion I inevitably found myself right where I started. Scratch that decade.

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My brother has a Vive and there is NO running, very very little walking, and the only jumping I’ve done was in Minecraft VR (which is AWESOME by the way)

You should go to a VR arcade and check out what’s on offer!

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I would LOVE to go to a VR arcade. I’ll try (again) to find one around San Francisco.

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There are TWO in lil’ ol’ Kalamazoo, there’s probably at least THREE in San Francisco :yum:

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Yes, and now that I know what to search for, I’ve found a couple. I’ve done searches in the past, and not found anything, just because I didn’t know the exact terms to use, thanks. Vive is what I would get, as I’m a big-time Steam user.

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The advantage of the Vive (aside from you already using Steam), is the real 360 degree immersion. Because you set up two cameras on either side of the play space it doesn’t matter which way you’re facing, other than how tangled the cord gets (i really want to get the wireless adapter).

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