Positional Tracking and Collisions

The best thing to do if someone tries to put there head into a wall is black out the screen which should encourage them to bring their head back into the game world without causing motion sickness like suddenly cutting off position tracking would.

As there is no perfect solution to force feedback, ghost simulators seems like it could be the more emersive game type to create.

"mrmonkeybat" wrote:
The best thing to do if someone tries to put there head into a wall is black out the screen which should encourage them to bring their head back into the game world without causing motion sickness like suddenly cutting off position tracking would.

As there is no perfect solution to force feedback, ghost simulators seems like it could be the more emersive game type to create.

You're perfectly right, the black screen is the best thing to do. If you stop the motion, nausea guaranted :

Nausea guaranteed?

I'm not sure.

In real life I am not able to put my head through the wall and a headache is what I can expect if I try too hard.

Reality confirmed?

A collision mesh for the camera should be all you need.

"xhonzi" wrote:
Nausea guaranteed?

I'm not sure.

In real life I am not able to put my head through the wall and a headache is what I can expect if I try too hard.

Reality confirmed?

I'm sure.
The Rift is not like real life in that we can't stop the head from moving, and if the head moves but your vision doesn't, you get motion sick.

Honestly, I don't think trying to push your face through a wall should be comfortable.

Rather than fade to black I think pulsing red would be better. Disorient them so they don't notice the mismatched motion, and trigger reflexes closer to a pain response to make people back away.

If you go too far in accommodating the user, you end up with a world that does not feel solid or interactive, or make the player feel like some sort of disembodied ghost. Extremely passive experiences are good for beginners, but to create a strong sense of presence you need some way for the world to affect you.

"nuB" wrote:
A collision mesh for the camera should be all you need.

???

no. It's not about the virtual camera hitting a virtual wall (and stopping it) it's about how to convey this comfortably to your brain/eyes! Your real life head will keep on moving while the in-game one is blocked against the wall. Very bad.

Fade fast to black is the answer, and if adopted as a standard then every VR user will know what to expect and get used to it and what it 'means'

"owenwp" wrote:
Honestly, I don't think trying to push your face through a wall should be comfortable.

Rather than fade to black I think pulsing red would be better. Disorient them so they don't notice the mismatched motion, and trigger reflexes closer to a pain response to make people back away.

If you go too far in accommodating the user, you end up with a world that does not feel solid or interactive, or make the player feel like some sort of disembodied ghost. Extremely passive experiences are good for beginners, but to create a strong sense of presence you need some way for the world to affect you.

This isn't about what a head hitting a wall feels like though. It's a technical issue only at this stage, about how to prevent nausea and motion sickness. The minute your in game head cam is stopped/blocked/locked then it's imperative your reduce the visual feedback to your still in motion head (until you correct it).

Inducing visual pain via flashing red is a bad idea imo, at least for 'the masses', so have it only as an option for the insane/hardcore as it may cause headaches! :)

But fade to black is very elegant and it's like you've 'stepped out of' the virtual world, which isn't an immersion breaker as such - more like a 'wow I can step in out like this AND not get motion sickness' win win.

Fade to black removes you from the world all-together, which indeed would prevent any disorientation caused by the ingame camera moving out of sync with your actual head movement, but it comes at the price of going blind in the game world (big trade-off imo).
The harsh "stop" you get when the camera collides with an ingame object/surface, can lead to disorientation, this is true.
Maybe instead of a harsh stop, there could be a "soft" stop, as if pushing your head into molasses, or against a spring.
This can trigger a "contact" feeling response, without causing a total disconnect from the 1:1 head-camera tracking.

Imagine say the camera having a bounding area, and enlarging it slightly, this extra overlap volume could be used as a spring-buffer in which the camera is held, and push/pulls against when the outer binding area collides with ingame physics, and starts this slight degradation of the 1:1 movement in what I feel would be a very tangible respond-able fashion, that doesn't jerk you out of the game.

I guess only time will tell as we see developers test out similar ideas!

no, simply because any disparity between head movement and visual update = motion sickness!! so slowing down the in game camera won't be pleasant.

I really don't know why some think fading to black is 'bad', I can imagine it working perfectly (Until better tech arrives to alleviate the problem altogether like a haptic neck brace! ;) )

the main priority here is to eliminate motion sickness and making VR feel unpleasant to use, NOT keeping full immersion with the world (though obviously that is a big deal and and in an ideal world you'd have both). Definitely one takes priority here, and it's not like we are stupid, we KNOW we are in a HMD even if we suspend disbelief and have great presence, a bit of black screen won't harm anyone as it would be so infrequent anyway. Hardly immersion ruining. I actually think in some ways it would feel quite magical, when we already know we are in a virtual world to go out of it's bounds that way it would compel us to want to move back in quickly anyway. I honestly think that is a better alternative, and even 'fun', compared to the awful side effects of fudging your in-game camera tracking for the sake of 'immersion' but to detriment of your brain/stomach. :)

I guess we need to try out all the options when we can but right now my feeling is, as it's only a minor problem anyway (one that the human brain would work around and 'avoid' going out of bounds as much as possible) that fade to black is simple, elegant and esp for the non hardcore, desirable. Any game that stops my virtual camera from moving while my head does will get get un-installed. it's that simple.


And I don't think fading to black will pull you out of the game, any more than you'd expect and respect for doing something 'stupid' like putting your head through a wall when you can clearly see there is a wall there! What would suck is when you go out of bounds, fade to black and show ADVERTS!!! haha - now that would really prevent you looking.. though am sure I've just put that idea into plenty of greedy minds now........ :twisted: :lol:


I think pulling your head back in (!) from the blackness and have the world fade into view again would feel awesome personally. I'd probably do it a lot on purpose just to witness the boring blackness turning back into 'presence' and fictional reality. It would almost be like lucid dreaming with on/off control. In horror games it could also be a safe haven for the nervous.... too scared of monster? stick head through wall lol! (keep sounds of your intestines being ripped out so you know it's not a winning strategy but at least you can avoid the visual horror - as we don't have hands to put in front of our eyes like we do when we watch horror films*) - though you could just close your eyes of course. :lol:

*I say 'we', I never put my hands in front of my face for horror films, but lots of females do (sorry if that sounds sexist but it is pretty much true)