Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are You? And as the poets of Stained once said,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I did an episode dedicated
Speaker 1: to virtual reality, but I thought it would do one
Speaker 1: this week because I actually saw a cool video that
Speaker 1: showed Disney imagineer and now Inventor Hall of Famer Lanny
Speaker 1: Smoot show off an invention called the hollow tile floor,
Speaker 1: which could, among other things, potentially provide a solution for
Speaker 1: folks who want to explore a virtual space while simultaneously
Speaker 1: moving around their very real, you know, physical environments with
Speaker 1: their actual physical bodies here in the real world, you know,
Speaker 1: without bumping into things. And that prompted me to think
Speaker 1: of the challenges that inventors face when designing those kinds
Speaker 1: of systems. But let's lay it out. Even though some
Speaker 1: of this is pretty obvious stuff. As I'm sure all
Speaker 1: of you know, virtual reality is on one end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum of mixed reality. So with virtual reality, you
Speaker 1: have replaced some or maybe even all, sensory input from
Speaker 1: the real world with computer generated material instead. So it's
Speaker 1: possible that with a VR system you could have all
Speaker 1: visual and audio data provided by computers, but you might
Speaker 1: also have other stuff too. A computer might control a
Speaker 1: selection of fans to blow air at you to simulate
Speaker 1: wind or you know, rushing air if you're flying, or
Speaker 1: something like that. You might even have a system that
Speaker 1: releases certain sense, sort of how Disney's soaring over California
Speaker 1: will blast riders with the smell of oranges as you
Speaker 1: appear to fly over a grove of fruit trees. You
Speaker 1: can have haptic feedback systems. These are ones that give
Speaker 1: you some sort of tactile feedback, so you might have
Speaker 1: like a vest that vibrates when you are encountering a
Speaker 1: dangerous situation or something like that. They're all sorts of
Speaker 1: different ways where a computer could provide the sensory input
Speaker 1: that your body normally would get just through navigating through
Speaker 1: a physical space. But the thing to remember is that
Speaker 1: the computer is providing all this input. The computer is
Speaker 1: replacing whatever is actually in your real world environment with
Speaker 1: computer generated alternatives to that, right, and these things can
Speaker 1: be very convincing. People have felt scared or anxious while
Speaker 1: walking up to a virtual cliff side, even though they
Speaker 1: know that in reality they're standing on a solid floor
Speaker 1: in a room. There's no chance of them plummeting off
Speaker 1: the side of a cliff because there's no cliff there.
Speaker 1: But the experience of seeing it in virtual reality can
Speaker 1: still be convincing enough to prompt your body to go
Speaker 1: into a stress response. In fact, it could be so
Speaker 1: convincing that some mental health professionals actually use VR systems
Speaker 1: and scenarios as part of immersion therapy with patients who
Speaker 1: experienced various phobias. I remember interviewing one psychiatrist many years
Speaker 1: ago when I was working on a piece about VR
Speaker 1: in medicine, and this psychiatrist actually used an airport scenario,
Speaker 1: a virtual airport scenario, to help patients who have a
Speaker 1: fear of flying go through a simulated process of going
Speaker 1: to an airport, walking through the airport, making their way
Speaker 1: to the departure gate, all the steps they would actually
Speaker 1: have to do in real life if they were going
Speaker 1: on an airplane trip, and it was all meant to
Speaker 1: kind of gently confess front the experience, and patients would
Speaker 1: report feeling similar sensations of anxiety and fear while they
Speaker 1: were doing so, even though they knew deep down that
Speaker 1: they weren't actually in an airport. But the scenarios gave
Speaker 1: those patients the opportunity to experience these situations in a
Speaker 1: safe and controlled space and gave them confidence to build
Speaker 1: up their tolerance and understanding of the situation so that
Speaker 1: they could ultimately go and do it in the real
Speaker 1: world further down in their therapy. And it was a
Speaker 1: really cool thing to learn about. In many ways, it
Speaker 1: reminds me of how thrill seekers enjoy things like roller coasters, right,
Speaker 1: because roller coasters, assuming that they are properly designed, simulate
Speaker 1: dangerous situations. Right, That's where the thrill comes from. You're
Speaker 1: not in control, You're going along a track at high speeds,
Speaker 1: up and down, maybe in twists and loops, all this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. It simulates being in a dangerous situation,
Speaker 1: and thus it is thrilling, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: we ultimately know, or at least we certainly hope that
Speaker 1: the ride is safe and that we're not in any
Speaker 1: real danger. It's very similar in that regard, But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different challenges that come along with
Speaker 1: virtual reality, and I think That's one of the many
Speaker 1: reasons that virtual reality still isn't as widely adopted as
Speaker 1: you might expect it to be considering how long VR
Speaker 1: has actually been around. For those of you who are
Speaker 1: old enough to remember, you might recall that back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, when VR was first starting to become
Speaker 1: a big deal, that a lot of money was poured
Speaker 1: into research and development, but ultimately it kind of petered out.
Speaker 1: Some folks even opened up VR arcades that gave the
Speaker 1: general public the opportunity to experience it for themselves. In fact,
Speaker 1: I did this. There was a mall that was, you know,
Speaker 1: not too far from where I lived called Gwinet Play Small,
Speaker 1: and they had a little VR arcade. You could go
Speaker 1: there and I think it was like five or ten
Speaker 1: bucks for like five minutes of playtime and you would
Speaker 1: play the game. I remember. It's one that lots of
Speaker 1: people know about from that time period called Dactyl Nightmare,
Speaker 1: and you were fighting against polygonal pterodactyls as well as
Speaker 1: other players while navigating through a very simple geometric space.
