Joel Khalili – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

September 24, 2019

Is the Seated Experience the Future of Virtual Reality?

Virtual reality (VR) is one of only a handful of activities that can draw the human attention away from its immediate reality. The suspension of reality is an inherently delicate state, though, and usually lasts for only a brief amount of time.

The VR industry’s broad goal is to create ever more compelling experiences, that extend this period of acute distraction for as long as possible. But VR faces a significant barrier to progress where this objective is concerned—the movement of the player around the virtual world. This particular head-scratcher is widely known within the industry as the “locomotion problem”.

To allow for physical movement within a virtual environment, all the while maintaining an unbroken suspension of reality, was never going to be a simple problem to solve. Today’s premium systems do a serviceable job of tracking movement within a demarcated play-zone, but fall down on the second criteria.

Anyone who has sampled a premium virtual reality experience will be familiar with the jarring sensation of striking a physical object in the real world, that isn’t present in its virtual counterpart. In some sense, the feeling is of betrayal, similar in kind to a child’s discovery of the techniques behind a magician’s illusion.

Some companies are turning to technological solutions in the form of peripherals, in an attempt to sustain the illusion. Many of these believe the seated experience represents the best solution to the problem of locomotion.

The question of room-scale

The room-scale VR experience is undoubtedly an impressive spectacle, but it has its issues. There are valid question marks over its safety, its value as a form of gameplay and its practicability, given the amount of space it requires.

Some, including Stan Chesnais, CEO at 3dRudder, believe that the arrival of room-scale virtual reality along with the HTC Vive had a lasting negative impact on the industry.

Over Skype, he said he thinks “the launch of the Vive was in some sense damaging for the industry. It introduced the idea that virtual reality should be a standing experience, and this created a lot of confusion. Games like BeatSaber are great played standing, but no movement is required. As soon as the player is asked to move, they feel more secure and comfortable seated.”

Chenais, whose balance-board style product allows players to move and strafe in virtual space with subtle movements of the feet, went on to discuss the issue of space.

“The idea of room-scale was a significant impediment to adoption because very few have the space for it. I live in Paris – not even in the centre, but the suburbs – and I don’t have space for room-scale virtual reality. Unless you’re playing in the desert, you’ll never have enough space, so for the player to move without limitation the industry will need to transition towards the seated experience.”

Of course, the arrival of the HTC Vive has to be said to have had a net positive effect on the VR industry – and Chesnais would surely agree – but his point is worth considering. Perhaps the early popularity of room-scale VR has funnelled the industry down a path it could do without stepping.

When it comes to the locomotion problem, developers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Room-scale VR is a significant draw because to be able to wander around a virtual environment as you would any environment in the real world is compelling – it’s sexy! At the same time, the emphasis placed on the room-scale experience has alienated a significant sub-set of potential adopters, who lack the necessary 2.5m²play-zone.

Context is king

Unlike the 3dRudder’s more sedentary play-style, Michael Bieglmayer’s Cybershoes have the player traverse the virtual environment by gliding their feet back and forth along the floor, while seated on a swivel stool.

Again over Skype, Bieglmayer discussed the locomotion problem as he sees it. One thing he’s certain of is that the player has to be able to utilise the body in as natural a way as possible.

“For me, VR should be a holistic experience. The more of the body involved, the better, because it’s a natural user interface. The player shouldn’t feel like a human joystick, and with foot tracking they can perform precise movements in a natural and intuitive way. Using only the upper portion of the body means the lower half is being underutilised.”

For Bieglmayer, context is king when it comes to seated versus room-scale VR. It’s not a case of either-or.

“Room-scale virtual reality is for certain games, not all. It’s powerful when employed effectively, but its also certainly limiting for game developers. Neither room-scale nor the hand controller will die out because they each serve a purpose, but open-world games especially should be experienced seated.”

Part of the beauty of the virtual reality industry is that it’s full of dreamers and creatives – people looking to push the boundaries of experience and technology. However, a hard and unromantic pragmatist might suggest that the greatest value lies in assessing the technological limits of VR systems as they are today and operating exclusively within those boundaries. The seated experience sits comfortably within those boundaries, but in certain scenarios room-scale does not.

2.5m²

It’s likely discussions around the locomotion problem will continue for a few more years yet, but what’s clear today is that a rebalancing of perspective needs to occur.

