The movement conundrum
So I've been watching the recent Oculus videos from GDC etc. and would like to post a couple of thoughts/observations here around a couple of the issues highlighted.
Creating a realistic sense of movement when moving around in VR.
I hope I'm not teaching anyone to suck eggs when I say this but my thoughts would be to look at the biomechanics of the human body then apply them to in-game locomotion with some tweaking.
What do I mean?, well when the human body is in motion as we all know the head isn't static it rolls slightly, it moves from side to side and it goes up and down. The variation of this will be dependent on the individuals speed, height, posture and to a lesser extent weight. Would it not be possible using say a treadmill to track these movements at various speeds and in transition from one speed to another (walking to running etc.) then map them into a movement mechanic?. (just re-read this, I'm not suggesting each user has to get this data individually, but a generic data set be created of an 'average' human that would be then changed to suit an individual users measurements)
Now that in itself I don't think would be enough, as was pointed out in the talks the human body has tricks that allows it to maintain steady vision even when moving in many vectors at once (though I believe it is much better at horizontal and vertical correction then lateral). I think the key here is that even with these tricks the body does not maintain a totally rock solid visual field, it applies the dampeners in all states but with various levels of success. So my proposition would be to create the mechanical model of movement as described above but then apply an artificial dampener that simulates our human reactions.
Done incorrectly I think this would break immersion not to say presence, but I think if the balance was right and the sweet spot found it would 'lock us in' to the experience exponentially better compared to current attempts. In order to implement this across multiple experiences I think it would require a person to enter the relevant data at the same time as they are doing their IPD, so developers can call on the data once instead of each experience requiring user configuration.
After all the reason the current seated experiences work so well is because the brain is not expecting any other movement than head/torso, allowing us to easier suspend our disbelief.
Thoughts anyone?
The other issue that I had thoughts around was the idea that your body will not accept movement cues in VR if it can sense it is sitting down, bum in chair and feet on ground etc.
I have an injured spine, due to training and physiotherapy it is largely under control, but when it wasn't I used to have a recliner in front of my computer, I tilted the monitor down a little and used the keyboard on my lap with the mouse on a small table at the side of the chair. In this position, which was almost supine, I had little pain, and my weight was distributed through the length of my body rather than vertically down my spine. The point being would it be possible to engage in VR in a supine position using the movement mechanic I mentioned at the start and be able to disengage the lizard brain's monitoring enough to again suspend disbelief.
Thoughts?
I'm just putting this out there and chose the General Development forum as you guys are the ones who likely have answers or could figure out a way to achieve it.
I realise on one hand I'm suggesting people need recliners to enjoy a god VR immersion, but we are at a stage where we haven't cracked this movement conundrum so anything is worth mentioning I figure.
Lastly a question re: Dev kit 2, does anyone know that if you place the camera at slight height above your head (a foot or more) if this would aid in getting near to 360 degrees positional tracking? Or would it throw the positional tracking off if the camera is not at eye level?
Regards
StuPer
Creating a realistic sense of movement when moving around in VR.
I hope I'm not teaching anyone to suck eggs when I say this but my thoughts would be to look at the biomechanics of the human body then apply them to in-game locomotion with some tweaking.
What do I mean?, well when the human body is in motion as we all know the head isn't static it rolls slightly, it moves from side to side and it goes up and down. The variation of this will be dependent on the individuals speed, height, posture and to a lesser extent weight. Would it not be possible using say a treadmill to track these movements at various speeds and in transition from one speed to another (walking to running etc.) then map them into a movement mechanic?. (just re-read this, I'm not suggesting each user has to get this data individually, but a generic data set be created of an 'average' human that would be then changed to suit an individual users measurements)
Now that in itself I don't think would be enough, as was pointed out in the talks the human body has tricks that allows it to maintain steady vision even when moving in many vectors at once (though I believe it is much better at horizontal and vertical correction then lateral). I think the key here is that even with these tricks the body does not maintain a totally rock solid visual field, it applies the dampeners in all states but with various levels of success. So my proposition would be to create the mechanical model of movement as described above but then apply an artificial dampener that simulates our human reactions.
Done incorrectly I think this would break immersion not to say presence, but I think if the balance was right and the sweet spot found it would 'lock us in' to the experience exponentially better compared to current attempts. In order to implement this across multiple experiences I think it would require a person to enter the relevant data at the same time as they are doing their IPD, so developers can call on the data once instead of each experience requiring user configuration.
After all the reason the current seated experiences work so well is because the brain is not expecting any other movement than head/torso, allowing us to easier suspend our disbelief.
Thoughts anyone?
The other issue that I had thoughts around was the idea that your body will not accept movement cues in VR if it can sense it is sitting down, bum in chair and feet on ground etc.
I have an injured spine, due to training and physiotherapy it is largely under control, but when it wasn't I used to have a recliner in front of my computer, I tilted the monitor down a little and used the keyboard on my lap with the mouse on a small table at the side of the chair. In this position, which was almost supine, I had little pain, and my weight was distributed through the length of my body rather than vertically down my spine. The point being would it be possible to engage in VR in a supine position using the movement mechanic I mentioned at the start and be able to disengage the lizard brain's monitoring enough to again suspend disbelief.
Thoughts?
I'm just putting this out there and chose the General Development forum as you guys are the ones who likely have answers or could figure out a way to achieve it.
I realise on one hand I'm suggesting people need recliners to enjoy a god VR immersion, but we are at a stage where we haven't cracked this movement conundrum so anything is worth mentioning I figure.
Lastly a question re: Dev kit 2, does anyone know that if you place the camera at slight height above your head (a foot or more) if this would aid in getting near to 360 degrees positional tracking? Or would it throw the positional tracking off if the camera is not at eye level?
Regards
StuPer