Speaker 1: It wasn't terribly compelling from a graphics standpoint, but it
Speaker 1: was really neat to quote unquote inhabit a game. However,
Speaker 1: the limitations like those graphical limitations and the fact that
Speaker 1: you really couldn't do that much in the games. The
Speaker 1: games were pretty darn simple and limited because of how
Speaker 1: much computational processing power was required for it to actually work.
Speaker 1: It meant that people found out that we had a
Speaker 1: really long way to go to make VR what it
Speaker 1: had been kind of hyped up to be. The expectation
Speaker 1: of what VR could do was at a huge gap
Speaker 1: compared to what it could actually do. And you got
Speaker 1: to remember, like there were a lot of limitations. The
Speaker 1: headsets back then were huge, and they were heavy. In fact,
Speaker 1: they were so heavy that most of the time you
Speaker 1: were talking about a headset that would be suspended from
Speaker 1: a frame in the ceiling. The suspension would let you
Speaker 1: turn left or right, so it's not like you were
Speaker 1: stuck in place. You weren't like in a static position.
Speaker 1: You could turn left or right, but you couldn't really
Speaker 1: move forward or backward because you had this harness essentially
Speaker 1: that was carrying much of the weight of the headset.
Speaker 1: If it weren't, then it would be far too heavy
Speaker 1: for you to wear it comfortably, especially for like five
Speaker 1: minutes so in order to keep you in place, you
Speaker 1: also would end up standing on a pedestal that had
Speaker 1: a rail around it at about waste height, and this
Speaker 1: would keep you from toppling off the side right, so
Speaker 1: you could turn left and right, but you couldn't actually
Speaker 1: step forward or backward or anything like that. There were
Speaker 1: other issues too. Some systems struggled with latency. That's the
Speaker 1: delay between when you take in action and when you
Speaker 1: see it reflected on the screen in front of you.
Speaker 1: That delay creates this swimmy effect that for lots of people,
Speaker 1: including me, can lead to motion sickness, and it is
Speaker 1: incredibly unpleasant. So the various limitations sapped away a lot
Speaker 1: of the enthusiasm around VR, and so funding dried up
Speaker 1: not long after that. There were still folks who were
Speaker 1: working in the field of virtual reality, but they really
Speaker 1: had to scramble to get funding in order to push
Speaker 1: research forward. So progress slowed way down because there just
Speaker 1: wasn't enough financial support to keep it going at a
Speaker 1: good pace. But some other tech fields ended up doing
Speaker 1: quite well, and the VR industry would end up taking
Speaker 1: notes essentially scavenging, in order to get things that other
Speaker 1: tech fields had developed and repurposing them for the needs
Speaker 1: of VR, and one of the big ones would be
Speaker 1: home video games, specifically home video game consoles that became
Speaker 1: a popular source for innovation and equipment that VR would
Speaker 1: end up repurposing. And those advances were meant to enhance
Speaker 1: console systems and to create competitive advantages against other console systems,
Speaker 1: but the VR space would appropriate the technology to help
Speaker 1: advance their own research, so stuff like motion controls and
Speaker 1: camera systems and light guns and all sorts of other
Speaker 1: peripherals and control systems and functions would find a second
Speaker 1: life over in VR research. We're talking about things like
Speaker 1: even the Nintendo Power Glove, which admittedly was a pretty
Speaker 1: lack luster video game controller, even though it looked cool
Speaker 1: and every kid I knew wanted one because I grew
Speaker 1: up in the era of the Nintendo, and when the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Power Glove came out, everyone thought that was the
Speaker 1: coolest thing ever. Turned out to not be the most
Speaker 1: practical control system, but it was something that ended up
Speaker 1: being useful over with VR research. Now, eventually we get
Speaker 1: up to the twenty tens, when a teenager named Palmer
Speaker 1: Lucky It produced a prototype VR headset that would eventually
Speaker 1: become known as the Oculus Rift. Later on Facebook, Slash
Speaker 1: Meta would acquire Oculus and these days what used to
Speaker 1: be the Oculus Quest is now the Meta Quest. So
Speaker 1: it all dates back to the early twenty tens. Lucky
Speaker 1: was confident that he was onto something, and he even
Speaker 1: dropped out of college in an effort to develop a
Speaker 1: mass produced VR headset that could become a consumer electronics item.
Speaker 1: Like it wouldn't just be something that you would find
Speaker 1: in you a VR arcade or an amusement park or something.
Speaker 1: It could be something that people could actually own and
Speaker 1: use in their own homes and VR could explode. So
Speaker 1: again into the whole Oculus story would require an episode,
Speaker 1: at least one, probably a couple plus. Then we would
Speaker 1: probably have to acknowledge that Palmer Lucky has said and
Speaker 1: done some stuff that has rubbed some people the wrong
Speaker 1: way to put it lightly. But rather than get bogged
Speaker 1: down in all of that, let's just take a little
Speaker 1: side step. Well, just mention that at this point in
Speaker 1: the twenty tens we started to see a real push
Speaker 1: to get VR to the consumer space, and that's still
Speaker 1: where we are today. For certain elements of VR, there
Speaker 1: have been tons of advancements. The headset technology has really
Speaker 1: come a long way to the point where now you
Speaker 1: don't even need to have a tethered headset. So for
Speaker 1: a very long time, if you wanted to have the
Speaker 1: performance capabilities needed to have a good VR experience, your
Speaker 1: headset needed to have a physical connection to a very
Speaker 1: powerful computer. That requirement has kind of faded away over
Speaker 1: the last half a decade, where now you can have
Speaker 1: an untethered headset. That's a huge, huge leap forward, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's possible now to make a headset that
Speaker 1: someone can wear at least for a short gaming session
Speaker 1: without having to mount it to the ceiling right like you.