There prevails a feeling that a VR experience isn’t true or full unless it’s dialled up to the max. People want VR to be as consistent with the experience of living and operating in the real world as possible, immediately. It would be healthier in the long term, though, to concede that trying to go from 0 to 100 straight away is neither sensible nor plausible. The industry is still very much in its nascent stages, after all.

The current prejudice against seated experiences will surely fall away as more high-quality and affordable peripherals enter the market, and demonstrate that you don’t necessarily need 2.5m²to suspend reality. In fact, you may well be better off without it.

April 4, 2019

Why it’s Time to Reinvent the Vocabulary of Virtual Reality

The way an emerging technology articulates itself often plays a much larger role in its uptake than the quality and utility of the technology itself. This is the power of language, and of marketing. It’s also often the case that the terminology used to describe a technology when it first erupts onto the scene sticks with it for good. Once branded, it’s branded for life.

Oculus Quest - Hero / Lifestyle Image We’ve been using the same language to describe the virtual reality (VR) experience since it became available to the consumer. We talk about VR as immersive, interactive, transformational, groundbreaking, innovative. We also talk about the universe virtual reality (VR) unlocks, our presence within it, and the state of flow it induces in us.

These terms share a very distinct set of qualities. They are all grandiose, romantic and superlative, and they all lack specificity. What these words fail to provide is space to accommodate for any of VR’s imperfections, and this might prove an issue in years to come.

Words like immersive and innovative have started to sound like hollow – even desperate – jargon, and may well start to have the opposite of their desired effect. It’s as if we’re using them time and again in the hope that their repeated utterance will somehow magically bring them to fruition. Instead, this process has driven out any meaning the terms once had.

The VR lexicon is due a considerable overhaul. It’s high time the industry found more expressive and particular ways to discuss the phenomenon of virtual reality because the current vocabulary is doing it a disservice.

Reinvention

Reinvention is much more difficult than the title of this article makes it sound. The terminology that attaches itself to any new technology at the outset has a distinct stickiness.

We’ve seen this phenomenon play out in the blockchain industry over the past year or so. Some companies entering the scene have attempted to distance themselves from the word blockchain, due to its association with cryptocurrency and the orbiting controversies. Some are choosing to use Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as a kind of sanitized synonym.

The unique responsibility – you might even say burden – of a brand-new technology is that it must describe itself accurately and convincingly to an audience without a frame of reference. For this reason, the temptation is to describe an infant technology, before anyone quite knows what it’s capable of or what it will become, in flowery and unspecific ways.

Enter immersive, the go-to term for describing a VR experience that’s in any way pleasing or remarkable.

As Emily Brown and Paul Cairns of UCL’s Interaction Centre point out in their paper, A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion, “it is very difficult to find out what exactly is meant by immersion and indeed even whether the different research on immersion is talking about the same concept.”

This slippery quality is precisely what made the term perfect for the early VR marketeers, but it’s also what’s now limiting discussion of the VR experience. The vocabulary of virtual reality is built upon the word immersion, a foundation that no one can pin down, qualify or interpret convincingly.

Brown and Cairns conclude their paper by stating: “Immersion is an intense experience that we have begun to clearly describe…this study has only scratched the surface”. It’s not quite an acknowledgement of defeat, but it’s not far off one either.

Moving beyond immersion

Perhaps instead of attempting to retrospectively apply meaning to a word as elusive as immersion, as Brown and Cairns attempt to do, we should look to unshackle virtual reality from the term entirely.

The onus is on the industry to somehow find a way to communicate the nuanced qualities of the VR experience in a way that both emphasizes its considerable merits, but also leaves room for its deficiencies.

If marketeers and industry professionals hold aloft the ill-defined concept of immersion as the immovable goalposts for VR, it’s going to continue to disappoint and to underperform.

The current popular vocabulary implies that VR is capable of inducing both the place illusion, the feeling of actually existing in a non-existent place, and the plausibility illusion, the genuine belief that a simulation is reality.

In truth, VR is currently only able to provoke glimmers of these sensations. For a flickering moment, the player might mistake the unreal for the real, or briefly forget their geographical location, but only ever for a moment. This in itself is remarkable enough.

