Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Hi, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the show
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says, who can tell
Speaker 1: what magic spells will be doing for us? I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: voc Obam, and I'm Joe McCormick, and our host Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland is out today because he was not feeling well. Yes,
Speaker 1: we decided to allow him that. Yeah, but we hope
Speaker 1: he is feeling better soon. And today we're going to
Speaker 1: be recording without him, but he will be back next time. Yes,
Speaker 1: And he is here very much in spirit with us.
Speaker 1: Because Okay, so we're talking today about virtual reality. Virtual
Speaker 1: reality that's the future if it's nine Yeah, according to
Speaker 1: every single movie that came out during that entire decade, UM,
Speaker 1: and also most of Star Trek the next generation, this
Speaker 1: is all going to be virtual reality right here on out.
Speaker 1: Just Max Headroom will rule us all. Yeah, Like you
Speaker 1: were saying that Jonathan is with us in spirit, right,
Speaker 1: because he wrote a couple of really great articles on
Speaker 1: how stuff works that we have used to kind of
Speaker 1: form the basis of our information here, um, and we
Speaker 1: can we can link those out somewhere on the interwebs
Speaker 1: that are easy to find. But I have never actually
Speaker 1: used a virtual reality headset. But I hear Joe that
Speaker 1: you have some experience with this. I have a couple
Speaker 1: of times. I remember there was like a so I
Speaker 1: was at a music festival sometime in the nineties when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Uh it was the Riverbend festival
Speaker 1: in Chattanoo. Game and they had this tent there that
Speaker 1: was like a traveling tent where they had virtual reality
Speaker 1: set up. But I barely remember it. I just remember
Speaker 1: I stood in line for a really long time, and
Speaker 1: I think I got to play for like five minutes,
Speaker 1: and it costs, you know, like all the money I had. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't remember much about the experience except that it
Speaker 1: went over my head and I was sitting in a
Speaker 1: chair and I was using these controllers and and it
Speaker 1: was like like a typical like game like soul controller
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was fairly immersive. Also.
Speaker 1: The other thing was I don't know if you remember
Speaker 1: you remember the Virtual Boy. I do not personally, UM,
Speaker 1: but I have read some really entertaining things about it
Speaker 1: on the internet a k a. The Red Headache Machine. UM.
Speaker 1: It was it's okay. Just imagine like one of those
Speaker 1: things that the viewfinder the yeah, yeah, that the little
Speaker 1: the little click aty things. Yet okay, so it's like
Speaker 1: you strap one of those to your head, except it's
Speaker 1: really big and it and it only shows you two colors,
Speaker 1: black and red, and it causes migraines. And that sounds
Speaker 1: like the best video game up. When when the Virtual
Speaker 1: Boy came out, what I can't remember how old I was,
Speaker 1: I was probably like I'm gonna guess, like seventh grade
Speaker 1: or something. Um, And it came out. One of my
Speaker 1: friends got one, and we all got together at his
Speaker 1: house and we were like, well, we're gonna play this thing.
Speaker 1: And the way it is at the time, like when
Speaker 1: you're a little kid like you, you don't realize things
Speaker 1: are bad. It's like, you know, everything is fun and
Speaker 1: new and exciting, and even a kind of terrible experience
Speaker 1: is like, oh man, why did I do that? It
Speaker 1: was great? Yeah, Like I never realized there was such
Speaker 1: thing as a bad movie. It's like I just saw
Speaker 1: Operation Dumbo drop. It was great. Let's go see it again,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, but yeah, I just thought this
Speaker 1: thing was awesome. Meanwhile, we were like kids sitting there,
Speaker 1: like just taking tile at all from the parents because
Speaker 1: it was really painful to the eyes, and it was
Speaker 1: just an awful experience of red paint the bridge of
Speaker 1: your nose. Uh. The screens and these things were made
Speaker 1: of L e d s, which was actually pretty impressive
Speaker 1: at the time because most most video screens were being
Speaker 1: made of l c ds liquid crystal displays, or they
Speaker 1: were still cathode ray tubes. So so it was an
Speaker 1: impressive technological feat. Um. But but the thing about red
Speaker 1: L E d s, especially at the times that they
Speaker 1: were it was made of this but because they were
Speaker 1: so cheap and so bright, they were the brightest, cheapest
Speaker 1: dilties that they could possibly make. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that anyone thought to like install the dimmer switch in there.
Speaker 1: They weren't. Really it wasn't This was a terrible, terrible
Speaker 1: disaster for Nintendo, wasn't it. I think so? Well. I mean,
Speaker 1: a couple of things to say about it. Number One,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really virtual reality, wasn't. I mean, it depends
Speaker 1: on how you define it. But actually let's refer to
Speaker 1: Jonathan's definition in the article, because I think it's pretty good. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: He defines it from two points, the first being three
Speaker 1: dimential images that appear to be life sized from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the user. Okay, so it was kind of that,
Speaker 1: I mean it was there was a lot of like
Speaker 1: simulated three D based on these sort of red lattices
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Um. And but the other thing
Speaker 1: is the ability to track the user's motions, particularly head
Speaker 1: or eye movements, um and adjust the images on the
Speaker 1: users display to reflect the change in perspective. And the
Speaker 1: virtual boy was I mean essentially table mounted, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: It sat on a stand like a tripod stand, and
Speaker 1: you just put your face in you when you move around. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean you'd move around when you get dizzy and
Speaker 1: start falling out of the chair, but you didn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be moving with you, and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: follow you. Yeah. Yeah, you didn't strap it to your head. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it was like it was a thing that a
Speaker 1: lot of people were thinking of as virtual reality, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't quite there. Um. What we're thinking about with
Speaker 1: virtual reality is something that's a more natural experience, that
Speaker 1: that stays with your face in a way, like you
Speaker 1: you are having this experience and you're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to just look away from it a right.