Speaker 1: They're no longer these enormous, clunky, heavy things, although they
Speaker 1: are still significant, like you can't just wear one all
Speaker 1: day and not feel it. They will start to wear
Speaker 1: on you after a while, but you can at least
Speaker 1: play for you know, a half hour or an hour
Speaker 1: typically without it being too much of a burden, so
Speaker 1: to speak. Controllers were getting better too. Nintendo and Sony
Speaker 1: had both created control systems that used cameras and gyroscopes
Speaker 1: and sensors and other technology to let players interface with
Speaker 1: games by using gesture controls and waving controllers around rather
Speaker 1: than just manipulating a joystick or a direction pad or
Speaker 1: something like that. And this was seen as an important
Speaker 1: component for VR as well, because anything that lets you
Speaker 1: move closer to the way you would if you were
Speaker 1: actually doing the same sort of stuff in the real
Speaker 1: world really supports immersion when you're in the virtual world.
Speaker 1: If the only way you can interact with the virtual
Speaker 1: world around you is to hold a traditional game pad
Speaker 1: in your hands and use joysticks and buttons, that creates
Speaker 1: a kind of layer of abstraction that interferes with immersion.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily break it entirely, but it's not helpful,
Speaker 1: right because that's not how we interact with the real
Speaker 1: world when we're going around all the time. Plus, controllers
Speaker 1: act as a kind of barrier to entry because for
Speaker 1: non video game players having to use a game controller,
Speaker 1: it can be an obstacle. It's an unfamiliar experience. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would argue that one of the big reasons that
Speaker 1: Nintendo we became so popular when it first came out
Speaker 1: is that Nintendo created a few non traditional motion based
Speaker 1: methods to interact with the game system, and that really
Speaker 1: appealed to people who had never played video games before.
Speaker 1: Because it didn't have this barrier to entry. You could
Speaker 1: move around and that was controlling the game, and I
Speaker 1: think that was a big reason why the we took off,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the reasons why VR companies look
Speaker 1: for ways to kind of reduce that barrier of entry. Well, clearly,
Speaker 1: all those motion controls were very useful for VR, but
Speaker 1: there's another challenge that relates to this. How do you
Speaker 1: actually navigate around a virtual space while inhabiting a physical one.
Speaker 1: That's what we're really going to focus on for the
Speaker 1: rest of this episode. Before we get into all of that, however,
Speaker 1: we need to take a quick break to thank our
Speaker 1: sponsors and we'll be right back. Okay, so you're in
Speaker 1: a physical space, but you want to play a virtual
Speaker 1: experience of some sort. Maybe it's a game, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a virtual tour, whatever it might be. How do you
Speaker 1: move around once you're inside the virtual space? Is there
Speaker 1: a way to make it feel like you're actually moving
Speaker 1: through a real space even though it's all virtual? Can
Speaker 1: you do that? Or are you stuck using video game
Speaker 1: controllers to either virtually walk or as a lot of
Speaker 1: games and experiences do teleport short distances as you navigate
Speaker 1: through the environment, so that instead of physically moving, you
Speaker 1: point a controller at a space that you can see
Speaker 1: on your screen, and you select it and it zaps
Speaker 1: you there, and then you can turn around and look.
Speaker 1: Maybe you interact a little bit, and then when you
Speaker 1: want to move, you do it again. Like that's obviously
Speaker 1: not how we really move. I wish it were. I
Speaker 1: would love to be able to teleport, even if it's
Speaker 1: just line of sight. It would be super cool. That's
Speaker 1: not how the real world works, and so it is
Speaker 1: a bit of an immersion breaking experience. So creating an
Speaker 1: alternative to a controller based system is a non trivial problem.
Speaker 1: People are experiencing these virtual reality scenarios inside real physical spaces,
Speaker 1: and these spaces have real obstacles in them, like furniture
Speaker 1: or walls. Meanwhile, the person in VR can't see these
Speaker 1: real obstacles right because everything they're seeing is coming courtesy
Speaker 1: of a computer system. It's not reflective of the real
Speaker 1: world at all. It's all what the computer has generated,
Speaker 1: and the computer might not be generating the fact that
Speaker 1: there's a coffee table in front of you or a
Speaker 1: wall immediately to your left. So while in VR it
Speaker 1: might seem like you're in a meadow of flowers, in reality,
Speaker 1: you could be a step and a half away from
Speaker 1: a footstool that's just waiting to ruin your whole afternoon.
Speaker 1: So moving physically through a space while you appear to
Speaker 1: be in a virtual environment is dangerous. This danger becomes
Speaker 1: compounded if you want more than one person moving around
Speaker 1: within that same physical environment at the same time. So
Speaker 1: for a VR experience involving multiple people, you have to
Speaker 1: actually figure out how can you have all of these
Speaker 1: people come together safely within that virtual environment. Now, one
Speaker 1: option is to only allow people to join over a
Speaker 1: network connection, so they're not actually in the same physical
Speaker 1: space at all, right, like you could each be in say,
Speaker 1: your own homes or in adjoining rooms or whatever. But
Speaker 1: what if you actually want to have people grouped together physically,
Speaker 1: because there are times when you might want that. Imagine
Speaker 1: that you're doing a military training simulation and you're moving
Speaker 1: with a squad of soldiers, or maybe you're playing a
Speaker 1: fantasy RPG style computer game and you're with a party
Speaker 1: of adventurers and you're all in the same space and
Speaker 1: you're all working together. You can even reach over and
Speaker 1: tap your friend's shoulders silently to indicate it's time for
Speaker 1: them to move forward. That would be pretty cool, but
Speaker 1: you would have to have a way to orient everyone
Speaker 1: together and to keep them from running into each other.
