Vestibular mismatch remains an issue, but for seated sims there are hydraulics, for walking around sims - there is no mismatch. There's a crazy amount of experimentation going on right now with locomotion systems, such as some that involve you walking across your space, turning 180, and keeping the world fixed in your view, but with visible dust in the virtual air that becomes the main thing you notice, not the faded out world, and on you go.
For running/terrain, we just need backpack pcs and larger tracked areas. I already know of a startup looking to breathe new life into old indoor laser tag installations.
As to his anecdote - I stuck dozens of people in my dk2 and many were nauseous, myself included. On the vive - nobody - a d I've let far more people try it as a result of the overwhelmingly positive reaction - I had to pry my sixty something mother out of it.
Re: post simulation - that I concur is a problematic one. I can see very bad shit happening and it being ostensibly due to post-simulation experience distortion. I can vouch that it's very real - but that you do find your legs. After my first few sessions in the vive (never had with dk2, not immersive enough), I'd come out seeing things as weirdly unreal, too flat, and generally felt a bit "spaced". I don't get that any more - and my exposure hasn't been that heavy - maybe 50 hours over the last three weeks or so.
It's all about the software. I've been developing DK2 based experiences for trade shows and have seen thousands of people try VR for the first time. Perhaps 1 in 100 suffer from simulation sickness, but this highly depends on the application. E.g. One of my first prototypes made everyone that tried it very sick - including myself (this due to a single camera movement mid-experience - flying over a rail & then spiralling up a staircase).
Unfortunately, beyond the scarce info on the subject of sim-sickness - my experience has been derived completely from trial & error.
I'd like to see more specific information shared on the subject of simulation sickness.
It makes for an interesting conflict with the desire to provide an "extreme" experience, I think.
It happened when I attempted to use the Rift with Portal, which at the time had very primitive Rift support. The game had a calibration mechanism which adjusts the field of view for each eye independently, as well as the "left-rightness" of objects as they recede into the distance.
I fiddled with the calibration for a little while, but everything looked pretty muddled. Suddenly it all came into focus, mostly, and I played the game for an hour or two. Which is to say, I stumbled around in this weirdly-calibrated world.
When I took off my Rift, I was astonished to find that I was cross-eyed, and couldn't uncross them. I tried closing my eyes, focusing in the distance and then back, etc, to no avail. After a few hours I gave up and went to sleep.
I woke up fine. It was one of the strangest experiences I've ever had, and I was wondering if anyone's experienced a similar effect.
EDIT: Interesting. Apparently the answer is "No, no one else has experienced this."
I should clarify some details. This was several years ago, back when Rift support was in its infancy. The only thing I remember is that there was some sort of program designed to inject Rift support into games. Back then, Mirror's Edge, Portal, etc didn't have Rift support, but using this program, you could hack it to work.
I think what happened is this: Point at the ceiling, then bring your finger close to your nose. Keep focusing on your finger. There's a distance where you have to cross your eyes in order to continue focusing on your finger. Bring it a little closer.
I'm pretty sure that's how I had the calibration set up. And I played like that for a couple hours, which caused my eyes to adapt to that situation. Hence, cross-eyed vision.
I've played many other games with no problems, so it was definitely a product of the bizarro calibration. It'd probably be a bad idea to try to replicate this, but there were no lasting effects.
To be clear for anyone else that may read this, any sudden visual impairment warrants an immediate visit to the ER. Even though many problems will resolve themselves, there are plenty of others that can cause permanent vision loss if they aren't treated properly.
I'm not a doctor, but I've had similar symptoms unrelated to VR. After several tests (including an MRI), I was advised to wait and see if the problem recurs. Given how long you've been asymptomatic, just wait and see seems like a reasonable course[1]. On the other hand, my symptoms did come back after a while, and it sounds like that VR session put more strain on your eyes than I've ever subjected myself to.
[1] I am not a doctor; when in doubt, talk to anyone w/ a medical license
B) I can't resist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaz2hxZLycY
It's not an uncomon effect for any close focusing to distort vision temporarily, especially if your eyes are tired. I visited an opthalmologist last year because of persistent ghosting at night, and it turned out to be from reading laying on my side in bed causing one eye to partially cross but not fully uncross until morning.