Speaker 1: I think the kind of hope and dream is is
Speaker 1: that star trek Holideck kind of thing where where you're
Speaker 1: just immersed in a virtual environment and to the point
Speaker 1: where you can interact with objects there and barely even
Speaker 1: tell the fact that it's virtual. Yeah, um, hopefully, except
Speaker 1: not with like the messy like every single time they
Speaker 1: went to the holiday something completely terrible happened and that
Speaker 1: moriarity took over the ship and whatever. So so without
Speaker 1: without that part. Um. But historically speaking, this has been
Speaker 1: in the works for for a really long time or
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, a relatively long time since the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties anyway, And um okay, so so the very
Speaker 1: first kind of example that we have of anything even
Speaker 1: vaguely like this is um Morton Helligs or Helix I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Um Sinsarama, which was in nineteen sixty was a stereoscopic
Speaker 1: um head mounted display that also involved like fans and
Speaker 1: and and sent squirters and and stereo speakers and any
Speaker 1: moving chair um, which overall sounds completely miserable to me personally,
Speaker 1: although I've been on some rides at like Disney and
Speaker 1: Universal Studios. That's seem a little bit similar. But I
Speaker 1: can imagine that in nineteen sixty this wasn't actually an
Speaker 1: extraordinarily pleasant experience. You know, in nineteen sixty there were
Speaker 1: a lot of bad movies out there in gimmicks like
Speaker 1: three d oh. Yeah, they could really pull you in.
Speaker 1: And I guess this is just like the ultimate gimmick
Speaker 1: for the sensory experience of the movie. And I'm picturing
Speaker 1: like a film, probably not quite to the high quality
Speaker 1: of Incident Price's work that that would have just just
Speaker 1: been I don't know, like giant spiders. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what giant spiders smell like, but it was probably very particular.
Speaker 1: They smell like watermelons. Actually really science fact not really.
Speaker 1: Um now, okay, so so the first, um, the first
Speaker 1: real head mounted display was created in nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: by phil Co Corporation. That was called the head Site.
Speaker 1: And this was a video feed only. Yeah, head Site.
Speaker 1: These names are only going to get more closed, um
Speaker 1: And this was this was video it wasn't computer generated,
Speaker 1: so so it was hooked up to a camera and
Speaker 1: you could use it like in dangerous situations where you
Speaker 1: want to send a camera instead of a person and
Speaker 1: UM and people could use that camera to look around
Speaker 1: or or if you hooked it up to and like
Speaker 1: infrared camera feed on the bottom of a helicopter, the
Speaker 1: pilot could use that to look around and figure out
Speaker 1: what was going on. UM and UH. Later on in
Speaker 1: the sixties, we started getting the concepts for what we
Speaker 1: think of as being VR today and and that's that's
Speaker 1: a computer generated image that is being fed through a
Speaker 1: headset UM you know, hypothetically uh tethered to a you know,
Speaker 1: tethered physically to a giant computer and hypothetically with some
Speaker 1: kind of motion tracking in the headset. But he never
Speaker 1: the guy creating this U Ivan Sutherland at the time,
Speaker 1: did not come up with anything vaguely close to that
Speaker 1: in in like physical prototype. I don't think it would
Speaker 1: take another couple of decades and involvement from like NASA
Speaker 1: and the Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation
Speaker 1: and the CIA before we started getting UM kind of
Speaker 1: industrial use virtual reality stuff to help train astronauts for
Speaker 1: spacewalks and uh a flight and vehicle sim kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until four that a guy named Michael
Speaker 1: McGreevy started experimenting with using this kind of technology as
Speaker 1: a computer interface, which is what we're really talking about
Speaker 1: when we're talking about video games and and virtual reality,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what we're going to move into
Speaker 1: in the second half of this podcast. So uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't you know that that fascinates me that
Speaker 1: we had had this kind of concept for a really
Speaker 1: long time. It was never called virtual reality until after
Speaker 1: all of that in seven when Jaren Lanier coined the term.
Speaker 1: But but, and and and that's I think when the
Speaker 1: media finally picked up on the fact that this existed.
Speaker 1: And then all those all those horrible virtual reality movies.
Speaker 1: What were some of them? We were talking right before
Speaker 1: the podcast about virtuosity, which I hadn't even thought about
Speaker 1: in decades. That was tiny, cheepy wrestle crow. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he plays when he's like a digital serial killer
Speaker 1: and some police training module. He like escapes into the
Speaker 1: real world, you know, struts around. I'll staying alive place
Speaker 1: behind them. Of course he's gonna, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: kill people with pixels. I don't remember what he did.
Speaker 1: I do not I write. I think I've blocked this
Speaker 1: to that just he just like walks up to you
Speaker 1: and gives you the blue screen of death. Oh no, um,
Speaker 1: it's strange days. I guess it's kind of similar to that.
Speaker 1: I'm a much a much better version of virtual reality,
Speaker 1: aside from the kind of terrible part of it. Um or,
Speaker 1: I guess, well, it's into virtual memories. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that counts or not. I know,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of these movies. Of course, lawnmower Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Oh yeah, yeah, lawnmower Man. You gotta
Speaker 1: go with what a horrible movie. And sequels there was
Speaker 1: there was at least one sequel to that involved. Well,
Speaker 1: so the media and movies and everything really took this
Speaker 1: concept of virtual reality and ran with it. And we're
Speaker 1: still suffering from that today. The fact that this technology
Speaker 1: just got horribly, horribly overhyped. Well, yeah, I mean because
Speaker 1: the computer processing, we're still catching up to a point
Speaker 1: where we can create a headset that's that's going to
Speaker 1: be convincingly real looking from you know, and and hey,
Speaker 1: computers have developed a lot in the past couple of decades,
Speaker 1: and we're still kind of like almost there, but not quite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to mention just graphics bect then we're terrible. And
Speaker 1: and the expectation I think was immediately that it's going
Speaker 1: to look like um, like high quality video or something
Speaker 1: like that, We're just like real life. Uh. It was insanity.