Speaker 1: This is a non trivial problem. For one thing you'd
Speaker 1: have to build in the orientation feature. I'll explain this
Speaker 1: in an example. So let's say that you and I
Speaker 1: are together and we want to play a cooperative VR game,
Speaker 1: which sounds awesome. I would love to play a game
Speaker 1: with you, and so we each put on our headsets.
Speaker 1: We're in the same physical space. But let's say just
Speaker 1: because the way we're standing and putting on our headsets,
Speaker 1: we're not really paying attention. You're facing the north wall
Speaker 1: of this physical room, and I happen to be facing
Speaker 1: the east wall of this physical space, this physical room,
Speaker 1: and we put our headsets on, but the game just
Speaker 1: establishes that we're both facing the same direction within the
Speaker 1: virtual world, even though physically we're at right angles to
Speaker 1: each other. So the game thinks that the north wall
Speaker 1: is your current version of forward, the east wall is
Speaker 1: my current version of forward, and unfortunately, it thinks we're
Speaker 1: both facing the same forward. So within the game, if
Speaker 1: I were to look over to my side, I would
Speaker 1: see you and it would look like you were facing
Speaker 1: the same direction. I am same for you. If you
Speaker 1: were to look over, you would see me, and it
Speaker 1: looks like we're both facing the same direction. If I
Speaker 1: stepped toward the east wall to you, it would look
Speaker 1: like I took a step forward. If you took a
Speaker 1: step toward the north wall, to me, it would look
Speaker 1: like you took a step forward, even though we're now
Speaker 1: moving within right angles to each other in the real world.
Speaker 1: Now you can correct for this, this is not like
Speaker 1: an unsolvable issue. You can build in what is essentially
Speaker 1: a compass within the equipment so that it knows what
Speaker 1: physical direction you're facing, and that compass can feed the
Speaker 1: VR system information, letting it know that the two players
Speaker 1: are actually facing different directions in the physical world, so
Speaker 1: the game can feed each of us a different view,
Speaker 1: so that in the game, we would be facing different
Speaker 1: directions and I would see, oh, I'm at a right
Speaker 1: angle to you, I need to switch. I need to
Speaker 1: turn ninety degrees so that we're facing the same way,
Speaker 1: and then that solves the issue. Right The hardware could
Speaker 1: also instead of using a compass, it could use some
Speaker 1: other method like cameras. Right, you could have a camera
Speaker 1: system both externally like on the system itself, and you
Speaker 1: could also have cameras built into the headsets, and together
Speaker 1: these can establish which way we're facing within the real world,
Speaker 1: and that can feed into our experience in the virtual one,
Speaker 1: so that we don't have this issue. So it is
Speaker 1: possible to work around it, but the point is you
Speaker 1: have to build it in. It's not just naturally there.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you end up with like an mcsher kind of
Speaker 1: situation as people are moving in different directions in the
Speaker 1: real world in order to move in the same direction
Speaker 1: in the virtual one. The old VR arcades had a
Speaker 1: real elegant solution for all this because the players were
Speaker 1: held captive on those pedestals. Right. You were standing on
Speaker 1: a little platform and you had to rail around you,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't go anywhere. The headsets were all tethered
Speaker 1: to the VR system. You had these huge cables that
Speaker 1: would descend connecting to the headsets, but that also provided
Speaker 1: a solution for orientation. You physically couldn't move around the room,
Speaker 1: and the headsets were wired in such a way that
Speaker 1: they could show a specific point of view depending upon
Speaker 1: which way your head was pointed. But that doesn't work
Speaker 1: so well if you want a more flexible and free experience,
Speaker 1: if you want a bunch of untethered systems that are
Speaker 1: all connected together in the same physical space. Now, there
Speaker 1: have been numerous attempts to translate physical movement into virtual commands,
Speaker 1: and one of them relies largely on the fact that
Speaker 1: we human beings are not terribly good at walking in
Speaker 1: a straight line. When we're blindfolded, we have a tendency
Speaker 1: to veer off. We don't walk in a straight line. Typically,
Speaker 1: when we're blindfolded, we walk in a more curved path. Now,
Speaker 1: you can overcome this with a lot of practice. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that there's no way to walk a straight line,
Speaker 1: it's just not how we typically move. If we aren't
Speaker 1: using our eyes to give virtual cues so that we
Speaker 1: stay on track, Generally speaking, we're prone to walk in circles.
Speaker 1: But with the right approach in VR, it's actually possible
Speaker 1: to take advantage of this and turn it into a feature,
Speaker 1: not a bug. By presenting subtle visual cues within the
Speaker 1: virtual environment, you can influence how a person perceives their
Speaker 1: surroundings and by extension, how they move through those surroundings
Speaker 1: by changing visual distances between points by small amounts, or
Speaker 1: by adjusting the arc of how much your point of
Speaker 1: view changes as you turn your head. These tweaks can
Speaker 1: be subtle enough so that they don't seem strange to us,
Speaker 1: and yet they can affect how we move through the space.
