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. [caption id="attachment_34150" align="aligncenter" width="640"] SIGGRAPH 2015, Photo Courtesy Venturebeat[/caption] 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 https://vimeo.com/128641906 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 7x7 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 7x7 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 [caption id="attachment_30999" align="aligncenter" width="640"] AMD's new R9 Fury X GPUs[/caption] 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. [button color="orange" size="large" type="3d" target="" link="https://www.roadtovr.com/5-days-at-siggraph-2015-my-virtual-reality-highlights/2/"]Continued on Page 2 ..[/button] Wright Brothers First Flight Now, virtually no one else has talked about the Wright Brothers First Flight experience, but it’s basically an accurate recreation of when the Wright Brothers launched the first successful flight of their air plane, an experience created by Zypre with cooperation from the Smithsonian. A great amount of detail was put into this, from the accuracy of the modeled plane itself, to the rippling of the wings from wind, and to the realistic metallic screech of the propellers getting fired up. At one point, the plane would be flying towards you, and my body just naturally told me to dodge it by getting down low — a lot of object presence there, in which the object is felt by the mind like it is taking up a physical space in real life. Then I realized just how real the sound actually was; I heard clapping and shouting at one point in the demo, and I thought it was emanating from my physical surroundings, until I looked over and saw it was the people in my virtual world making those sounds. At that moment, a small switch in my brain flipped, and I got a fleeting sensation that the people who were clapping and running beside me, were actually there beside me in real life. Notes on Oculus’ Crescent Bay VR headset So that was my experience with some of the content SIGGRAPH has to offer, but I came upon some things perhaps others haven’t about the hardware. AMD was using Crescent Bay paired with the R9 Fury X, with Back to Dinosaur Island 2, and the Wright Brothers First Flight experience. I actually got to try Oculus' Crescent Bay with those demos at least 9 times. In addition to having 'fondled' the headset quite a bit as I just hung around the booth and talked to people, I even helped AMD give demos when one of the representatives wasn’t available at times. First of all, after getting so much experience with the headset and adjusting everything on it, I was able to slip it on just like I'd just put on a baseball cap, in both procedure and comfort levels. I also noticed that the headset felt lighter in the hand than any other headset I’ve tried, including the Vive, DK2, Gear VR, and Sony's Project Morpheus. The 3 straps are really easy to adjust and get comfortable for you once you get used to it. You basically separate the velcro parts, put on the headset, and then pull on the straps until the tightness feels right, locking it into place with the velcro again. Imagine there were small pulley systems in place. I cannot over emphasize how easy it was to adjust the straps and have them locked in place exactly where they’re comfortable. The headphones and the sound quality on the Crescent Bay were great, producing very realistic levels of bass, which I noticed in Crytek’s demo when the dinosaurs roared. The headphones were easy to adjust and really could disappear from the experience, completely, because you could actually lift it slightly over your ears so that they don’t even touch them. This helped aural presence a lot. However, this might not be the intended way, or even an easy way, as the earpiece positioning system is spring loaded, so they have a sort of bounce-snap to them. The comfort in the on-ear configuration is still unrivalled compared to most other headphones I’ve tried though. For the rest of the headset's capabilities, a comparison with other units might better illustrate my observations. My overall impressions are that I liked Oculus' Crescent Bay better than the HTC Vive kit - with the caveat that all my observations may not be accurate without the opportunity to try the headsets side by side (I’ve also only tried the Vive 4 times in comparison to date). I felt that it had a similar, or slightly larger FOV than the HTC Vive. Actually, more than one being “bigger” than the other, it’s more that the lenses are shaped differently. Crescent Bay is less circular and seems to utilize the corners of the display more, while magnifying the image a tiny bit less. Crescent Bay's SDE (Screen Door Effect) was a bit less bothering, but the optics were also smoother, which might explain why. Crescent Bay generally felt clearer to me, in the display, which might be due to the slightly decreased magnification power of the lenses, so the perceived pixel density is higher. There were some light ray artifacts like in the Vive, except they were much smoother, and didn’t show you (to my perception) the ridges of the fresnel component, like the Vive’s lenses do. The rays look more like a smooth radial blurring effect than the harsher streaks in the Vive, but I can’t say I prefer either, as I found both bothered me the same amount. Both variations are only very noticeable in scenes with very high contrast like white against a black background. Then I got a few juicy details from AMD. The most notable one, I think, is that with their multi-GPU feature exposed with LiquidVR, supporting hardware and drivers, you can theoretically use an “infinite” amount of GPUs together. AMD have already tested a dual GPU setup with Crytek and Zypre’s demos, and are still testing more. Someone asked when they were going to demonstrate the multi-GPU feature, and an AMD representative said that Crytek might show it off at CES with their Back to Dinosaur Island 3 demo. Take from that what you will, but the implications of Crytek (whose BtDI2 demo was confirmed by the representative to be running the R9 Fury X at 100% load all the time) pushing VR graphics with multiple GPUs is massive.