Speaker 1: And and then when people really got to experience what
Speaker 1: we were talking about with through something like virtual Boy, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is it wasn't even really virtual reality. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if they did what I did and then went
Speaker 1: to some tent where they had a virtual reality station
Speaker 1: set up, it had to be massively dis pointing, like
Speaker 1: it could not have competed with what you saw in
Speaker 1: the movies and what you assumed when you heard some
Speaker 1: news story about it or whatever. Um. And and so
Speaker 1: I think virtual reality is uh still suffering from this.
Speaker 1: It was this big calamity of over hype and underperformance
Speaker 1: of the hardware and and just nothing really cool about it.
Speaker 1: And now when you think of that, or at least
Speaker 1: when I think of it, I just grown like like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't even talk to me about virtual reality. So virtual
Speaker 1: reality is dead, right, Oh yeah, totally dead. That's absolutely
Speaker 1: why the Oculus rift raised two million, four hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty seven thousand, four hundred and twenty nine dollars in
Speaker 1: their Kickstarter campaign at the end of Big Surprise. Actually,
Speaker 1: the cool thing is that while everybody was so over
Speaker 1: virtual reality, it was actually getting good and okay. So
Speaker 1: so Palmer luck Key is the guy who, um kind
Speaker 1: of originally created the idea for the Oculus Rift. He
Speaker 1: was working at the time with a virtual reality exposure
Speaker 1: therapy program that helps veterans with PTSD. Yeah and um,
Speaker 1: but but those are those are huge expensive machines, and
Speaker 1: he was a hobbyist who kind of wanted something that
Speaker 1: didn't cost you know, a thousand, five hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: play with on his own. Um. He he really couldn't
Speaker 1: find anything out there in the wild that was going
Speaker 1: to be anything like that, so he decided to to
Speaker 1: kind of start putting something like that together for himself,
Speaker 1: and and it really captured the public's imagination. This this
Speaker 1: stuff isn't out yet, but they've raised some like sixteen
Speaker 1: million in private funding and all kinds of crazy stuff
Speaker 1: because up until now, up to and including now, real
Speaker 1: virtual reality systems are kind of these weird like like
Speaker 1: glattos looking things, I mean, like like it's it's tethered
Speaker 1: to a huge computer. It's usually a headset that's so
Speaker 1: heavy and bulky that your your neck wood snap if
Speaker 1: you tried to wear it and turn your head around.
Speaker 1: So so it's it's on a suspension. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: really not It's really not cool or pretty or portable
Speaker 1: or or inexpensive in any way. Um. You know though,
Speaker 1: though these things do exist, like you know, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to specify that that that's absolutely a
Speaker 1: real thing. Um. But you know, why would why would
Speaker 1: we want this for video gaming? Why would we want
Speaker 1: to take this out of the laboratory, um and and
Speaker 1: out of the kind of glado setting and and turn
Speaker 1: it into a video game. Well I've got a theory
Speaker 1: about that actually. Yeah. Um, so, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've read about the ideas of connecting video games with
Speaker 1: the concept in positive psychology of flow. Have you heard
Speaker 1: of this? Uh? Not really explained to me. Okay, So
Speaker 1: flow is a really interesting concept and it comes from
Speaker 1: this uh psychologist named and I hope I'm doing this
Speaker 1: right me Hi chick sent me hi. Um it sounds
Speaker 1: sounds good to me. Yeah, he ain't from around here.
Speaker 1: Apologies if that's incorrect. Yeah, but he uh, so he
Speaker 1: comes up with this idea that is, hey, there seems
Speaker 1: to be this really really pleasurable state that people can
Speaker 1: get themselves into. And you can sort of imagine it
Speaker 1: if you imagine like an X Y graph. So you
Speaker 1: look at it and you imagine the X axis is,
Speaker 1: um a person's level of skill, Okay, okay, and then
Speaker 1: you look at the Y axis and that is the
Speaker 1: challenge of a task. Okay. This is actually a problem
Speaker 1: that I have frequently when I play video games, because
Speaker 1: I am I kind of want to get to the
Speaker 1: next story point, but sometimes I get very frustrated with
Speaker 1: the technical ability that it's it's making me perform in
Speaker 1: button combinations and whatever. Yeah, well, in that case, that
Speaker 1: game might not be optimized for flow for or at
Speaker 1: least you might not be playing it at the right
Speaker 1: difficulty or something like that. But um so there are
Speaker 1: different regions of this graph, right if you can imagine
Speaker 1: different tasks, Like if you're down here at the bottom
Speaker 1: on both that that just seems like a really boring area,
Speaker 1: like nothing's difficult and you're not good at anything, you know.
Speaker 1: Um And meanwhile, if you if you go over, say
Speaker 1: like you're doing something that is not very challenging, but
Speaker 1: you're really good at it. Well, that can be easy,
Speaker 1: but it's not super engaging, right, You're not really you're
Speaker 1: you're not teasing your brain, you're not learning and growing. So, uh,
Speaker 1: if you go say like really high on the Y
Speaker 1: axis but not far on the X axis, that's like
Speaker 1: a state of of of problems of nervousness and anxiety.