Speaker 1: So we would perceive that we're moving in a straight line,
Speaker 1: but in fact the system is very subtly moving us
Speaker 1: in a curve so that we are able to continue
Speaker 1: forward progression, but we're not in danger of walking so
Speaker 1: far that we slam into the wall. And this method
Speaker 1: is called redirected walking, which makes sense right, and it
Speaker 1: does work, but only up to a point. You can't
Speaker 1: design a VR experience that moves people in a really
Speaker 1: tight curve and then convince them that they're walking on
Speaker 1: a straight tightrope. That just doesn't work. So there's a
Speaker 1: limit to how much you can redirect someone before they
Speaker 1: no longer feel like they're walking in a straight line.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a disconnect from what they see
Speaker 1: and what they're feeling. So redirected walking actually requires a
Speaker 1: pretty large physical space to allow for that kind of movement, right,
Speaker 1: because you need to have enough space where a gentle
Speaker 1: curve is still enough to keep someone from being in
Speaker 1: a collision course with a wall. Most of us don't
Speaker 1: live in palatial estates, and so if you do have
Speaker 1: a room that you have set as for VR, or
Speaker 1: one that you can use for VR, chances are it's
Speaker 1: not so big that it would allow for redirected walking
Speaker 1: in any meaningful way. Also, I imagine that redirected walking
Speaker 1: is much easier to implement if you've built out an
Speaker 1: experience that's intended for a specific physical space. That is
Speaker 1: that the VR system quote unquote knows how large the
Speaker 1: physical room is, and so it can adjust the virtual
Speaker 1: cues accordingly, and everything is hunky dory. I imagine it
Speaker 1: would be a lot more challenging to have a system
Speaker 1: that could adapt to any given physical space and thus
Speaker 1: make appropriate adjustments to those visual cues with regard to
Speaker 1: how much room is available. That's a lot of complicated math, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you were to port an experience from a
Speaker 1: room that's maybe let's say twenty feet to a side,
Speaker 1: it's a big, big room. It's twenty feet to a side,
Speaker 1: but then you move it into one that's you know,
Speaker 1: made be fifteen feet to a side. I don't know
Speaker 1: how easy it would be to have a system that
Speaker 1: could readjust for that reduced amount of physical space and
Speaker 1: plan out new versions of visual cues to keep you
Speaker 1: from running into walls. I'm sure it's possible, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's been done, but I bet it's hard, and
Speaker 1: it's got to be even harder if you're talking about
Speaker 1: your typical consumer space, because again, most of us don't
Speaker 1: have access to these really big rooms that would be
Speaker 1: very useful for redirected walking. It is possible. It's something
Speaker 1: that's been going on and I'm just not aware of it.
Speaker 1: One common strategy in VR is to make use of
Speaker 1: cameras to keep an eye on people within a physical
Speaker 1: environment as they move through the virtual environment. And the
Speaker 1: cameras could include some that are mounted in static positions
Speaker 1: around the room, right like you might have some that
Speaker 1: you have mounted on shelves, on the walls or close
Speaker 1: to a one specific location. And then you typically also,
Speaker 1: like I said, have a camera like a forward facing
Speaker 1: camera in a headset itself, and collectively these cameras can
Speaker 1: keep an eye on where a person is in relation
Speaker 1: to their physical walls or other obstacles around them, and
Speaker 1: these systems typically will give the user a visual queue
Speaker 1: within the virtual experience if they start getting a little
Speaker 1: too close to these barriers. So you might be walking
Speaker 1: through a space and then in this like virtual space
Speaker 1: that you're walking through, you'll see suddenly a grid outline
Speaker 1: of a wall, and that could break the immersion right
Speaker 1: like now you're suddenly seeing It's kind of like in
Speaker 1: Star Trek you see the wall of the hola deck
Speaker 1: or something. It breaks the immersion, but it also helps
Speaker 1: you avoid breaking your nose on a wall or something else.
Speaker 1: This is not an ideal solution, because in a perfect
Speaker 1: world you would avoid anything that would take you out
Speaker 1: of the virtual experience, but it's certainly preferable to an injury.
Speaker 1: For example, the Meta Quest formerly known as the Oculus Quest,
Speaker 1: allows users to set up boundaries and they call the
Speaker 1: system guardian. The system gives the user the freedom to
Speaker 1: define a play area within a physical room, and Meta
Speaker 1: stresses that you really need six and a half feet
Speaker 1: by six and a half feet or larger to have
Speaker 1: this workout well. Otherwise you should probably play VR in
Speaker 1: a stationary position, either seated or standing up, so smaller
Speaker 1: than six and a half feet to a side, you're
Speaker 1: going to encounter some frustration. The setup includes something that
Speaker 1: you might not have thought about. You actually have to
Speaker 1: establish the height of the floor. Now, the way meta
Speaker 1: handles this is that you put on the headset and
Speaker 1: you lower a controller down to the floor, and you
Speaker 1: look at the controller, and this lets the system establish
Speaker 1: where the floor is with relation to the rest of
Speaker 1: the environment. Metaquest then lets you define the play area
Speaker 1: by showing you pass through video in the headset. So
Speaker 1: this is sort of like turning the Metaquest into an
Speaker 1: augmented reality headset rather than a virtual reality headset. Augmented reality,
Speaker 1: or AR, is when you have a view of the
Speaker 1: real world around you over which digital information can be laid.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily have to involve a display. That is
Speaker 1: the typical way we think of AR, but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty common to do the display version now. In many ways,
Speaker 1: AR gets around a lot of the challenges that you've
Speaker 1: come across in VR when it comes to movement, because
Speaker 1: the person who's using an AR system can still actually
Speaker 1: see the real world around them, including the people who
Speaker 1: are in it, it's just that the extra digital stuff
Speaker 1: gets thrown in there too. Anyway, Using pass through video,
Speaker 1: the player uses a controller and they use that to
Speaker 1: kind of shoot a beam to trace the outline of
Speaker 1: their intended play area within the physical room where they'll
Speaker 1: be playing their VR stuff. So to an outside observer,
Speaker 1: it would just look like the player is pointing a
Speaker 1: controller and moving in a slow circle. But to the player,
Speaker 1: they would see they were generating an outline which ultimately
Speaker 1: would form into a box, and this becomes the defined
Speaker 1: play area. So if the player were to walk close
Speaker 1: to one of the boundaries of that play area, that's
Speaker 1: when they would see the warning indicator, letting them know
Speaker 1: they're getting a little too close to being out of bounds.
