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I'll be going over the definition of VR, the present status of it
some misconceptions on it that people still have
and then some developer perspectives on it
and then if i have some time some of my personal prototypes
I'm currently a student at Tampere University
I do prototypes and study mixed reality concepts, because it's awesome
I don't have a game, I don't have a company This is just an umbrella term for my work
Much of this talk is subjective and my personal opinion
but VR is really too new to have any real authority figures
and it's not even properly here yet.
So what is VR exactly?
It's an old idea, but it's still not widely understood completely
And the developers are not innocent in this
And they are in fact in danger of doing harm to the form of media
Wrong expectations that conflict with reality
can lead to disappointment, confusion,
and premature dismissal of an entire artform
VR is often confused with other parts of the mixed-reality spectrum
So it's probably easier to start there
This is reality. This is where most of us live.
This is where we eat. This is where we sleep. This is where we play our Xbox
It looks and feels like reality, because it is reality.
This is not VR
Then we have Augmented Reality This is virtual stuff in a real environment
AR tracks and matches reality.
It's an extremely promising field for the near future
And I could talk for hours on AR alone. But this is not VR
Then we have Augmented Virtuality
This is essentially a mirror image of Augmented Reality
It's real stuff in a virtual environment
Whenever people talk about Virtual Reality they mention the Holodeck
Close, but they are still real people
And we have pilot training simulators and projected CAVE environments
that also have real people in them
For practical purposes, in many cases these are enough for their purpose
But it is not VR
And then we have VR. This is The Matrix.
This is complete replacement of our experience with a virtual world
It looks and feels like reality because our sense tell us it is reality
It also does not need to look or function like reality
It just needs to convince our senses, that it is
And we get really excited with this vision
And we start to dream all the ways it will make everything awesome
VR will become the primary way of life, traditional forms of media will die, VR will magically make everything better
But even people who understand the basic definition of the medium
can be confused with what this means for the end product
There's a lot of unsupported hype. Decades of philosophy has been unchecked by reality
because VR has not existed to be checked against
These are the people who expected flying cars and jetpacks
And then there's the crowd who think it's a gimmick
We have all seen this before with 3D TVs, kinect, wiimote, all those things
It's kind of cool, but more or less a useless gimmick
More useful as marketing material than real gaming devices
We have seen the hype and have been disappointed
How is a 3D monitor on your face any different?
To get some perspective between these two extremes
we go deeper, and see what VR is trying to do,
how it works, and how it is different from traditional media
Our experience of reality is based on a mental model
We use our senses to analyze reality, and form understanding of how reality works
and then we interact based on that model
Our experience of traditional media in reality happens through abstractions
When you play a traditional videogame, we sense the reality,
devices in that reality, that work as proxy to see and interact with the game.
We have to include that interaction abstraction relationship in our mental model.
Our perception is split in two worlds.
We can play a game and be immersed in it.
But it relies on the learnt abstraction context of the machine
Much like how we learn to ride a bike, or drive a car.
But we never feel like we are the car.
And this is the defining limitation with the premise of traditional media.
It is designed to control a machine.
The abstract act of pressing a button to play a jump animation
will never equal the experience of performing a jump
Adding more complexity for more actions pushes us
even further away from a real experience.
Muscle memory helps, but only up to a point.
Looking at the problem from this perspective VR is a gimmick.
It is seen as an interface for the computer.
Unfortunately many VR developers still have this view.
They see VR as an extension or addon to improve traditional media
But incremental improvement on abstraction does not matter
because the premise is flawed.
This is why other gimmicks have failed. The mental model is the problem.
The idea of VR is not to interface with a machine
but to intercept and recreate the full range of our physical sensory system
without you noticing.
The goal is to completely cut out the conscious abstractions
between the user and the simulation. To bypass physical reality
and directly interact with simulation without any conscious proxies within reality.
If successful, our mental model sees the simulation as reality.
Our unconscious senses tell us virtual experience feels like real experience.
Ofcourse we are consciously aware that reality exists
but we can suppress awareness with little effort.
Michael Abrash has a definition of succcessful VR that I really liked;
With traditional media, you need active suspension of disbelief to accept that it is real
But with successful VR, you need active suspension of belief, to accept that it is not real
So in essence having to remind yourself that your are just playing a game.
