We’ve seen several videos demonstrating what games might be like when played with the Oculus Rift VR headset, and while the list of supporting games is growing slowly, will we ever see it be compatible with Sony’s upcoming PS4? While […]
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I’m a little nauseous and a bit sweaty. This was my first time using the Oculus Rift. It’s the sort of thing you’ve got to ease into, really — sitting stationary, letting your brain adjust to the whole experience. Or you could just pop the thing on and run in place on a treadmill in a downtown Los Angeles hotel suite. Your call, really. Just don’t come crying to me when you’re having a bit of trouble standing up straight, as you attempt to step down from the slippery surface at the end of your session. Have I seen the future? Hard to say, of course, but whatever it was that just happened was neat — and if you were one of the 2,000 or so folks who got in on Virtuix’s Kickstarter, it’ll be heading your way in January.
The company’s CEO, Jan Goetgeluk took me through the paces of the system, a stationary design he settled on after toying around with a more traditional treadmill model. The Omni is really quite a simple thing at its heart, a concave, slick surface attached to two bars that converge in a circle. The company’s designed special soles, as well — plastic pieces raised at the heel and ball of the foot, with a fabric friction surface on the toe. Walk around and your feet slip. That’s about it, really. Of course, it takes some getting used to, and Goetgeluk stood aside as I learned to walk again: lean forward, step down on the heel and let the rest of your foot slide with it. It took a few minutes, and I’m still not exactly an expert
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
Welcome to Touchable TV!
In addition to showcasing their 8K, 7680×4320, Ultra-High-Def (Ridiculous-Def?) TV broadcasting kit last weekend, Japan’s NHK also demoed a haptic feedback device that simulates virtual 3D objects in real time. And the thing is, it’s really just a robot that, when you touch it, kinda touches you back.
NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) is a public media organization somewhat analogous to the American PBS. However, entirely not at all like its American counterpart, the J-broadcaster’s got this: NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories. Which is nice, because in cooperation with various corporate partners, NHK seriously delivers the tech.
Okay fine… so where’s the robot?
Haptic Virtual Reality that’s Actually Virtual – Just Put Your Finger in This Robotic Thingy!
In the image above, a brave test pilot is placing his index finger into the locus of a five-point artificial haptic feedback environment. Based on the analysis & modeling of a virtual 3D object that in turn informs the movements and relative resistances among five robotic arms controlling the five feedback points, a focused area of stimuli/response is generated. Sounds complicated to explain “robotic, artificial sense of touch” that way, but conceptually the idea is quite simple:
#1. Put your finger in here and strap on the velcro:
#2. It’ll feel like you’re touching something that doesn’t physically exist, like Domo-kun (Dōmo-koon) here:
Each of those shiny round points is the terminus of a robotic arm that either gives way or holds steady based on the relative position of the finger to the contours of the object being simulated. Each point’s position-resistance refreshes every 1/1000th of a second. Not bad.
For practical, full-immersion VR to exist (in a physical sense; that is, before VR becomes a direct neural interface a la The Matrix), for now and for a while our low-to-medium-resolution interactive haptic feedback interfaces will be intrinsically robotic. And for virtualizing entirely digital, non-real artifacts, NHK’s device is a step in that direction.
Of course five points of interactivity might not sound like much, but mindful of the generally leapfroggy nature of technological advancement, effectively replicating and surpassing the haptic resolution we now experience via the estimated 2,500 nerve receptors/cm² in the human hand doesn’t seem too tall an order.
If that does seem too tall, if that does sound too far out and overly optimistic, if it seems impossible that we’d ever be able to cram 2,500 sensory & feedback robots into a square centimeter – well, then your robo-dorkery score is low and you need to pay more attention. Because dude, we’re already building nanorobots atom-by-atom. Not an “if” question, this one.
Neat… But Anything Really New Here?
Of course, a wide variety of teleoperated force-feedback systems are either already in use or in-development (the da Vinci Surgical System; NASA’s Robonaut 2; etc.), so it’s important to emphasize here that NHK’s device is novel for a very particular reason: Maybe all, or nearly all, of the force-feedback haptic systems currently in use or development are based on an ultimately analog physicality. That is to say, whether it’s repairing a heart valve from another room, or, from a NASA building in Texas, tele-pushing a big shiny button on the International Space Station – what’s being touched from afar ultimately is a physical object.
So, what we might consider contemporary practical VR is more accurately a kind of partial VR. As the sense of touch is essential to our experience as human beings, incorporating that sense is a step toward interactive, actual factual, truly virtual virtual reality. Modeling and providing haptic feedback for non-physical objects, i.e., things that don’t really exist, in concert with other virtualization technologies – that’s a big step.
So What Can/Does/Will it Do?
NHK is kind of talking up the benefits for the visually impaired – which is good and noble and whatnot – but perhaps focusing on that is a bit of a PR move, because at least in theory this technology could go way, way beyond simple sensory replacement/enhancement.
An advanced version, incorporating the virtual touching of both simulated and/or real objects, could add layers of utility and interactivity to almost any form of work, entertainment, shopping… from afar we might discern how hard it is to turn a valve in an accident zone (partial VR), how bed sheets of various thread count feel against the skin (partial or full VR), the rough surface of the wall one hides behind in a videogame (proper VR), or even pettting the dog, or petting… ummm, a friend (partial and/or proper VR – chose your own adventure)!