Speaker 1: The boundary solution is functional for smaller spaces, but it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily ideal for multiplayer implementations. For those, you still
Speaker 1: need a way to keep people safely in their own
Speaker 1: little physical bubble where they're not likely to slam into
Speaker 1: each other blindly at full speed. And that will bring
Speaker 1: us to another method, the treadmill. Before we get into that,
Speaker 1: we need to take another quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: We're back, so treadmills in many ways, are a little
Speaker 1: similar to those old pedestal solutions of the VR arcades
Speaker 1: I've talked about a couple of times in this episode.
Speaker 1: They keep each individual player confined to a physical space
Speaker 1: within the environment, But unlike those pedestals I talked about,
Speaker 1: the treadmills allow players to physically walk and to have
Speaker 1: that physical motion translate into the VR experience as VR locomotion.
Speaker 1: Some of the treadmills allow players to turn and change
Speaker 1: direction while walking. In fact, some of them allow players
Speaker 1: to even run. These omnidirectional treadmills tend to be pretty
Speaker 1: darn expensive, and they also attempt to address several of
Speaker 1: the barriers in the way of people moving freely in
Speaker 1: a physical location while exploring a virtual one. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of products either out on the market right
Speaker 1: now or that are scheduled to launch very soon. Some
Speaker 1: of them have been in development for the better part
Speaker 1: of a decade. The ones that I'll mention here just
Speaker 1: because they are similar and one of them is on
Speaker 1: the market now and the other ones going to launch
Speaker 1: soon would be the cat kat Walk C two Core
Speaker 1: that's one, and the virtueix Omni one. So the C
Speaker 1: two Core is something you can purchase right now. It's
Speaker 1: at a hefty nine hundred ninety nine dollars. The Omni
Speaker 1: one is available for pre order for a whopping two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and ninety five dollars. And considering that these
Speaker 1: are peripherals, right, these do not include the actual VR setup.
Speaker 1: That is a huge price tag. Right, You still have
Speaker 1: to have the computer system. You still have to have
Speaker 1: the VR hardware, or at least the VR hardware. There's
Speaker 1: now standalone VR hardware. Back in the day, you had
Speaker 1: to have a computer that was really a chonker in
Speaker 1: order to run V. It's a little different today, but
Speaker 1: you still have to have those base systems before you
Speaker 1: even worry about these these treadmills. It's also this would
Speaker 1: be another reason why VR in general hasn't seen widespread adoption,
Speaker 1: because it be expensive, y'all. It is a high price
Speaker 1: to enter, and that's before you even start thinking about
Speaker 1: a library of content that you can actually use. Now,
Speaker 1: at a casual glance, these two systems, the C two
Speaker 1: Core and the Omni one, seem pretty darn similar. Both
Speaker 1: consist of a treadmill quote unquote a treadmill that actually
Speaker 1: looks more like a dish, like an upturned satellite dish,
Speaker 1: or maybe like a very very shallow walk And both
Speaker 1: of them have an arm that's mounted on the platform
Speaker 1: that has that holds the dish. This arm is a
Speaker 1: vertical arm, so it extends upward and it also can
Speaker 1: rotate along the perimeter of the dish. And mounted at
Speaker 1: the end of that arm is a harness that you
Speaker 1: are to put on when you're using the device. So
Speaker 1: as I said, the arm can actually rotate around the
Speaker 1: whole perimeter of the dish. That lets you turn in
Speaker 1: place while you're wearing the harness and you're using the treadmill,
Speaker 1: and that harness keeps you from falling over or tripping
Speaker 1: off the side of the treadmill, and also lets you
Speaker 1: have that stability you need if you want to do
Speaker 1: something like try and run in place. Obviously, like if
Speaker 1: you've got something obscuring your vision in the real world,
Speaker 1: your body is not going to want to run, right.
Speaker 1: Your body's going to say, heck no, it's stupid to
Speaker 1: run when I can't actually see the environment around me.
Speaker 1: That harness and that arm is meant to restrain you,
Speaker 1: so that you can feel confident that you can make
Speaker 1: those kind of motions, that you can run in place
Speaker 1: and it's not going to have you, you know, do
Speaker 1: a kool Aid Man through the wall of your room
Speaker 1: or anything like that. These arms are also articulated, so
Speaker 1: they can extend up or downward. They allow you to
Speaker 1: do things like you can squat, or you can kneel,
Speaker 1: so if you're playing like a shooter game or something,
Speaker 1: you're not just stuck at one vertical level. You can
Speaker 1: do things like squat down. Like if a game has
Speaker 1: that capability where you can, you know, squinch down and
Speaker 1: get underneath a barrier, then you can actually do that
Speaker 1: within the physical space because the treadmills allow you to
Speaker 1: do that. So both systems act like controllers. From what
Speaker 1: I understand, they are mostly compatible with existing VR titles,
Speaker 1: to varying degrees of effectiveness. At least the ones that
Speaker 1: allow you to navigate through the VR experience using a controller.
Speaker 1: Most of them work pretty well from what I understand.
Speaker 1: I have not had personal experience with either of these,
Speaker 1: so I can't say from that regard, but from what
Speaker 1: I read, it sounds like, reasonably speaking, they're fairly compatible
Speaker 1: with a lot of these titles. They do all the
Speaker 1: conversion for you, so there's not like extensive setup that
Speaker 1: you need to do. In most cases, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of differences between the two besides the price. So
Speaker 1: the C two Core, for example, requires players to wear
Speaker 1: special shoes. You have shoes that come with the platform,
Speaker 1: and those are what you need to wear when you're
Speaker 1: using the device. These shoes have sensors and the bottom
Speaker 1: of the shoes that face downward. It's kind of similar
Speaker 1: to how a laser mouse has a sensor on the
Speaker 1: underside of the mouse that what helps it detect movement
Speaker 1: and position. So you can't just hop onto a C
Speaker 1: two Core with your normal kicks. I found an Ask
Speaker 1: Me Anything on Reddit where a user going by the
Speaker 1: handle of a tickle Monster five twenty eight explained how
Speaker 1: they had put a thin pair of socks or stockings
Speaker 1: around these shoes in order to improve how they slide
Speaker 1: against the surface of the treadmill itself, and that as
Speaker 1: long as it was thin enough, it didn't inhibit the
Speaker 1: sensor's performance on the treadmill itself, but it made it
Speaker 1: way easier to walk and or run on the surface
Speaker 1: of the treadmill. The Omni one does not require you
Speaker 1: to wear special shoes, but it does come with overshoes.