And if you want to hear more about this stuff, I recommend you check the youtube video;
Michael Abrash' speech "Why virtual reality is not (just) the big next platform"
And if you have been paying attention
you will notice that today VR does not look like this
We have the first generation of sufficiently good headsets
and input systems are the biggest problem at the moment
Controller abstractions are still necessary
and the sense of touch is essentially completely missing
Today we are stuck between two mediums
Like a portal between the real world and the virtual world
We observe the virtual world on the other side
and interact with abstractions on the other
A bit like being born in slow motion, one limb at a time
as new technology is being developed
there's a lot of interesting new controllers coming
that try to solve this problem
So is it a gimmick?
It's just the first piece. These are baby steps in a new medium.
We need to reinvent the wheel on interaction.
It's far from complete, but we can already do a lot of interesting things.
Just because it is not ready on day one, does not mean it's useless.
There's a lot of datadumping in my speech, so; a breathing break.
And there's still a lot of confusion with what you can do with this new stuff
There's even a TED talk about how VR is the future of film
And media keeps asking film directors about VR
And they are the wrong people to ask.
Apart from being in a VR movie theater, watching a movie on the screen,
the art of Film is fundamentally incompatible with VR.
Film is about precise control of viewer experience and emotional flow.
Guiding the eye of the viewer, forcing them to understand
a specific, designed narrative.
It's about abstraction of ideas and emotions.
The sensation of being there is not the primary goal of film.
The frame-abstraction is the entire artform.
Removing the abstraction would destroy the art.
I rest my case.
There may be passive film-like experiences with VR
but they will not replace, or even compete with traditional film.
It's a very different artfrom.
This will be especially interesting with 3D scanned environments
The surrounding world becomes objective, the act of watching much more subjective and unguided.
It's about experiencing an objective place or narrative happening around you.
And any direction has to be subtly implied, or it comes across as heavy-handed and disruptive.
A narrative experience is more like live theater, or a stage play,
or like a holodeck-recording on Startrek.
You share a space with these actors.
There is no longer a social safety glass between you and the events in the room.
The fact that you think you can touch them, and that they can touch you,
gives emotional depth to the scene.
It's awesome, but it's not film.
Another is the novelty experience. About a space or location.
Nature documentaries, live music performance
or a spectacle of being in the middle of a massive action sequence.
Some films of this type aim for this type of experience,
so VR will probably be good for this.
It's cool, but has limited potential, and is also, not film.
"VR is the future of ***" Yes.
What *** tries to do, is what VR does.
You want to be there, experience and empathize as closely as possible.
But it will be messy.
Another common saying is that VR is the future of gaming.
Traditional games have evolved to the abstractions they were made in.
The screen, the controls, the mechanics.
The end-goal of most games is not the holodeck.
Much like film, the abstraction is the artform
and many of the same restrictions apply.
Some game mechanics are not possible with VR
or give unexpected results.
Not everything has to translate to VR.
Some types of games translate better than others.
With consoles there has been an evolution of making games more comfortable.
Sitting back on your couch in your underwear,
playing 8 hours of Akham City, only using the muscles on your fingers.
I don't want to lose that. I still want games like that. And VR is not that.
Retrofitting old games is an exercise in futility.
Nearly all of them are terrible ports.
A successful port really requires low level access to the engine,
and HLVR mod by Wormslayer probably one of the more comfortable ones
and it's better than many "real" VR games.
But it raises another problem;
It illustrates how the level design does not fit well for VR.
The levels were designed for desktop-play for the keyboard & mouse, the monitor frame.
It's cool, but it feels like there's something wrong.
The abstraction is the artform.
VR needs original content, designed for it's strengths and weaknesses.
One popular fear is that VR is anti-social.
Or that you look like an idiot wearing it.
You should not be doing VR in a socially active local environments.
That is what traditional media and augmented reality is for.
VR as a medium is for situations when you are alone in physical space,
when you are isolated in local reality.
So why do you care what you look like?
For people who are not included in the experience,
every type of engaging experience is anti- social, be it traditional games, TV or books
People also forget, the point of VR is to be a reality.
Body language and personal space create a real sense of being.
The virtual characters feel instinctively human.
People respect each others personal space, and gather in a circle to talk.
To say that "VR is anti-social", is to say; "across the street is anti-social"
because your frame of reference is local reality.
If I launch the same application in desktop-mode the experience is very different
and the abstraction is back
I'm home. My avatar is in the chat, not me. The body language disappears.
Other people become distant avatars again, and it feels more like a Skype-chat.