That’s a ways off, but in the short-to-near-term, here’s how NHK envisions functionality for their touchable TV tech:
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Full-Immersion Omni-Sensory VR System!
Okay, so to get this ball rolling: NHK, meet VR upstart Oculus Rift. NHK & Oculus Rift, meet VR/AR mashup Eidos. NHK, Oculus Rift, and Eidos, meet UC Berkely’s laser-activated pseudo-robotic hydrogels.
We’re all waiting for your pre-holodeck lovechild.
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Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.
Via: MyNavi (Japanese/日本語); DigInfo
Images: DigInfo; NHK
My brain hates first-person games, so most of the stuff I’ve read and seen about the Oculus Rift don’t really interest me. But I’d be willing to buy the Rift just for Joo-Hyung Ahn’s VR Cinema 3D. It’s an app for the Rift that lets you watch videos in 3D while you’re inside a virtual movie theater.
As Ben Kuchera described at the Penny-Arcade Report, VR Cinema 3D doesn’t just let you watch videos on an enormous 3D screen. It lets you move around the theater. You can change seats and perhaps even faff about, fall asleep and ignore the movie altogether. The way Kuchera describes it, Joo Hyung-An seems to have captured the perspective of being in a cinema so well: your perspective of the screen changes accordingly when you move around, and the theater is believably dark and spacious. It’s a happy place for introverts and claustrophobes.
Those of you who have a development unit of the Rift can use VR Cinema 3D for free. Head to Joo Hyung-An’s website and click on the ‘Projects’ header to see the download link.
[via The PA Report via Movies]
In the latest update to Valve‘s classic sci-fi first-person shooter Half-Life 2, the developer added official support for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, making it the second game from Valve to support the new VR device, with Team Fortress 2 being the first game that received the green light.
Valve programmer and lead developer of the Oculus Rift-ified Team Fortress 2 Joe Ludwig announced support for Half-Life 2 on the Oculus Developer Forums. The beta for the VR version of the game is out now, and Ludwig says that the port should be shipping to everyone “in a few weeks,” allowing Oculus Rift owners to take advantage of the Valve game.
However, Ludwig notes that this particular port is “a bit more raw” than the Team Fortress 2 port when it first was released for the Oculus Rift, so gamers will definitely experience some bugs in the game, and Valve is already aware of a few themselves, including problems with HUD and and the zoomed-in UI.
As for other Valve titles that will make their way through the Oculus Rift development process, Valve says that more of their games will be heading to the VR headset, including the Portal and Left 4 Dead series, which have already gone through some testing phases. However, no more details were given about upcoming games.
[via Polygon]
[Source: Oculus Developer Forums]
Half-Life 2 Oculus Rift support official is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
We’ve seen several games, such as Team Fortress 2, Mirror’s Edge, and Skyrim modded to run on the Oculus Rift VR headset, and if you’re wondering what other games might be fun to play while wearing the Oculus Rift, it seems that some people have modded popular game, Minecraft, so that it can be played together with the Oculus Rift, essentially putting you into the game itself. We’re not sure what it would feel like since we don’t have the device for ourselves, but so far based on the video above put together by Vaecon, it seems to be pretty immersive, which we guess was kind of the point to begin with. For those who backed the Oculus Rift device and have it with them and you’re interested in trying this out for yourself, you can head on over to the MTBS3D forum where you will be able to download the necessary files to get the game up and running. For regular folks like ourselves, we guess the video above would have to suffice. So gamers, what other games would you like to see on the Oculus Rift?
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Ouya Console Launch Delayed To 25th June, Sony Teases “Panopticon” Announcement For 16th May, 
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Man, the people who got their hands on the Oculus Rift are really desperate for something to play on their new toy. We already saw someone make a Virtual Boy emulator for the Rift, and now here’s an experience for head-mounted display about not having your head mounted on your neck anymore.
The program is called Disunion. I can’t really call it a game, because it doesn’t seem to accept any input from the “player.” It’s a guillotine simulator and all you can do is wait and look around. I think that pretty much sums up the options left to the victim in such an event.
Disunion was made by Erkki Trummal, André Berlemont and Morten Brunbjerg during the Exile Game Jam. You can download a Windows build of Disunion on Unicorn7. I wonder if it lets you look at your body after you’ve been decapitated. At that point you’ll have a first- and third-person perspective at the same time.
[via Kotaku]
We’ve seen a number of games modded to work on the Oculus Rift over the past couple of weeks with Mirror’s Edge, Team Fortress 2 and Skyrim being among the most popular games. But one of the cooler, and probably the most cruel, piece of software that was developed for the Oculus Rift has got to be Disunion.
Disunion is a guillotine simulator developed by André Berlemont, Erkki Turmmal and Morten Brunbjerg which was developed in only two days and offers its user (or victim) a first-person view of what it’s like to get your head cut off. Their demo video not only shows brief glimpses of Disunion in action, but the team also takes the demonstration one step further by chopping at the neck of the person wearing the Oculus Rift. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Dead Space 3 Plasma Cutter Working Replica Can Fire Real Lasers, Splinter Cell: Blacklist Bringing Back Spies vs. Mercs Multiplayer Mode, 
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