Speaker 1: They kind of look like sandals that slip on and
Speaker 1: snap on on top of your normal shoes. They have
Speaker 1: straps and everything. You strap them to the underside of
Speaker 1: your shoes, and that's what you use to run against
Speaker 1: the Omni one treadmill. Otherwise, in many ways, it seems
Speaker 1: pretty darn similar to the C two Core. They're not identical.
Speaker 1: They do have differences, and I'm sure there are also
Speaker 1: differences as far as compatibility and performance are concerned with
Speaker 1: VR titles, But without the opportunity to try them out
Speaker 1: for myself, I can't really compare and contrast, so I
Speaker 1: can't say one is definitively better than the other, or
Speaker 1: performs more consistently than the other one does I don't know.
Speaker 1: I know that both of them, at least according to
Speaker 1: other folks who have used these devices, can occasionally have
Speaker 1: performance issues where things get a little janky. It's still,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, incredibly immersive and really effective in
Speaker 1: most situations. It's just once in a while you might
Speaker 1: encounter a situation where you take a step forward, but
Speaker 1: what you see reflected in the game or the experience
Speaker 1: isn't a one to one match with what you were
Speaker 1: doing in the physical space. So within the discourse of
Speaker 1: the VR community, there does seem to be a mixture
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm and skepticism around these products. Some are heralding
Speaker 1: them as the bridge that turns VR from an interesting
Speaker 1: diversion and a niche interest among a hobbyist community into
Speaker 1: a compelling activity that has mainstream appeal and something that
Speaker 1: could end up becoming an important part not just for
Speaker 1: stuff like entertainment, but maybe in fields like fitness. Others
Speaker 1: are arguing that this technology, this omni treadmill approach technology,
Speaker 1: is not yet refined to a point where it's fun
Speaker 1: to use, Like, clearly the potential is there, but it's
Speaker 1: not ready for actual prime time yet, and that once
Speaker 1: the shine wears off from getting something like this and
Speaker 1: getting to try it, the limitations become more evident and
Speaker 1: can become aggravating, and that maybe it's better to wait
Speaker 1: a bit longer for the technology to mature. And that's
Speaker 1: tough because that's kind of what the argument was for
Speaker 1: VR back in the nineties, and it was understandable at
Speaker 1: the time, but Waiting for something to mature requires that
Speaker 1: the technology still have the support necessary to continue to develop. Right.
Speaker 1: You still need the money and the talent in order
Speaker 1: for the tech to advance. It doesn't just do it
Speaker 1: on its own. And so if everybody holds off and says,
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting, but I don't think it's ready yet,
Speaker 1: then you don't have the money coming in that will
Speaker 1: fund the next generation of the technology. Meanwhile, if you
Speaker 1: have everyone rush in, they might try it and say
Speaker 1: this isn't what I want it at all, and then
Speaker 1: they just abandon the technology entirely. You know, there's no
Speaker 1: easy solution here. But this does bring us up to
Speaker 1: the hollow tile invention that I mentioned at the top
Speaker 1: of the show. The hollow tile approach uses a collection
Speaker 1: of tiny hexagonal tiles I'm talking about like they look
Speaker 1: like they're about the size of maybe a half dollar
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with that. So each of these tiles
Speaker 1: can act like a treadmill, and it's a treadmill that
Speaker 1: can move in any given direction, and collectively, these tiles
Speaker 1: can keep someone within a relatively stable position on the
Speaker 1: floor as the person attempts to walk around a virtual environment.
Speaker 1: So If you were to watch this, you would see
Speaker 1: someone standing on what looks like almost like a carpet
Speaker 1: of hexagonal tiles, and as they're moving in various directions,
Speaker 1: they're not actually traveling anywhere physically right because the treadmill
Speaker 1: is keeping them in the same relative position physically, but
Speaker 1: within the virtual environment, they could be traveling wherever they're going. Now,
Speaker 1: the demonstration was really limited. There was an early view
Speaker 1: of this technology. It showed users walking very slowly and
Speaker 1: using very small steps, and that implies to me that
Speaker 1: it's very early in this technologies infancy. It cannot handle
Speaker 1: someone just walking at a normal pace. You have to
Speaker 1: be walking at like, you know, a quarter speed with
Speaker 1: small steps in order for it to work as it
Speaker 1: is designed right now. But the potential is pretty darn cool.
Speaker 1: Imagine that we've reached a point where this technology can
Speaker 1: handle people walking or maybe even running, and yet keep
Speaker 1: them in the same relative physical location inside a big room.
Speaker 1: You can have a bunch of people inside the same
Speaker 1: physical room standing on a floor made of these hexagonal tiles.
Speaker 1: They can be facing different directions. They could all be
Speaker 1: walking or running at their own pace and still staying
Speaker 1: in the same relative position so that they're not in
Speaker 1: danger of running into each other, and yet they can
Speaker 1: all interact in the same virtual environment. That is a
Speaker 1: really cool concept. I don't know if we're ever going
Speaker 1: to get there, but it's the potential that's really exciting.
Speaker 1: Because those tiles will just keep you within that same
Speaker 1: relative physical space even while you change direction and speed.
