Getting rid of health and safety warning

I am pretty sure Norwegian law on the subject is very similar to German, we at least have the "unless risk is apparent"-level of reason in court. As a bare minimum, considering the fact that these warnings hold no legal meaning in most non-US countries, allow us to dismiss them permanently if we don't live in the US. Put a "where do you live?(please don't lie)"-option in runtime installation. Let us check a box that says "I don't live in the US, and understand that I can't see when I wear a Rift". Use IP localization or something. I really don't care how OVR does it, get rid of it...

Sorry for my snarky tone, but I get really annoyed about these kind of things... But if I'm annoyed enough, before I even get the Rift, to harp on about it in here, then a lot of other people will get annoyed as well. The goal here is to roll this out to the general public, internationally. This might be accepted in the US, but I know a lot of people who get angry when Health and Safety nannying treats them as an idiot or a child. There will be a lot of annoyed and angry people over this, some of which might actually drop VR until this stops, some might actually give up VR indefinetly. Then we all loose...

"8igby" wrote:
Put a "where do you live?(please don't lie)"-option in runtime installation. Let us check a box that says "I don't live in the US, and understand that I can't see when I wear a Rift". Use IP localization or something. I really don't care how OVR does it, get rid of it...

A quite efficient way to determine the country of residence, without relying on the user being honest is to look at the combination of set system timezone, language and keyboard layout.

For example despite being German I have set all my systems to use English for the system language. But my timezone is UTC+1(?DST) so that pretty much identifies the system to be located somewhere in Central Europe or South Africa. However despite using English system language my keyboards are and the settings follow in PC105 German layout (or Neo, when I'm feeling fancy trying to learn that one), so that pinpoints me to Germany. Of course had I set Dvorak things would be not so clear.

However since you only have to dead sure identify those residences, where hefty litigation can happen the set of ambigous locations where it matters I presume is rather small.

"8igby" wrote:
I am pretty sure Norwegian law on the subject is very similar to German, we at least have the "unless risk is apparent"-level of reason in court. As a bare minimum, considering the fact that these warnings hold no legal meaning in most non-US countries, allow us to dismiss them permanently if we don't live in the US. Put a "where do you live?(please don't lie)"-option in runtime installation. Let us check a box that says "I don't live in the US, and understand that I can't see when I wear a Rift".

+1

"8igby" wrote:

Sorry for my snarky tone, but I get really annoyed about these kind of things... But if I'm annoyed enough, before I even get the Rift, to harp on about it in here, then a lot of other people will get annoyed as well. The goal here is to roll this out to the general public, internationally. This might be accepted in the US, but I know a lot of people who get angry when Health and Safety nannying treats them as an idiot or a child.

Yes. I think OVR underestimates how negative this can be perceived in other cultures.

But to be honest, even in the US I would reconsider if the HSW is the best solution. Psychologically, the repetitive HSW means that every singly VR experience starts with short moment (or actually not that short) of some mixture of negative feelings -- something in between boredom, annoyance, anger, or maybe just confusion since typically the HSW just covers the actual user interface. It's a negative stimulus, so it is creating negative reinforcement. I think the overall goal of OVR's research is just: reduce all VR-induced negative stimuli. If the goal is to remove all negative stimuli, there is no room for a repetitive HSW. On the technical side, there is a lot of effort going into things like latency/judder with some really amazing results. I'm convinced there must be some way to improve the solution to this legal problem as well. I can hardly believe that the best trade-off between usability and legal security is a repeated in-your-face message. That does not seem to be quite as polished as the solutions on the technical side like timewarp.

What about this: In order to disable the H&S warnings globally in the SDK, a Rift owner has to acquire an "HSW exemption certificate". In order to get the certificate it is necessary to pass a little online test, which covers all security relevant aspects. This actually ensures that a Rift owner really has to read all HSW. This would probably require to shift the liability from the user to the owner (essentially: the owner of an Oculus Rift must give instructions to new users...). I have no idea if something like that would work according to US law. But since it requires a thorough examination of the HSW, it is maybe comparable to repeating the HSW. And psychologically, a short-term annoyance (followed by a highly positive stimulus of not seeing the HSW for the first time!) is much better than the repeated negative stimulus of the HSW.

I think a lot of people in the thread are overlooking (or ignoring) a couple of things.

First off, regardless of the law, and the specific merits of a given suit, fighting lawsuits is expensive, disproportionately so for larger companies because of the constraints of discovery. If Oculus can head off such lawsuits before they even begin, that's likely to seem appealing to them.

Second, the idea of what's an obvious risk versus what's not may not be as cut and dried when you're dealing with a brand new piece of consumer hardware specifically designed to fool your brain into thinking you're somewhere other than you are. Sure, put a blindfold on someone and expect not to be able to see. Put a Rift on someone for the first time, and they won't expect the visceral realism it can induce. It's not hard to make people stumble, fall, or reach for things that aren't there, because many of these are autonomic reactions that happen at a lower level of thought, below where the 'this is all fake' idea is firmly implanted.

"jherico" wrote:
I think a lot of people in the thread are overlooking (or ignoring) a couple of things.

First off, regardless of the law, and the specific merits of a given suit, fighting lawsuits is expensive, disproportionately so for larger companies because of the constraints of discovery. If Oculus can head off such lawsuits before they even begin, that's likely to seem appealing to them.

