Man Sets World Record With 25 Continuous Hours In Virtual Reality (roadtovr.com) 80
An anonymous reader writes: Derek Westerman has made it in the Guinness Book of World Records by spending 25 straight hours in virtual reality. He used the HTC Vive and spent his entire time playing Tilt Brush. "Guinness has a whole set of rules and regulations, one of those being 'one game only the whole time.' I wanted to pick something that gave me the most freedom," Westerman says, "And painting in 3D space for 25 hours seemed like the best bet." At around the 17th hour mark, Westerman reportedly experienced some vertigo and threw up into a bucket provided for him by an assistant. The same bucket was used around the 6th hour mark when Westerman had to urinate. Then around the 21st hour, he starts babbling incoherently while waving the Vive controllers around, saying at one point, "I don't know where I'm at..." The video of the event has been released on Wednesday, even though Guinness lists the record as being achieved on April 7th.
Duration (Score:2)
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And lubricated, for god's sake. Nothing worse than rope burns on your tallywhacker.
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He goes back in time to urinate in the bucket he threw up in?
Yeah. Fetishes. I can't explain them either.
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I wonder how far these record attempts are going to go. Before long, people will be spending a year in VR to beat the record.
Would have been easier... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Seems to me that an actual game like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars or EVE would have been less boring. One of my cousins wonders if the rules would have excluded Second Life as it's not a game itself, but a "world" with many different things to do, including various games. (She plays in Second Life.)
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There are no games out like that for VR. Youve got tech demos and short games you can finish in a few hours. Vive has it the worst. There are a few multi-player games, but they are likely to intense. He could have wandered around Vanishing of Ethan Carter i guess or driven endlessly in project cars.
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FWIW, my cousin says that Second Life supposedly supports one of the VR headsets. She thinks Oculus, but doesn't have a VR headset, so isn't sure.
A friend of mine has an Oculus (dev version). Besides working on his own 3D apps, he uses it for gaming, even games that weren't designed for VR, let alone the Oculus. I tried it once. There was no depth perception, so was similar to sitting right on front of large monitor (or front row seat at an IMAX movie (non-3D)).
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Such as Eve Valkyrie?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm sceptic his symptoms were about being in VR (Score:4, Funny)
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I've recently toyed around with "Tilt Brush" in VR using a Vive, and while it might be not as boring as the "Job Simulator", it became pretty boring after 15 minutes or so. Doing "Tilt Brush" for 25 hours sounds dangerous to your mental health - not because of VR!
Tilt Brush is just a creative paint program. Plenty of people paint for hours for fun.
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I've recently toyed around with "Tilt Brush" in VR using a Vive, and while it might be not as boring as the "Job Simulator", it became pretty boring after 15 minutes or so. Doing "Tilt Brush" for 25 hours sounds dangerous to your mental health - not because of VR!
Agreed, but not the boredom... Tilt Brush is just a black background (plus whatever you create), so there's no horizon to orient yourself to. He would've had an easier time with something with a horizon, like Job Simulator, or even the Roman Villa demo.
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Sounds dangerously like a scam. Creatively painting, often contemplating a blank screen with your eyes closed, does that really count, say compared to playing a first person shooter et al which is what they will sell to children. Sounds like some pretty ass hat public relations bullshit to me :|. Let's see the first person shooter endurance trials, team against team (4 on 4 or 8 on 8 or even 16 on 16), MMO and see how longs those teams last against each other, SCORE WISE INCLUDED (no empty public relations
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... Doing "Tilt Brush" for 25 hours sounds dangerous to your mental health - not because of VR!
As clearly evidenced by what happened in this case.
typo (Score:3)
Does spending 17 hours stright (Score:3)
on WBS.net Ravers chat back in early 1997 count?
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Good one...
small record (Score:1)
Kevin Flynn has this record beat by more than 25 years!
I've got that beat (Score:2)
More detail, please (Score:4, Interesting)
After his experience, he said “There is a definitely a difference between my life before and after spending days in Virtual Reality. I was marked by it. And now, in an exciting way, everything feels slightly superficial or unreal.”
I want to know how, how it's affected his daily life, and whether that unreality is starting to pass. I've read quite a bit about the effects of LSD and psilocybin, and would like to know if there are any similarities.
It's a pity there wasn't a team of researchers there with him...
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I get a similar effect if I play Minecraft for a few hours; I start looking at rooms and objects in rooms in terms of how many blocks they would be, and that effect remains for several hours.
What's the point of this record? (Score:2)
Just strap a vibe to the head to one of those people that don't sleep. It's the same as staying awake period. Where is the added difficulty in wearing a VR headset?
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Did you understand the episode?
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Hey donte, don't you have some demons to slay at 30 fps or something?
25 HOURS? That's it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Guiness Book of Western World Records (Score:2)
Is just 25 hours really a world record? It sounds like the kind of thing a South Korean might do by accident.
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hint: a day has only 24h
dangerous things (Score:2)
Guinness stopped doing records for things like quantity of food or drink ingested because of health dangers. Sleep deprivation is dangerous too though this man wasn't into the recognized danger zone yet
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Guinness stopped doing records for things like quantity of food or drink ingested because of health dangers. Sleep deprivation is dangerous too though this man wasn't into the recognized danger zone yet
Sleep deprivation only really becomes an issue around 30-40 hours. Speaking from experience. I do have to wonder if the guy fasted the entire time though. It's really only an impressive feat if he went 25 hours without food and drink. And that mixed bag of deprivation would be pretty unhealthy, too.