Perhaps the state of immersion isn’t even what developers should be aspiring towards. Surely fun is a much more appropriate and rewarding goal. There’s plenty of time for the illusions of place and plausibility to be realised, but for now they are still ultimately a thing of (perhaps dystopian) fiction.

Immersion doesn’t necessarily equate to fun. It’s actually quite a serious term, when you consider the implications of becoming convinced that you’re somewhere you’re not, in a reality that’s not your own.

For now, I’d like to see virtual reality understood for what it is: a striking sensory experience, and a brand new artistic medium – but, most importantly, an imperfect one.

March 6, 2019

How low-end VR Offerings are Damaging the Health of the Ecosystem

The issue of price has loomed large over the virtual reality (VR) industry since its conception, and it’s one of the main barriers to entry for those curious about the technology. To purchase an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, including a PC powerful enough to run them, the consumer needs roughly £2000 burning a hole in their pocket.

Some companies, such as Samsung and Google, hoped to tackle this issue with cheaper, smartphone-powered offerings. Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Daydream and Cardboard headsets represent a wrung of VR offerings that compromise on raw processing power in the name of affordability and portability, using a smartphone as a means of display.

At first, this seems like a sensible and even noble enterprise. How are we supposed to propel the adoption of VR, if the headsets are so wildly unaffordable, right? If premium headsets are considered a toy of people with more money than sense, how is VR expected to survive its infant stages?

However, there are hidden costs attached to undercutting the premium platforms with low-end offerings, which pose an even greater existential threat to the VR ecosystem.

Performance versus accessibility

Without getting too bogged down in the technical details, there is a huge performance gap between the Gear VR and the Oculus Rift, for instance. The latest Samsung smartphones are undoubtedly impressive pieces of tech—I even own one myself. However, when it comes to generating and running an interactive 3D environment, they don’t compare with high-end PCs, and nor should they be asked to.

The Gear VR could be described as a plug-in-and-play experience but, despite its convenience, the application library is shallow, and the system is prone to serious lag. It also lacks the facility to track the user’s physical movement, which means that using the Gear VR is much more like peering through a window into a virtual world, as opposed to actually stepping into one. The virtual world becomes an ornament to admire, rather than an immersive space to explore.

Portability is another of the Gear VR’s main draws – unlike the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, the headset is wireless. The reason the two premium headsets are unable to operate wirelessly is, in short, that current technology doesn’t allow it. It’s not possible to fit the processing power of a high-end PC into a package small or light enough to sit on the front of the face. For reference, the PC I use to run the Vive weighs 14.85kg. Not even the most impressive of (human) necks could withstand this kind of weight for an extended period. Again, here, the Gear VR sacrifices quality and performance in the name of convenience.

By providing a taste of what virtual reality makes possible, you might think that systems such as the Gear VR would serve to whet the player’s appetite for the technology. However, the reality is that those who experience VR for the first time through low-end platforms won’t necessarily attribute their limitations to the individual headsets. The risk is that they will make a blanket assumption about the entire VR ecosystem, and write it off as underwhelming and overhyped. Instead of whetting the appetite, the player’s hunger evaporates into thin air.

A false economy

With virtual reality, it’s very much the case that you get what you pay for.

In terms of price, after recent cuts, the HTC Vive will run you £499 GBP, and the Oculus Rift comes in slightly lower at £399. The latest iteration of Samsung Gear VR is sold for roughly £100, and the Google Daydream costs £75. Finally, Google Cardboard can be purchased for the modest fee of £5 or, by another metric, a three-course dinner at your local Wetherspoons.

The name Google has chosen for its cheapest device—the Cardboard—is evidence enough that it doesn’t take the platform seriously. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean consumers will connect the dots. Not because they’re brainless, but because they have no frame of reference, having never experienced virtual reality.

Because the price of smartphone-driven VR is drastically lower than premium offerings, many are turning to them as the first port of call. However, low-end VR is comparatively disappointing, especially in the context of the public’s lofty expectations of VR, as influenced by popular Sci-Fi. This means these systems are serving to dampen enthusiasm for virtual reality, dealing lasting damage to the health of the ecosystem.

Samsung and Google have disguised an attempt to capitalise on the considerable hype surrounding VR as an honest attempt to tackle the affordability problem.

The state of play

Words like “gimmick” and “fad” are nails down a chalkboard to VR enthusiasts, and they’re almost always levelled at virtual reality because the experience has been sampled using a low-end platform.