So you are saying it acts as a deterrence against lawsuits that might otherwise occur? How is that any different than writing "please don't sue" on the box?

"jherico" wrote:
Second, the idea of what's an obvious risk versus what's not may not be as cut and dried when you're dealing with a brand new piece of consumer hardware specifically designed to fool your brain into thinking you're somewhere other than you are. Sure, put a blindfold on someone and expect not to be able to see. Put a Rift on someone for the first time, and they won't expect the visceral realism it can induce. It's not hard to make people stumble, fall, or reach for things that aren't there, because many of these are autonomic reactions that happen at a lower level of thought, below where the 'this is all fake' idea is firmly implanted.

Is it really that different to any other new consumer technology? The only thing I can think of are GPS Vehicle navigation systems where not only the health of the user but also other people are involved. Are you comparing the Rift to a GPS navi?
Heck even the Google Glass doesn't bug it's users in that way, (a message on the screen every usage) and that is worn in public, possibly all day long.
Besides most of us are fine with a warning, as long as it doesn't come with a nag-screen in the current implementation.

"ElectricMucus" wrote:
So you are saying it acts as a deterrence against lawsuits that might otherwise occur? How is that any different than writing "please don't sue" on the box?

No, I'm saying that if an app didn't implement the warning as required, Oculus can shift the liability and thus the target of the lawsuit to the app authors. If it can be shown the user wasn't complying with the warning, even though they saw it, Oculus can shut down the lawsuit, because the user was being stupid.

"ElectricMucus" wrote:
Is it really that different to any other new consumer technology?

Most new consumer technology isn't explicitly designed to alter the user's sense of what's real and what isn't.

"ElectricMucus" wrote:
Heck even the Google Glass doesn't bug it's users in that way, (a message on the screen every usage) and that is worn in public, possibly all day long.

Even Google Glass doesn't flash something on the screen unless the use takes an explicit action to activate it (spoken command, a tap, a head tilt, or a glance at the screen after a notification). Also Google Glass doesn't really inhibit your view of the real world. It's unlikely to make you lose your sense of balance.

Personally I think Oculus should implement some sort of settings option where a person can certify that this is a single-user device and that they've read the warning. The SDK (or applications) could check that option and not display the HSW if it was turned on. This explicitly shifts liability to the user and obviates the need for the warning at every program start.

"jherico" wrote:
If Oculus can head off such lawsuits before they even begin, that's likely to seem appealing to them.

Yes I fully agree. So the question is: What is the best solution in terms of legal security, usability, and reputation. I'm pretty sure OVR can come up with something better than what we currently have. Maybe by transferring John Carmack to the legal department for a week ;).

"jherico" wrote:

Personally I think Oculus should implement some sort of settings option where a person can certify that this is a single-user device and that they've read the warning. The SDK (or applications) could check that option and not display the HSW if it was turned on. This explicitly shifts liability to the user and obviates the need for the warning at every program start.

That is what I was trying to suggest, I just don't know if a simple checkbox is legally binding / secure enough. But there still is the paranoid version: print out some kind of declaration of consent(*), sign it, send it to Oculus, and wait for an activation key to remove H&S warnings. I guess that should be a very safe solution (globally) and it is now just up to the costumer if they prefer to sign a scary HSW agreement or keep the repeated HSW.

(*) including agreement to re-read the HSW every year, make sure to either never let others use the device, let them read the HSW, or supervise them etc. And of course you agree to always lock away your Rift after use...

Oculus could just provide an asset bundle that developers can use for implementing a scene in the start of their projects. This would include the health and safety warning before even entering the main game title screen. The safety warning right now is just terrible no offence Oculus but it's very easy to whip up something better than what's currently in use. I'm sure someone may have suggested something similar I didn't read every reply in the thread but I share the frustration you guys are having with this!

This frickin' HSW has driven me mad tonight. I'm super excited to be developing something for the rift and it's getting better and better (not worse as the novelty wears off) but this stupid warning IS getting in the way of productivity. I have a section that I'm testing tonight that starts out and I need to see things clearly straight away, not after the HSW times out... I ended up having to code in a delay just wait for the HSW which adds lots of time onto iterative testing/design. I know I said this earlier in the thread already but seriously Oculus, sort it out!! Developers for sure do NOT need to see this every minute when in a tight design/test phase.

Am off to fix it myself using the advice in this thread (build it myself with the flag disabled - please tell EPIC to enable access to this flag in UE4), this building of the engine each time - workaround is a time sink!!!!!!!!!!!!

:evil:

I did build a UE4 with it disabled and that worked but for some reason I had loads of troubles using that build so gave up and went back to the official build. Can we just build the plugin (with engine) then dump the plugin over to the official (if both are the same version i.e UE4 4.4.2)

I really don't want to have to rebuild each time a new UE4 update comes out anyway. This is far worse than any SDE, LOW FOV/RES, Black smear - as a dev it really puts those things into context. Please Cyber, give those in charge a prod again and ask them FOR DEVELOPERS only can the flag be more easily exposed (in UE4 - ie allow epic to allow disabling it from blueprints or whatever, even if only in dev builds but overridden to on for shipping builds?? sounds fair!)