Frank He digs into his journal to bring us his favourite moments from SIGGRAPH 2015, where virtual reality’s presence was stronger than ever before (pun intended).
Now a second year UCLA undergraduate in a neuroscience program, Frank was born in Los Angeles and then raised in Canada, spending his high school years across the border in New York.
His main interest is in technologies that enable immersive experiences, and Frank’s academic path is towards better understanding the brain, how it works, and then enabling us to do something for the betterment of life through that knowledge. Besides studying, Frank makes efforts towards supporting the VR community locally and online, where he regularly participates in discussions about VR.
Oculus, HTC, and Sony are launching their consumer VR hardware in 2016. With VR becoming a reality so fast, we are seeing more and more events host increasingly VR related demos and content. SIGGRAPH 2015, which took place in the Los Angeles Convention Center starting August 8, is such an event.
Different from other expositions where VR has been big, like E3, CES, and gaming related shows, SIGGRAPH is more of a place where people share their research, specifically about computer graphics related applications. I had the pleasure of going this year, and while it was my first time, I could tell that VR had become big there like never before. For instance, talking with other show goers with past experience of SIGGRAPH, I’ve heard a lot of impressions containing surprise and wonder at how much VR has taken over the place. The half of an entire Hall at the venue had basically been dominated by VR, while VR would be interspersed among the booths of all the other sections of the show as well.
There was a lot I learned and discovered in the 5 days that I attended the event, and I want to share those lessons and observations with you. In fact, there were so many things, that I had to keep a journal every day to keep track of everything. The discussion that follows will give you a taste.
Redirected walking
Redirected walking is a technique to solve the problem of locomotion in VR, by taking advantage of the way our brain uses vision to keep balance and direction. The technique is supposed to imperceptibly turn your view in the headset so that you walk straight in VR, but are actually turning in real life, never leaving the space you’re given.
Entering the space of USC’s booth, which seemed to be around 7×7 meters, I put on a DK2 and was led through the demo. My experience with it wasn’t perfect, but in the end, probably not bad at all. At times, I did notice that I was being turned in a harsh way; in other words, the induced turns in the view were not imperceptible all the time. When I was walking in a direction, I would feel myself walking straight, but getting turned in VR. Maybe 1/3 of the time I spent walking had this noticeable redirection. The other times, it wasn’t noticeable, but when it was, it didn’t really bother me I think.
I didn’t feel any sort of nausea from it, nor did I feel bad consciously correcting for the harsh turning. Some factors like visual and vestibular noise, jumbling the sensory information you get from the artificial turning, might be able to explain why I didn’t get motion sick or anything like that.
In all honesty, I feel that I could live with it, especially given the benefits of actually being able to walk in VR without needing a football field of space (though there are other challenges with walking around with a VR headset in a 7×7 m space). I think the real question is if the conscious correction for when you’re noticeably being redirected can become subconscious, and then if that truly adds to Presence, arguably the most important aspect of VR which differentiates it from any other medium.
Robinson: The Journey (aka Back to Dinosaur Island 2)
Back to Dinosaur Island 2 is the second VR demo that Crytek has made and shown off, having already been seen at previous events like E3. While already reported on, there were a lot of subtleties in the demo itself that could be missed, especially by those who haven’t tried it multiple times. I will give some of those missing details about the demo, which I picked up having played through it several times. The demo was not being shown by Crytek, however, but by AMD, who was using it to promote their their R9 Fury X range of GPUs, and LiquidVR, their VR focused SDK.
See Also: Hands-on: Crytek’s ‘Robinson The Journey’ Prototype is a Visual Feast, Built for Motion Controls
Back to Dinosaur Island 2 is the most beautiful VR experience I have seen yet. It is also extremely polished. You may have known that, but did you know that you could use your hands to interact with more than the handles you grab onto? Those floating hands collide with everything, and never clip through anything in the world. When you put your hands up to the cliff side, you can actually scrub off dirt particles.
You were also able to let go of the handles to fall to your death, something one of the AMD representatives liked getting people to do, but at certain points, you can actually let go, and land on a narrow piece of land jutting out, unexpectedly surviving. Another thing I haven’t seen mentioned much is a more active element of the demo, in which a pterodactyl above you is kicking down dirt and rocks. When that stuff hits you, it impairs your vision, so you move around with your body to dodge. Simple stuff like that is more fun than you’d expect.
On a personal note, I got the closest I’ve ever been to getting scared of heights in VR. Walking back to the edge of the cliff I’d just climbed and peering over it, for a moment I forgot there was a floor below me and my body was compelled to reach out and grab onto the rope for dear life. It wasn’t a lasting feeling or as strong as the ‘sweaty hands intensity’ of fear of heights in real life that I get, but it was a hint, and now I finally know it’s something VR can provoke in me. To put it into perspective, I have never gotten that feeling in VR, and I have had a lot of experiences where you are put into that sort of situation, even with great VR headsets like the Vive. To have finally gotten that feeling for the first time in VR after having been disappointed for such a long time was a delight.