Speaker 1: You're not adequate and you can't do what you need
Speaker 1: to do. Um. So that's a really uncomfortable place to
Speaker 1: be in. But imagine you're you're up at performing very
Speaker 1: high on on both axis. You're doing something that is
Speaker 1: at the peak of challenge and your peak of skill,
Speaker 1: and so you're rocking out something that's really hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have phrased this is like getting
Speaker 1: in the zone, you know, or or being on a role.
Speaker 1: It's when you're fully engaged in a task that is
Speaker 1: consuming all of your mind. You're putting yourself fully into it,
Speaker 1: you're getting immediate feedback, and you're doing it well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of people talk about flow in
Speaker 1: other contexts, like say artistic work. Like if you're a
Speaker 1: writer and you suddenly you get a burst of energy
Speaker 1: and you're just writing and you're going you know, or
Speaker 1: if you're a painter or a musician, I imagine like
Speaker 1: if you're say a jazz guitar player and you're you're
Speaker 1: improvising and you're having a you know, a great session
Speaker 1: with some some other players. Um, you can be in
Speaker 1: that zone where what you're doing is at the peak
Speaker 1: of your skill and you're doing it very well and
Speaker 1: you're fully immersed in it. But apparently your reason people
Speaker 1: play video games is that video games are very good
Speaker 1: at encouraging a state of flow where there's a task,
Speaker 1: where the goals are clear. Um, it fully engages your attention,
Speaker 1: it takes it's somewhat difficult, so it takes skill to
Speaker 1: do it, and it's something that you can do yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so and it and it provides sort of like
Speaker 1: a rhythm of rewards and feedback on your performance. It's
Speaker 1: a steady incremental accomplishment. This is what makes video games
Speaker 1: really fun. In my opinion, And I'm obviously I'm this
Speaker 1: idea doesn't come from me. Other people suggested it, but
Speaker 1: but I think I agree with it. Oh absolutely, I
Speaker 1: think that's that's why they can get you know, pretty
Speaker 1: pretty addicting sometimes, right. But so there are a couple
Speaker 1: of problems with video games that that can interrupt this
Speaker 1: experience of flow. One of them is um distraction. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, if you're if you're playing on a
Speaker 1: TV screen across the room, other things in the room
Speaker 1: can get your attention enough if the dog walks in
Speaker 1: front of the screen, or if um if if screen
Speaker 1: quality is poor, and or if you're getting a reflection
Speaker 1: of from it from a light behind, or just the
Speaker 1: simple sort of ambient awareness that you're using a TV
Speaker 1: across the room, you know what I mean, sure that
Speaker 1: that you're not really in the terrible town of Silent Hill,
Speaker 1: and that that well, I mean, in that case, actually
Speaker 1: that would that's pretty pretty much good for me. I'm
Speaker 1: fine with having that level of awareness. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is that you're aware of your tools, and
Speaker 1: so you're aware that you're holding a controller at least
Speaker 1: in some ambient sense. You're low level awareness of this.
Speaker 1: You're manipulating buttons to do what you need to do,
Speaker 1: but you're not moving that you're that you're manipulating something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not as it's not as natural as maybe say
Speaker 1: like playing a sport where you're just using your body
Speaker 1: in kind of like full immersed involvement in the task,
Speaker 1: which for for most people in most situations is is
Speaker 1: a very extremely fluid, very quick moving um electrical nervous
Speaker 1: reaction that is about as good as we get at stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but wouldn't it be great if you could create some
Speaker 1: kind of video game system that is a total limitation
Speaker 1: on distractions so you have full sensory immersion in it
Speaker 1: to take that distraction element out, and it engages your
Speaker 1: body as directly as possible so that you're not aware
Speaker 1: of the tools you're using to participate in this world. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you put it that way, sign me up for
Speaker 1: like lawn mower man stuff that sounds that sounds great,
Speaker 1: exactly so, And I think that's sort of one of
Speaker 1: the promises of virtual reality is that in some ways
Speaker 1: it can help you lock into this state of even
Speaker 1: deeper because of of those things that it limits your
Speaker 1: awareness of the tools. If it's good, that's the big qualification.
Speaker 1: Now I'd imagine that bad VR is actually even worse
Speaker 1: than a normal video game because you're hyper aware of
Speaker 1: the tools because they're making you nauseous. Excuse me, nause
Speaker 1: ad nauseated? Yes, well, I mean they might make you
Speaker 1: nauseous as well. If I don't know, somebody's watching you
Speaker 1: smell really bad or something. I'm not sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how that would work out. But but do you
Speaker 1: see what I'm saying there? Like, the virtual reality has
Speaker 1: to be extremely good I think before these benefits start
Speaker 1: to become manifest right. So okay, so so what are
Speaker 1: we talking about when we're talking about VR VR equipment
Speaker 1: being really good? Uh? I want to offer up one
Speaker 1: thing that I think is one of the most important,
Speaker 1: which is the low latency effect. So latency is it
Speaker 1: shows up when so you imagine you're wearing a VR
Speaker 1: headset and it is displaying to your eyes what you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be looking at. And ideally what it should
Speaker 1: do is track your head so that when you turn
Speaker 1: your head, it's just as if you were turning your
Speaker 1: head in real life. Right, it renders out the image
Speaker 1: that's that's over to your right or over to your
Speaker 1: left or above or whatever, so that as you move
Speaker 1: hypothetically instantaneously or near instantaneously. But um, yeah, but the
Speaker 1: problem is that this this is like massively process or
Speaker 1: intensive right to track you like this, and that if
Speaker 1: you move quickly, I mean just you're you're creating a
Speaker 1: problem there that if you move your head too fast,
Speaker 1: how's it going to keep up? Um, your eyes don't
Speaker 1: really have a problem with this usually, but it can
Speaker 1: be really unpleasant to wear a headset and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to turn and you see frames dragging lagging behind. That
Speaker 1: just gave me like physical shivers. That sounds so incredibly
Speaker 1: not fun. I'm sure. Yeah, it's just headaches and nausea
Speaker 1: and you want to take it off. So in order
Speaker 1: to have a really good VR experience, you've got to
Speaker 1: get that latency level down. And this is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest hurdles, right because the human the human brain
Speaker 1: actually processes things a little bit faster than we can
Speaker 1: see than we tend to fill in blanks. Um really
Speaker 1: before we get to to to the next thing, that's
Speaker 1: that's in the corner of our vision. And uh and
Speaker 1: and what it equals out too, is that that really
Speaker 1: any anything more than a fifty millisecond difference in in
Speaker 1: latency is going to be problematic. It's it's it's noticeable. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so I read an interesting article from this July from
Speaker 1: the computer scientists and roboticist Steve Laval. Yeah, he's actually
Speaker 1: one of the kids working with Occulus Rift right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so what he said is basically that sixty milliseconds
Speaker 1: of latency is the considered the upper limit most of
Speaker 1: the time, but that he himself notices a lag effect
Speaker 1: when latency is greater than forty milliseconds um, and so
Speaker 1: that's difficult. Uh. He actually he cites the work of
Speaker 1: Michael A Brash. A Brash, I'm not sure how to
Speaker 1: pronounce that. Ah, yeah, he works for he works for Valve.
