The sense of place is the vital element and it's really hard to communicate how significant it is.

If you're sceptical about Oculus Rift, here's an experiment for you. Download Doom and play it back-to-back with a modern FPS. What you'll probably notice most isn't the low resolution or the weird cardboard-cutout objects, but the absence of freelook. You'll find yourself jarring as you try to look up at ledges or peek down through windows, feeling peculiarly constrained, almost as if you're wearing a neck brace. The Rift is at least as big a difference.

HMDs with accurate head tracking are an absolute revelation, because they truly immerse you in the environment. You don't realise how much your natural vision relies upon your ability to take quick glances at odd angles - a look down at your feet to spot the last step, a peek over your shoulder before you merge into traffic and so on.

I guess then the next stage would be eye-tracking, so you can glance around without even moving your neck.

Which might also lower the computational requirements as the level of detail only needs to be high where you are looking.

The latency would have to be very low though.

Actually, this would be best handled by simple having a display that takes up significantly more than your field of view.

not necessarily true, depth and focus become an issue. Even with a bigger screen, you still need to know exactly where the eye is looking to provide proper focus on the screens.

If you've been following what John Carmack has been doing with these types of things, that seems to be the conclusion he has come to.

Your solution is certainly simple and cheaper to implement, but isnt anywhere near as effective, immersive, or cool. Eye tracking is defiantly needed to take this to the next level.

If you embed the optics in a contact lens (such as the one that is being readied by iOptik, then you dont need a HMD with embedded optics and can indeed have a large flexible display covering your entire Field of View.

> Something that will really be awesome will be these goggles and a Leap Motion controller, so that you gesture around your world.

I preordered an Oculus rift devkit, and the first thing I'll be doing (after spending hours ooh-ing and ah-ing in whatever 3D demo comes with it, hopefully) will be to hook it up with a kinect.

I believe you're looking for the omnidirectional treadmill[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnidirectional_treadmill

I can see lots of possibilities for new-age arcades with this in mind. Something like a real-world holodeck could feasibly come together with some investment.

Option 1: Just an omnidirectional treadmill with kneepad and wrist sensors. This is cool but immersion breaks trying to interact with obstacles or walls.

Option 2: Build different arena like a laser tag arena or paintball arena or a tennis court with obstacles and different types of gun controllers littered around the arena, then have the Occulus overlay a virtual simulation of the arena and different weapons depots, and add kneepad sensors connected to the Occulus so it can simulate motion. This allows you to solve the immersion problem of simulating and experiencing obstacles/walls.

Bonus: Some sort of suit that can use ems to be able to simulate muscle resistance to add weight to virtual collisions. Like this: http://www.cct.lsu.edu/~fharhad/ganbatte/siggraph2007/CD1/co...

I wonder about trauma from "dying" in a game that is so immersive it "tricks" your brain into thinking it is real -- example from the article about him sticking out his tongue to try and catch snow without thinking about it.

I wonder if we will start seeing more people in therapy for PTSD from gaming.

DFW predicted the rise of an entertainment so engrossing that people lost interest in doing anything else[1]. From bookworms to couch potatoes to video game addiction[2], we have seen ever-enriched simulations develop over the last few hundred years. People are already dying from neglecting their "meatspace" selves[3]; this will only increase in popularity. This does give some hint as to what people will "do" post-singularity[4].

1: Infinite Jest

2: Videgame Addiction was rejected from the next DSM, but I believe that we will see a form of it added within our lifetimes.

3: This has been happening for almost ten years: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

I think "The Entertainment" from Infinite Jest was an exaggeration rather than a direct prediction. I mean, a single glance at the screen would freeze someone in place and make one willing to cut off the fingers of another in order to continue watching. "The Entertainment" was also entirely non-interactive and non-social, whereas Starcraft and MMOs have strong interactive elements.

Far more interesting was the bit about the rise and fall of video chat, where people became so self-conscious about their appearance they eventually altered or covered them up before returning to audio-only. Kottke brought this up in relation to Facetime[1].

http://kottke.org/10/06/david-foster-wallace-on-iphone-4s-fa...

I am speaking more of direct sensory based shock, at "dying" or fear (horror genre), as apposed to "neglecting meatspace concerns".

Like it or not, that may be the future, where we're always "plugged in". We already do that with the Internet. We may even feel physical pain from not being able to access the Internet for a few days, and dearly "miss" it. I imagine this sort of feeling will only become more powerful as technology becomes more advanced, more connected, and more realistic.

But I don't think it's all bad. I think it will help with so many things we aren't even foreseeing yet.

The first solid MMORPG for this will be worth billions.

Brainstorm: A team of scientists invents "the Hat", a brain/computer interface that allows sensations to be recorded from a person's brain and converted to tape so that others can experience them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)

Also: Strange Days, Total Recall and Blade Runner.

and Final Cut, and a whole host of made-for-TV movies, depending on how much you're willing to relax the theme.

awesome movies!

Except for the remake of total recall... That sucked!

In response to your parent, there's also the movie by Wim Wenders "Until the end of the world"

Where IIRC a scientist creates a device that can record dreams and his wife becomes totally addicted to the experience and just can't stop playing and re-playing her dreams.

I think it's in Until the end of the world but cannot swear it ; )

Good movie anyway...

And then there's the movie which is a reflection on immersive videogame as the main plot: David Cronenberg's Existenz. Existenz is considered a flop by many, but an underrated movie by quite some people too.

I can imagine it being weird to walk around a 3D world while standing still in real-life (using keyboard or some sort of controller). But the Oculus Rift should be awesome right out of the box for any flight simulator. For a flight simulator the Rift makes so much sense.

Out of body experience? I imagine the future will be more like Avatar or Surrogates [1].

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl_h9RaL0es

Fun fact: the "happy ending" in Surrogates would likely result in total collapse of global economy and death of billions of people.

Sometimes filmmakers don't understand large-scale real-world consequences of the plot choices they make.

I imagine the real issue with a setup like that would be how quickly and smoothly the robotic camera could match your head movement. Did you experience any difficulty to that effect?

I've tried many controllers throughout my life. There's still nothing better than keyboard (WASD) plus mouse.