Speaker 1: That means you can all share and experience together. You're walking,
Speaker 1: but you're not really going anywhere. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: that stereotypical nightmare where you're in a hallway and you're
Speaker 1: running toward the end of the hallway, but you never
Speaker 1: get any closer to the end, except you know, it's
Speaker 1: just what's going on within the physical space. In the
Speaker 1: virtual space, you would actually be moving all over the place.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine how this technology would enable really
Speaker 1: cool experiences that Disney might use and attractions in the future.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you could have an interactive virtual experience
Speaker 1: that lets you explore a famous fictional world, like imagine
Speaker 1: being able to walk around Wonderland or never never Land,
Speaker 1: or dare I say it Fresno but was a joke.
Speaker 1: I know Fresno really exists, and you could do this
Speaker 1: with your friends and family, right, you could all be
Speaker 1: in that same instance together, and you could all be
Speaker 1: walking around and exploring this space and split up and
Speaker 1: go your own way, and you'd be safe from running
Speaker 1: into you know, mom and dad because everyone's on their
Speaker 1: own little, you know, patch of hollow tiles that are
Speaker 1: keeping them isolated from everybody else while still being able
Speaker 1: to share this experience. Of course, for all that to happen,
Speaker 1: this technology will need to work a whole lot better
Speaker 1: than it does now. And as I said, and the demonstration,
Speaker 1: it was clear that users were really going easy on
Speaker 1: these tiles. They did have a demonstration where they had
Speaker 1: two people facing different directions walking on these tiles, but
Speaker 1: again they're doing those kind of tiny little baby steps
Speaker 1: at very slow pace. But the demonstration was still really impressive.
Speaker 1: And I think the takeaway is that solving for movement
Speaker 1: that pairs actions in the physical world with the virtual
Speaker 1: world is still really hard. You're pretty much forced to
Speaker 1: make concessions. You may have to make some concessions in
Speaker 1: order to ensure that the system is functional, or you
Speaker 1: may have to make concessions to make sure it's safe,
Speaker 1: or some combination of the two, or maybe there are
Speaker 1: other considerations that come into play. I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the big challenges that's holding back VR adoption in general.
Speaker 1: As it stands, you can do some really cool stuff
Speaker 1: in VR, but it still feels fairly limited. Beat Saber
Speaker 1: is a really great game, but you're standing in place
Speaker 1: while you're waving your arms around. You're not set free
Speaker 1: in a virtual open world where you can explore by
Speaker 1: really walking around a physical space. When you do use
Speaker 1: games that allow you to do some physical walking, you
Speaker 1: have to work within a limited play area or else
Speaker 1: you risk slamming into a wall or knocking over a
Speaker 1: valuable antique or something. It's going to take a bit
Speaker 1: more work to get to a point where the reality
Speaker 1: in virtual reality lives up to the potential of virtual reality.
Speaker 1: For that reason, I think augmented reality actually has a
Speaker 1: slightly better chance of seeing higher adoption, at least in
Speaker 1: the relatively short term, because AR has a few advantages. Now,
Speaker 1: it does come with its own set of challenges, like
Speaker 1: how do you integrate, say, game elements into AR so
Speaker 1: that they fit naturally within someone's real world environment, But
Speaker 1: it removes other challenges because you can see the physical
Speaker 1: world around so the system doesn't have to find ways
Speaker 1: to protect you from the physical world, or to protect
Speaker 1: the physical world from you. If you are a limb
Speaker 1: flailing maniac like myself with AR, the limitations of the
Speaker 1: space around you are evident, and with a really well
Speaker 1: designed application, you might not even think of them as limitations.
Speaker 1: It may just all feel like they all naturally fit together.
Speaker 1: But programming something that can be a compelling experience no
Speaker 1: matter what the physical location happens to be, that's not
Speaker 1: easy either. It may be that you end up programming
Speaker 1: a game that's fantastic if you happen to have access
Speaker 1: to a space that's the size of a gymnasium, but
Speaker 1: maybe it's way more underwhelming inside your typical den or
Speaker 1: partially finished basement. I do like checking in on these
Speaker 1: technologies every few years to see what sort of progress
Speaker 1: has been made. One thing I find encouraging is that
Speaker 1: we are seeing devices like the C two Core and
Speaker 1: the Omni one make it to market. These could have
Speaker 1: been cases where companies had come up with this nifty
Speaker 1: idea and maybe got some seed money for it, but
Speaker 1: it never really got much further than the prototype stage.
Speaker 1: Like that happens all the time, especially in the fields
Speaker 1: of VR and AR. But these made it like they
Speaker 1: got to the point where you can buy the thing
Speaker 1: and get it delivered to your house and have it
Speaker 1: and use it, like that's a phenomenal achievement. But you know,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that these gadgets are meant to keep
Speaker 1: you in place, we're still moving forward. That's pretty darn cool.
Speaker 1: All right. That's it for moving around in VR. There
Speaker 1: are other elements we could talk about, and maybe I
Speaker 1: will in future episodes, but I thought that was a
Speaker 1: good way to kind of talk about an interesting set
Speaker 1: of challenges. It gets you to think about what you
Speaker 1: need to solve for in order to create the experience
Speaker 1: you want. That's really a big part of what engineering
Speaker 1: is all about, right, It's problem solving. It's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things about inering in general and talking to engineers,
Speaker 1: because engineers, when you talk to them, you realize they're
Speaker 1: constantly attempting to solve problems, even if they're not aware
Speaker 1: of it, and I think it's fascinating. I hope you're
Speaker 1: all well. I am glad that I'm back and podcasting again.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking to you again on Friday. I'll be
Speaker 1: doing a news episode about what's been going on this
Speaker 1: week in tech, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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