Speaker 1: I I think he might also be he's been involved
Speaker 1: with Oculus a little bit, but I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: he's actually on the team or not. Yeah, but a
Speaker 1: Brash claims that VR developers really should aim for seven
Speaker 1: to fifteen milliseconds just to be safe. Um, so where
Speaker 1: are we today? Well, um, here's a here's a quote
Speaker 1: from Laval's article. Basically, what he says is that a
Speaker 1: game running at sixty frames uh four, game running at
Speaker 1: sixty frames per second, the latency when using the Oculus
Speaker 1: RIFTED development kit is typically in the range of thirty
Speaker 1: milliseconds to fifty milliseconds um, including time for sensing, data
Speaker 1: arrival over USB sinsor function, game simulation, rendering, and video output.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of work and the computers having to do.
Speaker 1: I mean that's not bad. I mean that's that's faster
Speaker 1: than I can do those calculations personally, So I'm pretty impressed.
Speaker 1: But um, And then he points out that, uh, basically
Speaker 1: that other things can drive the latency up even more,
Speaker 1: but still that latency is a lot better than it
Speaker 1: used to be now. He also mentions the interesting innovation
Speaker 1: of predictive tracking, which what that would do is it
Speaker 1: would measure the angular acceleration of your head and it
Speaker 1: would try to predict actually the next frame instead of
Speaker 1: just waiting to see what you do and then showing
Speaker 1: you start rendering out stuff that it suspects that you're
Speaker 1: going to be looking at next, and so if you
Speaker 1: start to turn your head, it says, well, you're probably
Speaker 1: going to turn it about this far, and I know
Speaker 1: that the next frame I should serve you is this um.
Speaker 1: And so current algorithms can they can already predict like
Speaker 1: forty two uh sorry, twenty to forty milliseconds into the
Speaker 1: future with good accuracy. Um, and that could in theory
Speaker 1: cut down on the perceived latency to the user to
Speaker 1: less than twenty milliseconds, and that's really good. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But so the oculus rift is sort of where it's
Speaker 1: at today in terms of VR technology, and they're basically
Speaker 1: the only um you know, like I said, they're still
Speaker 1: in development, but but the only proposed consumer level I
Speaker 1: mean that they're pricing is looking at like something like
Speaker 1: three dollars when it finally does come out of development,
Speaker 1: which is nothing for for a virtual reality heads. Where
Speaker 1: did they? Where did they come from? Like I just
Speaker 1: became aware of them when suddenly they were a huge success. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so this this fellow Palmer Lucky who I mentioned
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier in the podcast, who's like twenty
Speaker 1: or twenty one years old right now. UM, it's pretty annoying, right, UM. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think I think he probably has because because he
Speaker 1: was a huge VR hobbyist. UM went around the age
Speaker 1: of like sixteen or so, he got really into virtual
Speaker 1: reality equipment as a hobby and UM decided in to
Speaker 1: launch a Kickstarter for a d I Y kit and
Speaker 1: he was aiming to make like a hundred of these
Speaker 1: things to be sold to other hobbyists. Um, but uh,
Speaker 1: he got the attention through this of John Carmack, who
Speaker 1: you know, who's the co founder of ID software, like
Speaker 1: lead programmer on like Wolfenstein three D and Doom in
Speaker 1: the Quake series, like kind of big important dude and
Speaker 1: video games. Um and and and John Carmack asked for
Speaker 1: a prototype, and Palmer Lucky was like, yes, please take
Speaker 1: a prototype, sir, thank you. Um and Karmack just ran
Speaker 1: with it. He demoed it with Doom three at three
Speaker 1: and um it exploded in the press. Um. Valve got
Speaker 1: ahold of a prototype as well, and Gabe Newell and
Speaker 1: Michael A. Brash agreed to appear in the kickstarter video
Speaker 1: because just everyone was so kind of enchanted and and
Speaker 1: uh odd by the fact that that this kid was
Speaker 1: putting this thing together. Um. So so yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked a little bit about what it does
Speaker 1: to solve some of the classic virtual reality problems. But um,
Speaker 1: but the the headset itself is you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a head mounted display. You can wear it. It's
Speaker 1: it's light enough for a person to wear. It's got
Speaker 1: these two LCD screens that that sit an inch or
Speaker 1: so away from the user's eyes, and they render the
Speaker 1: image out from slightly different angles. UM, and also kind
Speaker 1: of put the images through this this warp filter around
Speaker 1: the edges and then correct it partially with lenses that
Speaker 1: are directly in the headset. And furthermore, uh, pack the
Speaker 1: screens pixels more tightly in the center of view than
Speaker 1: on the edges. And all of this really replicates the
Speaker 1: you know, how human eyeballs, how round, imperfect, weird human
Speaker 1: eyeballs see stuff. And and then yeah, and then you've
Speaker 1: you've got the stuff that we were talking about. And
Speaker 1: in these accelerometers that are detecting pitch yawn role and
Speaker 1: they're furthermore and even cooler starting to work on gays tracking. UM,
Speaker 1: so that so that not only the motion of your
Speaker 1: head but also the motion of your eyes will help
Speaker 1: this computer start to figure out where you're going to
Speaker 1: look next and what it needs to render. So it's
Speaker 1: in it's in development right now. UM. A lot of
Speaker 1: people are playing around with it, and and it's it's exciting.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really you know, they still don't have a
Speaker 1: release date, but uh, I think I think that that
Speaker 1: even beyond video games, that could have some really wonderful applications. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So okay, so the Oculus Rift kind of has a
Speaker 1: lock on the VR headset market these days right now
Speaker 1: there where it's at, and it's pretty from what I've
Speaker 1: never used one, but I've read accounts online and I've
Speaker 1: watched your videos of people using them, and it's hilarious
Speaker 1: because they're just overwhelmed. Yeah, people say this thing is
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah yeah, I mean everyone, and it works.
