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Indigo
Up and Coming
August 11, 2013

"Self motion isllusion (vection) in VR"(?)

Found this on the six-flags facebook page:

"Self motion isllusion (vection) in VR" https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151465491754520

http://ispace.iat.sfu.ca/projects/ (LOADS of cool stuff)

These guys use stereoscopic sound, a blindfold, and a rotating platform + swivel chair system to simulate a sound scape rotating around a user.
Nothing new there. But after a while, users get the feeling that they are rotating in the world (Like turning in a swivel chair) as opposed to the world and audio sources moving around them. And they're collecting some useful data.

I'm guessing everyone here has experienced the Rift's magnetic drift. I'm always surprised when I take off the glasses and find myself facing a different direction.

Could this audio, swivel chair and platform trick be used to redirect users into facing a 'desired' direction? One where they don't wrap the cable around their neck?

So a user turns his head 90° left, the VR character does the same. But ever so slowly, the rendered view and audio scape slowly drifts right. Causing the user to keep tracking the sounds / visual queues and, unconsciously, start facing the original direction.

Full pdf paper download here:https://zoterofilestorage.s3.amazonaws.com/93163a40eabde9c050948dba48ca377a/Riecke%20and%20Schulte-Pelkum%20-%202013%20-%20Perceptual%20and%20Cognitive%20Factors%20for%20Self-Motion%20S.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI4IEEOCQFLSM5GMQ&Expires=1376243185&Signature=VUY%2F8EPfT49FoBZQJzH6MMIzxt0%3D (Haven’t finished reading it yet)
http://ispace.iat.sfu.ca/publications/

How useful is this? Depends.
People playing sitting down. People unable to rotate more than 180 while sitting in a sofa. People in VR warehouses that need redirected walking. People who don't want to accidentally yank their PC off the desk.

Pretty sure this has been addressed in another thread... But still.
Food for thought

    3 replies

    RoyMi6
    Up and Coming
    August 13, 2013
    Surely part of the problem with this is detecting the drift?

    If you can detect the drift then surely you just correct the drift and thus negate the very issue itself :)
    IndigoAuthor
    Up and Coming
    August 14, 2013
    Well I'm not really thinking of correcting or countering the magnetic drift. I'm thinking of having this as an immersion feature.

    If the user can no longer turn his head in a given direction, he will probably use his controller to rotate the entire character's body until his character is in the desired position and his neck is in a comfortable position.

    If the user is forced to move from one rotation control scheme to another (from head-look control to gamepad control) then this may break the illusion.

    With these two techniques, the developer can manipulate the user into placing his head in a comfortable position.

    Or manipulate the user into looking at a particular direction where an important animation is about to take place. If you play HL2 with the developer audio logs turned on, one of the things they talk about is designing the levels to capture the user's attention. They always try to "frame" areas where something is about to happen. When those techniques fail, having an option to encourage the player's neck to be pointing in a given direction could be useful.

    But I'd like to see this working for sound first. People probably wont want to spend $$$ on a rotating platform if they can get the omni or a wiz dish for nearly the same price... The suspended rotating hammock/hamper chair looks comfortable tho...
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    August 16, 2013
    This is interesting research, for sure, but seems a bit impractical for VR. Most importantly, there seemed to be a period of time where you perceive the world moving before you start to think you yourself are moving. So in a game environment, where you may quickly be changing directions, this seems like a huge problem.

    Secondly, the physical setup seems just as complex, or even more so, than something like the Omni or Wizdish.

    Finally, it seems the setup requires you to be seated. From my own experiments, I have found standing up to be a huge boost to immersion (especially with FPS games), so I am unsure how useful the seated gameplay would be.

    However, it is still very interesting and worth more investigation.
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