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Guinness stopped doing records for things like quantity of food or drink ingested because of health dangers. Sleep deprivation is dangerous too though this man wasn't into the recognized danger zone yet
Sleep deprivation only really becomes an issue around 30-40 hours. Speaking from experience. I do have to wonder if the guy fasted the entire time though. It's really only an impressive feat if he went 25 hours without food and drink. And that mixed bag of deprivation would be pretty unhealthy, too.
I had thought that sleep deprivation caused serious consequences at 7+ days, but was corrected recently. Right here on /.
I do mid-30's w/focus, without any chemical assists like Ritalin, a few times a year.
So yeah, and I'm not insane... Hmmn... Looking over my last decade of /. posts, maybe there is something to that 30-40 hour thing after all...
Can you publish in Nature and be insane at the same time? I cannot tell, which seems to meet the definition.
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As someone with a circadian rhythm disorder, I end up doing around 28 hrs about 2-3 times a month. I probably go over that a few times a year. These are up all night can't sleep, crap now I've got to go to work for the next 9 hours. Then when I get home I'm not tired and stay up all night again. You get used to it. Not that you should want to, but your body adapts.
I also went 2.5 days without food or water before I started passing out from it (was really depressed). One day without food and drink is nothing as long as you aren't exercising at the same time. It's ok to be hungry. We never used to be full all the time.
Apply for SSDI (Disability)!!! That will gain you the right under the ADA to have accommodations made for your sleep schedule – if it is determined to be a "disability". Don't let the word put you off. It is just one gov't dept's use of a term. I does not mean that you are broken!!! So, stiff upper lip. Inquire with a disability attorney, NOT your physician directly (it's like asking for a prescription for morphine to them...). The attorney will assess and advise.
Humans did not evolve to adher
21 hours and he's lost it? (Score:2)
So the guy started babbling incoherently at hour 21? What a light-weight!
I've done 70 (w/a 3-hr nap at 24).
I can perform solid efforts in the mid-30's of hours once every month or two (and I am in my late 40's). I stop when I have to re-read a sentence twice—That indicates the end of coherent conscious thinking. That is when you whip out the Post-Its because you have 5 minutes of semi-coherence left—So mark where you left off well!
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Out of interest what task was this? It appears reading related. Study perhaps? Coding?
I'll answer the 30+-ers first. As Richard Feynman said (roughly), "To perform an intellectually intensive task, one necessarily requires a significant amount of uninterrupted time to commit to the work."
I work in many disparate fields. That means, when a major task in one arena is ready – to be analyzed, or more typically, written-up – a major block of time must be committed to it. You first have to get everything loaded into your working memory, which can take several hours.
Having invested
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Also when doing work as opposed to screwing around after about hour 10 I start turning into a vegetable. Am I a weakling? Maybe. I've put in my fair share of all nighters followed by a short (unplanned) nap followed by another all nighter.
When you wake up and still feel tired and look at your clock and realize that you've only had 8 hours of sleep in the last 72, this isn't usually an accomplishment and generally whatever you were doing now falls behind while you catch up on sleep. Hopefully you didn't make any mistakes either, that will set you back farther.
Agreed. If you exert effort when your brain feels "fried", then you are indeed wasting your time.
If your mind remains focused, be it by passion or fear or inspiration, then go with it. Everyone is different.
The opposite is true. One day, you might have four good hours in you. The next, 12 hours. We humans are meat-bags, not robots. Intellectual productivity is maximized when a person discards that "9-to-5" crap, and uses the juice when it flows.
"When attention frays, I call it a day." – Sir Hol
Well this won't stand for long (Score:2)
On a serious note, if you are allowed to sleep - which the text description of the record seems to indicate to me - people will rack up a month to a year, easy, soon enough. Technically since the VR headsets are low voltage electronics, it makes me wonder if you could make a waterproof version so you could shower your funky ass off without removing it.
Hmmm (Score:2)
Kind of surprised that the record is so low, but isn't this basically an exercise in staying awake?
Wait for koreans... (Score:2)
Great. More dead gamers. (Score:2)
So we can look forward to a future of people who plonk down in front of a box, don't move and die of blood clots?
YAY!
Does playing Descent count? (Score:2)
I certainly played more hours than 25h Descent in one row except for going to the toilet.
And our multiplayer sessions often reached easily 10 hours.
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I certainly played more hours than 25h Descent in one row except for going to the toilet.
And our multiplayer sessions often reached easily 10 hours.
From the Descent FAQ;
-- [5e] ---------- I'm having hallucinations when I look away from the monitor.
You've been playing far too long, and you need sleep. Go take a nap. :)
Come on don't let a little off monitor hallucination get to you. Who didn't see the game when you closed your eyes?
VR humans lowest bidder to run civilization (Score:2)
I, for one, would gladly welcome our new basement VR overlords, since the arrival of the robot overlords has been delayed by driverless traffic gridlock (a sandbag is blocking a turning lane somewhere as we speak).
Operating heavy equipment and backhoes in all kinds of weather, performing critical tasks requiring precise coordination and at times unorthodox methods, including descent into dangerous confined spaces to repair water and sewer mains, where one is drenched in icy water attempting to digout, clean
Can't be the record... (Score:1)