Speaker 1: Of course, it works best if you've got stereoscopic vision,
Speaker 1: but um, but you can you can use it if
Speaker 1: you if you only have one eye too. I mean,
Speaker 1: it'll be a little bit flatter, and I've I've heard
Speaker 1: that it's um, perhaps a little bit more potentially nauseating,
Speaker 1: but but but not but not really discernibly, I mean
Speaker 1: not so much that you've that the people who are
Speaker 1: playing with it would have wanted to put it down. Um. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so we're kind of dealing with the first thing there
Speaker 1: is that that sensory control, like total sensory immersion. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course the sound has to be good too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's still working within existing game consoles. They're
Speaker 1: they're really planning on releasing this as a peripheral to
Speaker 1: work with any game console and so you know, you'd
Speaker 1: be working with whatever controller that game at any particular
Speaker 1: game has been designed for. So there's less of what's
Speaker 1: called the merging of action and awareness with that, right,
Speaker 1: because if you're still using these tools that you have
Speaker 1: to be aware of as as tools and you're not
Speaker 1: engaging your whole body in the same way, that that's
Speaker 1: not quite that total level of immersion that we would
Speaker 1: like to go for. It's not, although it will get
Speaker 1: better when you start using, um using things like a
Speaker 1: like a like a remote or um, you know what,
Speaker 1: one of those wands or the connect. The connect could
Speaker 1: be a terrific addition for this. Yeah. Or if you
Speaker 1: if you go with like the nineties movies, you've probably
Speaker 1: got like gloves, right, like VR gloves. You just put
Speaker 1: these things on. They look like like chain mail or something,
Speaker 1: and I mean one can only hope that they're like
Speaker 1: covered in like in like fox skeleton bones or something.
Speaker 1: They give you a virtual Freddy Krueger hands whatever it is. Um. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's that option, And but I want to talk
Speaker 1: about something that I think is really ambitious and cool,
Speaker 1: which is total body movement virtual reality. Okay, so how
Speaker 1: does how does this work? Well? Uh, the first one
Speaker 1: I want to throw out there, I'm not really going
Speaker 1: to talk about this much, but the Virtue Spear, which
Speaker 1: is essentially a VR hamster ball. It's a big sphere
Speaker 1: you go inside and you run like a hamster and
Speaker 1: there you go, and you're and you're wearing like big
Speaker 1: clunky goggles and and I all of the photos that
Speaker 1: I've seen of this thing, it does not help that
Speaker 1: the that the very nice um uh participant using it was,
Speaker 1: you know, like some nice gentleman from the early eighties
Speaker 1: with like a terrible mustache, and and it's I'm just
Speaker 1: it doesn't really look sexy, is all I'm saying. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: another option one that actually this is also caught on
Speaker 1: on Kickstarter VR treadmills, like the Virtue x Omni VR
Speaker 1: treadmill VR treadmills. I'm picturing something like a like like
Speaker 1: that run zombies and kind of app except except on
Speaker 1: a treadmill and you can see the zombies. Well it's
Speaker 1: not like a straight treadmill. Actually, these are omnidirectional treadmill.
Speaker 1: So what it is is It's like, imagine you're kind
Speaker 1: of in this weird cylinder thing that's got a rail
Speaker 1: on it to keep you from falling out, and then
Speaker 1: you wear special shoes that interact with the floor of
Speaker 1: the treadmill and basically you walk. You slide as you walk,
Speaker 1: so you're you're walking, You're using your whole body on this,
Speaker 1: but the apparatus keeps you in place as you go. Um,
Speaker 1: and this allows you to use your legs to move
Speaker 1: throughout a game environment. I have some pies of it
Speaker 1: where people are running through playing some first person shooter
Speaker 1: and their movement in the game is based on the running,
Speaker 1: which is amazing to me because, boy, you can get
Speaker 1: some exercise this way. Yeah. I was about to say
Speaker 1: that's a little bit terrifying for me personally, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I would be really bad at Halo if I had
Speaker 1: to run, or maybe you just be better at running.