I'm not going to go over issues with every possible combination with different types of media.
Just keep in mind while evaluating something; What makes the original media work?
What defines the experience?
And does changing the abstractions improve the experience?
Saying something is VR does not magically make it awesome.
Ignoring these issues will lead to bad user experience.
And the same applies to hardware.
Except you pay money for hardware.
And because of that you stronger emotional reaction to disappointment.
VR is at a point where the only thing that can kill VR, is bad VR.
If people think that a smartphone with a fancy case and some lenses on it
is enough for VR, they will be disappointed.
And they will likely dismiss VR as a stupid gimmick
As they should
Current phone hardware is not optimized for VR
And there will be high latency.
And more power will not solve more important issues;
Like not having positional tracking will break your sensory feedback loop
When you move, and you don't have positional tracking,
your movement is not recreated in your virtual body
and now your sensory system has conflicting information
and you sense this movement as movement in the opposite direction
this leads to oscillations as you try to find your virtual balance,
like on a boat. And you get simulation sickness.
Positional tracking is not optional. You will feel ill.
Mobile VR may only be ok for 360 videos or some very short novelty experiences.
Be aware of magical claims when supporting products claiming to be VR
Some have misleading advertising and some have outright lies.
There is no universal console support.
There is no positional tracking without external reference.
There's a lot of garbage out there, trying to get your money.
But there's also a lot of awesome stuff.
So now that it's coming, the developers have a big responsibility
If you treat it like a gimmick, that's what it will feel like.
Understand the medium. What VR is, and what it tries to do.
Not all games have to be VR. Not all VR have to be games.
The experience of presence is fragile.
Existing gaming muscle memory is not useful, if it conflicts with performed action
If you use controls that do not match your expected mental model,
you break the mental model. It brings you out of it.
Having a consistently present abstraction is better than a sudden introduction.
Make sure you are aware what the mental model looks like in your experience.
Does it match what is desired? Is it stable?
Does some interaction break it?
Traditional abstractions can still work in VR if used with care.
In some cases you can smuggle other interaction models into VR.
Driving with a steering wheel or flying with a joystick works really well
because the used controller matches what you expect and experience in VR
and the mental model of controlling a vehicle is familiar to us in reality
3rd person games work because you are controlling a traditional videogame in a VR environment
The distinction is subtle, but important
It's also a stylistic choice,
but keep in mind what kind of mental model it resolves to
Until better interaction arrives, we need to find acceptable compromises
We are settlers on a new continent, and we need to get this right
Please don't make bad VR.
..few minutes left..
I created a few prototypes to study empathy and some VR interaction paradigms
In VRsanity, you are a person with schizophrenia, in a store, looking for pills.
For interaction I used the razer hydra controllers
which offer true 6 degrees of freedom tracking
The immediate sensation from the prototype
was that the standing experience is much more immersive
Intuitivity of the 6DoF controllers
Squeezing the triggers to grab stuff is very immersive
But also without positional tracking the simulation sickness is really bad
And the forward facing play doesn't make any sense
Why do i need to face the computer to play a VR game?
Virtual blindness was a further study of mechanics
I used TeddyOk's Hydradeck movement system
where the left hydra controller is tracking your body movement
and there's no simulation sickness in this because you have positional tracking
and it feels really immersive. It feels like you could walk off
But using the analog stick to move is really bad, it breaks the whole thing
The distance between the two mental models has become too large
Better and more natural VR interaction in other areas
make older abstractions feel much worse
We made this fruitninja clone game at Millenium GadgetJam
You stand on a small platform
and use your sword to hit some stuff and dodge with your body
and this is a game without any abstractions
you only have the sword in your hand and use your body to move
and you can freely move around in the play area
And this was really immersive
The mental model was intact
Based on how the abstraction context in third person games work
and how intuitive the hydra manipulation feels
I wanted to take that man-machine interface we're used to in tank films and such
and smuggled that inside the simulation,
set it between the player avatar and the simulated world
See if it works as well as it does in reality
So that the mental model contains the tank controls
and none of the physical control abstractions
And I required the DK2 for this
And I only got it yesterday so I didn't have much time to test it
But it works pretty well
Moving and using things in the space feels really natural
But the lack of haptic feedback is an issue, if you don't know where your target is
If you can see it, and you know how the object works
it works surprisingly well
VR is awesome. It's not here yet. Be patient. It's coming.
There's some references... Thanks.