In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need? (nytimes.com) 34
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Will it soon be possible to simulate the feeling of a spirit not attached to any particular physical form using virtual or augmented reality? If so, a good place to start would be to figure out the minimal amount of body we need to feel a sense of self, especially in digital environments where more and more people may find themselves for work or play. It might be as little as a pair of hands and feet, report Dr. Michiteru Kitazaki and a Ph.D. student, Ryota Kondo. In a paper published Tuesday in Scientific Reports, they showed that animating virtual hands and feet alone is enough to make people feel their sense of body drift toward an invisible avatar (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). Their work fits into a corpus of research on illusory body ownership, which has challenged understandings of perception and contributed to therapies like treating pain for amputees who experience phantom limb.
Using an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and a motion sensor, Dr. Kitazaki's team performed a series of experiments in which volunteers watched disembodied hands and feet move two meters in front of them in a virtual room. In one experiment, when the hands and feet mirrored the participants' own movements, people reported feeling as if the space between the appendages were their own bodies. In another experiment, the scientists induced illusory ownership of an invisible body, then blacked out the headset display, effectively blindfolding the subjects. The researchers then pulled them a random distance back and asked them to return to their original position, still virtually blindfolded. Consistently, the participants overshot their starting point, suggesting that their sense of body had drifted or "projected" forward, toward the transparent avatar.
Using an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset and a motion sensor, Dr. Kitazaki's team performed a series of experiments in which volunteers watched disembodied hands and feet move two meters in front of them in a virtual room. In one experiment, when the hands and feet mirrored the participants' own movements, people reported feeling as if the space between the appendages were their own bodies. In another experiment, the scientists induced illusory ownership of an invisible body, then blacked out the headset display, effectively blindfolding the subjects. The researchers then pulled them a random distance back and asked them to return to their original position, still virtually blindfolded. Consistently, the participants overshot their starting point, suggesting that their sense of body had drifted or "projected" forward, toward the transparent avatar.
Seriously? (Score:1)
Millennials are fucking retards.
Re: (Score:3)
Shut up, Users are a myth. Get back to work and prepare for your timeslice.
What women think men think they need . . . (Score:1)
Their dick.
Because that's what they think with.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be a rather weird and creepy thing to see floating out there, disembodied.
less is more (Score:4, Insightful)
If this was 20 or 30 years ago (Score:2)
they would be telling you a trackball and wireframe graphics VRML plugins in Netscape would be good enough.
If hands and feet are good enough today, why not use stick figure hands and feet.
If you want something immersive, being able to shift your POV is pretty useful.
and I think Pornhub may have some VR studies that could have different findings.
None? Perhaps a couple of dots? (Score:3)
Listen - "virtual reality" is nice as a concept - but it's the same as any simulation. Yes - you can add arbitrary 'immersion' by adding various kinds of haptics, biofeedback, etc. reflecting body state and the like, but it's still virtual reality with just keyboard/mouse lame headset.
It's all just what you want to add to it - but like with most simulations, the additional features tend to fade into the background once you acclimatize to them.
And no matter how 'good' you make the simulation, because it IS a simulation, there is always going to strong pressures to use shorthands for longer experiences, injecting an artifice into the medium as it evolves. Books do this, movies do this, radio did this - all expressive works do this.
I currently categorize virtual reality as a relatively shallow extension of regular computer simulations. It's not as shallow as say, 3D movies are to regular movies - but in the same sense as only needing say, a mouse pointer, or simple indicator of position you're controlling - the same would hold for Virtual Reality - perhaps a couple of dots contrasting well enough with the background to know what you'd interact with with your arms, or controller, or whatever.
You don't even really need the dots if you can have the interactions themselves convey whatever you were controlling in-game/utility.
Like, if you were just doing an interactive map program, you could follow smartphone logic, and just have hand movements to drag/zoom around that map. Same with an interactive movie theater app on no-interface mode. As long as you didn't expect everything to be a body simulation experience, there doesn't have to be any limitation - the headset is just a large-aspect virtual monitor for some uses.
Ryan Fenton
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
TL;DR:
Full dive or go home.
Re: (Score:1)
Yep, but then again, perfect is the enemy of good enough.
I remember images of VR rigs in the 90's. Super expensive and not really that great.
It has finally reached a point where it is good enough for home usage rather than just a tech demo.
Even if it is just a novelty thing it is still a pretty big milestone.
It is usable and small improvements can be added and reach a large audience if it is cheap enough.
There is no longer any need to go for a full dive. Every small improvement will increase the group of pe
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying the current VR isn't great, it is. Have loved several games. BUT, I IMO we need all of those in their. In order of priority IMO [...]
Can't the 360 version of Kinect track literally all of that stuff?
Don't we know this already? (Score:2)
Weird conclusion (Score:1)
They concluded, because the users consistently overshot their starting point, that the users were projecting themselves towards the avatar? It sounds like they had a conclusion they wanted to make, and tested only that which would support the conclusion rather than what might refute it, making this bad science.
Why didn't they conclude that people tend to overestimate how much they're being pushed or pulled by external forces? Why not move the avatar as well, to see if this influences where the people end up
Mocap (Score:2)
With motion capture technology getting better and cheaper - and capable of real-time capture - incorporating a body in VR should be a solved problem soon. Startups are flocking to this space:
Perception Neuron Hardware
https://neuronmocap.com/produc... [neuronmocap.com]
Kigurumi Live Animator (real time animation running on Perception Neuron)
https://kila.amebaownd.com/ [amebaownd.com]
See Kigurumi Live Animator Animation demo here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
PrioVR:
https://yostlabs.com/priovr/ [yostlabs.com]
Ikenema Orion:
https://ikinema.com/orion [ikinema.com]
Motion S
One word.... (Score:2)
They don't exist. (Score:2)
There are no spirits, so how does one simulate being one?