Speaker 1: Maybe I would be better at running, but it probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't be exactly the same as like actual running, but
Speaker 1: you'd still be like engaging your muscles in one way
Speaker 1: or another, even if it's kind of a natural. But um,
Speaker 1: obviously what you'd be going for is the most fluid
Speaker 1: and natural experience possible to try to get this thing
Speaker 1: yet again, to to make you less aware of the
Speaker 1: tools you're using, to sort of engage your body naturally,
Speaker 1: to make you feel at one with the task you're doing. Sure, okay,
Speaker 1: do they have anything that's approaching that that star trek
Speaker 1: holidect of of just being able to move around in
Speaker 1: a free space. Well, there is the Oh, there's the
Speaker 1: Cave thing, the Cave program, right right, Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: so the University of Illinois and Chicago designed this UM.
Speaker 1: This it's a CAVE stands for Cave Automatic Virtual Environments UM,
Speaker 1: which is also abbreviated to CAVE. I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: why cave isn't the title, and that's the anyway, UM,
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's a room that uses rear projection
Speaker 1: tech to project on on all six surfaces that the
Speaker 1: floor of the ceiling, in the four walls, and so
Speaker 1: you can hypothetically, i mean, especially now that we've got
Speaker 1: fancy um uh, you know, infrared motion tracking kind of
Speaker 1: connect sort of stuff. You can you can track a
Speaker 1: person's motion in the room, and if you've got really
Speaker 1: good computers hooked up to it, let them look around
Speaker 1: a virtual environment. But that's still I mean that's not
Speaker 1: really immersive. I mean it's on a wall. I think
Speaker 1: that probably at a certain point it's not fooling you
Speaker 1: a whole lot. Yeah it sounds cool. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: totally cool. I mean, if anyone wants to invite me
Speaker 1: to come over and play with their incredibly expensive your
Speaker 1: projection room, then I'll do that. Yeah. How about Project
Speaker 1: holid Deck. Have you heard about that? I have not.
Speaker 1: What's that about? Well? Okay, so Project Holidayck is Uh,
Speaker 1: it's this virtual reality project set up out of the
Speaker 1: USC Games program. Okay, and basically what they're going for
Speaker 1: is three D full body virtual reality. Alright. UM, so
Speaker 1: imagine to set up like this, You've got this place
Speaker 1: space area, so it's a flat floor area, and you've
Speaker 1: got players within it, and what they wear is a
Speaker 1: headset and that would be an Oculus Rift that's what
Speaker 1: they use. Um. They also use a PlayStation move to
Speaker 1: provide head tracking data to interface with the headset. Uh.
Speaker 1: They use PlayStation eye cameras to track movement of the
Speaker 1: PlayStation move wand within the play space. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: they've got hand controllers, which are the six sense razor
Speaker 1: Hydras and then what you do is you become an autonomous,
Speaker 1: free moving agent within a virtual space while you move
Speaker 1: about in an actual space. Alright, So so depending on
Speaker 1: the size of the room, that's going to limit the
Speaker 1: type of game that you can play. Yeah, well it's
Speaker 1: mostly it's going to be limited by the field of
Speaker 1: the tracking cameras that you're using to keep track of
Speaker 1: your position. But so the way I saw this working
Speaker 1: was it was a couple of guys and they were
Speaker 1: um playing a game in this space, but what was
Speaker 1: going on in the screen was they were playing game
Speaker 1: where they were manning the battle stations of a virtual airship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're on this airship and to say they're like cannons,
Speaker 1: and then you've got to run over here and say,
Speaker 1: you've got like a you're sort of like a swashbuckler.
Speaker 1: So you've got maybe like a pistol and a sword,
Speaker 1: and you use these wands to control those things. But
Speaker 1: you also moved to the stations and you are moving
Speaker 1: about freely. And what it and the game actually the
Speaker 1: hardware tracks your movement in the real world and takes
Speaker 1: you from station to station wherever you go, and so
Speaker 1: your movement in the real world is mirrored by your
Speaker 1: movement in the game, So that's pretty cool. But the
Speaker 1: point you bring up is a good one. The space
Speaker 1: is limited, so it doesn't mean you can run around anywhere.
Speaker 1: You'll notice, like the the way that game is structured,
Speaker 1: it's like you're on the deck of an airship, so
Speaker 1: it sort of limits. Like it's sort of like those
Speaker 1: old rail shooter games. Kids. Yeah, you're you're not gonna
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to set a game up
Speaker 1: like that and and have um, you know, you can't
Speaker 1: play Madden and that experience or I mean it or
Speaker 1: it would be a really short game of can't keep running, right,
Speaker 1: But you know, if if you're exploring a house, um,
Speaker 1: then you could totally do that in that kind of environment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, now I could. I imagine you could move
Speaker 1: sort of room to room with this if you just
Speaker 1: suspend disbelief for a moment, like you moved to the
Speaker 1: edge and it's like you're in this room. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you'd have freedom of movement within that room. Still,
Speaker 1: I think that's really cool. What they're going for is
Speaker 1: that you know, you are a self contained, moving entity
Speaker 1: in this virtual world. And you're really moving. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: like it. I like the idea, and I like where
Speaker 1: they're going with it. Um. So, so where where else
Speaker 1: do we think this is going? I mean, well, I
Speaker 1: have a question about so. Obviously, I think the cool
Speaker 1: thing is that virtual reality is actually getting good now,
Speaker 1: right that we have the computer processing power and furthermore,
Speaker 1: just the like the clear public interest. Yeah. Um, and
Speaker 1: so that's novel, you know, it's not just type. It's
Speaker 1: actually I think now like the media sort of under
Speaker 1: hyping it because they've been burned, but the horrible VR
Speaker 1: hype of the nineties. Uh, and they might not even
Speaker 1: be realizing how cool the oculus rift is and and
Speaker 1: all this stuff like that and all its potential. Um.