In other words, he's still right that VR headsets won't work with current technology.
The mixed reality continuum doesn't require different displays to provide different types of systems, so the distinction between AR and VR from a hardware implementation standpoint eventually goes away. If you build a VRD for AR then you are 90% of the way towards a combined system that could also work for VR. The trick then is figuring out how to "render black", arguably the hardest challenge for a combined system or even just hmd AR system.
So yes, currently it's an issue with current systems but won't always be the case.
In terms of locomotion, i agree that you can't get there (at least for systems with 6DOF) through systems that are ocular input only and not have the vergence problem. The caveat being if you can build a fast enough photon to cortex system.
Why is that necessary? I bet I could have tons of fun with wireframe based augmented reality games with zero opacity in them. That would also be a good way to deliver heads-up real-time data.
The military/defense guys probably played around with this before. I'd love to hear their take on wireframe AR.
>Nvidia’s CEO reckons the challenges holding VR back aren’t going to be solved for 20 years, delivering a surprising dose of realism to a VR industry creaking under the weight of hype.
Last month's Wired article on Magic Leap says that they've got the magical depth focus problem solved. Unfortunately it's frustratingly short on details. So I don't think we'll know for sure until it's actually released, but if this first generation of Vive/Oculus doesn't solve the issue, whatever generation that Magic Leap ends up being in might.
Until they show something to the public, I'll give them zero credence of having really advanced the state of the art.
The short version is, an OLED/LCD has an "infinite" focal length and cannot do otherwise. So by default everything in the display is rendered at the same focal point. You can do some tricks like blurring elements, but these are not responding to the convexity of your eyeball or how your eye muscles are working, so if you look at something that is software blurred it will still look blurry. Even with eye tracking it's still really a hack, and isn't naturally responsive - it's the software reacting to your gaze.
Display based accommodation however renders objects at different focal points. So when your eye changes gaze point and your ocular muscles respond to put your eye at that focus level, the object/s come into focus. It's the reverse of the hack.
Sounds like a trivial difference but is completely different, significantly more convincing and logistically more complex.
There is no absolute need to let the player experience real acceleration in unrealistic games, you can't differentiate between being at constant motion and being stationary. What I am getting to is that in unrealistic games you can make things move only at 5km/h or not at all, sure not realistic but possibly ok enough for less players to get motion sick, sure not a perfect solution but game developers have done amazing things with the limitations of 2d screens, and some people still get motion sick from shooters played on 2d screens. Not polished enough for real mainstream use but still polished enough for a very big market.
Alternatively you could make the player accelerate at steps of 5km/h:
while(Speed > 10){ Speed = (Speed modulo 10); inGameSpeed = (inGameSpeed + 5); } actualPlayerSpeed = inGameSpeed;
It's less of a "sufficiently smart compiler" argument and more of an "if you only touch 5% of the scene, the other 95% is just looking through glasses, and people do that just fine" argument.
A consumer focused solution really isn't feasible.
Don't forget, people get nausea and vertigo in everyday life in certain circumstances - driving while reading for example.
Similar to the author I worked with HMD systems while in the air force, specifically the integrated HUD avionics F35 helmet system. He is correct about the current lack of accommodation (depth perception) and the vestibular mismatch for movement. Other posters discuss vestibular stimulation, without realizing that such stimulation actually induces physical motion. The biological systems are too tightly connected to just simulate physical movement in the brain without a physical reaction.
What he misses, which is critical is that certain virtual retinal displays can solve the accommodation and multiple depth object focal lengths. This is the major thing that magic leap has going for it, but while it's hard it's not impossible to do in multiple ways. We have our own multi-depth accommodation vrd patent filing.
There is no real solution to the movement problem though... Except to actually work with virtual objects in the real world, AKA augmented reality.
So the actual solution to his problem doesn't lie in VR solutions, it's in AR.
Until we have sufficient BCI that works around vestibular and ocular pathways we aren't going to see the matrix levels of presence in non AR displays.