Speaker 1: But I do have a question like is this sort
Speaker 1: of thing really going to show up in the average
Speaker 1: gamers home. I mean, you might go out and buy
Speaker 1: a PlayStation or an Xbox or a we um, but
Speaker 1: are you really going to buy VR hardware for your house? Especially?
Speaker 1: I wonder that if if you're you're trying to incorporate
Speaker 1: full body movement, say with like an omnidirectional treadmill or
Speaker 1: an open space sort of three D free play zone,
Speaker 1: I don't know how that's going to fit in most
Speaker 1: people's houses or within their budget. Sure, yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're talking about the Oculus Rift being
Speaker 1: a three piece of hardware, but that's not taking into
Speaker 1: consideration that, um, the game develop it meant for that
Speaker 1: kind of thing is probably going to knock the price
Speaker 1: of games up. Um. So you know, and and games
Speaker 1: are already what like six seventy bucks a pop. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so I would say that that's probably going to
Speaker 1: be something for more hardcore gamers and the hobbyists who
Speaker 1: are particularly interested in it, not for the common player yet.
Speaker 1: Or I had another interesting idea this may well you
Speaker 1: will judge if it's interesting. I can't say. Um and
Speaker 1: interesting to me? What if we saw a revival in
Speaker 1: the arcade culture because of virtual reality. I mean, arcades
Speaker 1: used to be a cool You'd go there, you'd play
Speaker 1: the big, you know, huge sure sure games that you
Speaker 1: couldn't get a hold of or couldn't afford. You know,
Speaker 1: you could put up a quarter on the machine, but
Speaker 1: you weren't gonna be able to to go get your own.
Speaker 1: Yeah whatever, there's not really much of that left today.
Speaker 1: If there is it's it's mostly a kind of I
Speaker 1: think nostalgic or retro or or something so so outlandish,
Speaker 1: like a like they never really got Dance Dance Revolution
Speaker 1: up to a point where it was very playable at home,
Speaker 1: so right, so something niche like that. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: imagine VR arcades becoming a thing. Like you and your
Speaker 1: friends go out, you pay, you split the tab for
Speaker 1: two hours of VR space time, and you do something
Speaker 1: like this. You you say, you play with the group
Speaker 1: in a free play zone with total body movement, or
Speaker 1: you each get to use your your VR treadmills, and
Speaker 1: you know, you like you combine your your exercise time
Speaker 1: with your friends, you know, with your shoot him up
Speaker 1: time with whatever it is you're playing. I mean, I
Speaker 1: still very occasionally go out to laser tags, So I
Speaker 1: can totally see that, see that becoming a thing. Um So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think that that actually be kind
Speaker 1: of cool, that that idea seems fun to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and either way, you know, whether whether this really
Speaker 1: picks up as as a video game movement or not,
Speaker 1: the fact that I mean this this has tremendous applications
Speaker 1: and in medicine and industry. Um, Yeah, we haven't even
Speaker 1: talked about like the real stuff you can do with
Speaker 1: VR that's not just games. Yeah, because I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a terrific toy, but I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's like we're talking about earlier. NASA has been using
Speaker 1: virtual reality to train its astronauts on space walks for
Speaker 1: for a couple of decades, because I mean, as much
Speaker 1: as you can put someone in a space suit underwater,
Speaker 1: there's really only so much of of of the realism
Speaker 1: of space that you can transmit through that kind of experience.
Speaker 1: Um And also on the I talked about UM that
Speaker 1: psychological therapy UH center that that Palmer Lucky you worked in,
Speaker 1: where you know you can you can genuinely help people
Speaker 1: who've got um you know, some some kind of major
Speaker 1: fear about something get over that. And that's that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Um Or training training doctors for for surgery something like that,
Speaker 1: if if they can, if they feel like they're working
Speaker 1: on a patient, but they don't have to actually experiment
Speaker 1: on a patient, then that's pretty cool. Um Or. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been reading some things about some industrial applications, like
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you create a virtual model
Speaker 1: of a car or a building. Then you can you
Speaker 1: can walk around and it see how it's functioning. See um,
Speaker 1: see whether it's working or not without having to actually
Speaker 1: build something really expensive and potentially full of fail Yeah
Speaker 1: in architecture, I guess sure. Yeah yeah or um. Cannon
Speaker 1: actually put out a industry level virtual reality augmented reality
Speaker 1: headset this year that has like a hundred dollar price tag,
Speaker 1: but is pretty useful for for people who want to
Speaker 1: get that that sense of how an object works in
Speaker 1: virtual space without having to you know, so that so
Speaker 1: that you can just create the computer model of it
Speaker 1: and get a really good look at it without having
Speaker 1: to to build it first. That's awesome. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think that just about wraps us up for today. Uh.
Speaker 1: I have enjoyed talking about virtual reality number one because
Speaker 1: of how horrible it was, and number two, how big
Speaker 1: of an upset this is that it's finally cool. Yeah
Speaker 1: that that that's when something has been that far down,
Speaker 1: it's it's even more beautiful when it comes this far up.
Speaker 1: I really want to use an Oculus rift. I haven't
Speaker 1: an I would love to get that opportunity. So hey,
Speaker 1: if y'all are listening, hook me up. Find me put
Speaker 1: face any out there, anyone out there who's a developer,
Speaker 1: let us know. Okay, well that does it for today. UM.
Speaker 1: If you all want to read more, you can go
Speaker 1: to f w thinking dot com where we've got videos, podcasts,
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Speaker 1: media on Facebook and Twitter. UM. We look forward to
Speaker 1: hearing from you and we will talk to you again
Speaker 1: in the future. For more on this topic in the
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