As a long history of television advertising tells us, first impressions are everything, and the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift have been tarred with the same brush as their would-be relatives. It’s notoriously difficult to change someone’s mind after it’s already been made up, and first opinions on VR are currently dictated by its least impressive representatives.

It’s clear that for virtual reality to find its way into every household, it needs to become significantly cheaper. However, this price-drop needs to occur naturally, through a lengthy process of iteration and technological refinement. By exposing the consumer to a raft of sub-par and unrepresentative experiences, we’re in danger of dealing a fatal blow to VR’s longevity, before it’s been given a proper chance to demonstrate its merit.

February 15, 2019

How the Lack of Physical Space is Affecting the Adoption of VR in Major Cities

Living in a sprawling metropolis like London or New York can be expensive, and often cramped—any local will tell you that. It’s also fair to say that neither of these characteristics of big city living are all that helpful in the context of virtual reality (VR) adoption. So, how precisely is the lack of physical space affecting the adoption of VR in major global cities?

When discussing VR adoption in this article, I’m talking about widespread adoption and the effects of space constraints in this context. What I’m not talking about is the early adopters, those who will make space, despite the lack of it. What I’m trying to say is, I’m not talking about the nutters willing to alienate their flatmates with a living room full of sensors and cabling—nutters like myself.

If VR is to take off, it needs to find its way into the household of the casual gamer (someone unwilling to make space), not just those mad, eccentric or passionate enough to take a gamble on the technology.

Tetris-like living

Two meters by one and a half meters. This is the minimum amount of space required to set up a room-scale VR experience using the HTC Vive. It might not sound like much, but it’s harder to find than you might think.

Take my beloved London for example. According to a 2015 survey, the average floorspace of flats in the London boroughs of Walthamstow, Bexley and Croydon was a mere 57 m². The City of London wasn’t far behind, with an average floorspace of 59 m². This might sound like plenty of space, but once you’ve accounted for dividing these flats into bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and living rooms, and populating these spaces with necessary furniture, that all-important 2m x 1.5m becomes extremely difficult to find.

Some have described living in London as “Tetris-like living”, which is fun to visualise, but less fun to experience. The term “rabbit hutch Britain” also began to float around in 2014 when it was announced that the UK topped the rankings for the smallest properties in Europe. Not exactly an accolade to be proud of.

Apartment dwellers in global cities such as London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo have become masters of this “Tetris-like” lifestyle. They spend more time outside of the domestic sphere than most, utilising public spaces like parks, squares, restaurants and bars, to compensate for the lack of space at home.

By necessity, city dwellers become experts in spatial economy, making use of every inch of personal space, as well as every inch of communal space. If you’re in need of further convincing, find a video of commuters boarding a train in Tokyo—it’s a modern marvel. However, the tactics employed by savvy city dwellers can’t be applied to VR’s specific space problem. Top of the range VR sets aren’t exactly cheap, portable or weatherproof, so it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing them in our public squares and parks any time soon.

Another recent survey found that 47 per cent of UK residents said there wasn’t even enough space in their homes for the furniture they owned. It’s fair to assume that this percentage would be even higher if London was examined in isolation. Presumably, this means that more than half of all Londoners are from the get-go completely inhibited from setting up a VR play-space at home. This figure doesn’t even account for those who have no interest in technology, and those that simply don’t have the knowledge required to operate a VR set, two demographics that would drive the exclusion percentage even higher.

For VR to become widespread, its userbase needs to reach a critical mass. At this point, more money will be poured into developing high-quality applications and inexpensive set-ups, and the userbase will multiply. Whether it’s possible to achieve this critical mass with such a high percentage of city-dwellers excluded from using VR in the home is, unfortunately, perhaps doubtful.

However, there might just be a way around the lack of physical space in our global cities. If only there was some way of creating the convincing illusion of space, where in fact there is none…

The locomotion commotion

Locomotion has been an issue for as long as VR has existed. Those who’ve had the privilege of sampling the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift will be familiar with the genuinely incredible sense of immersion they induce. They’ll also, though, be familiar with the heartbreak brought about when that delicate state of immersion is shattered, as a wayward fist or leg strikes a wall (or television) that doesn’t exist in the virtual world. It’s like an unsolicited bucket of cold water tipped over the head.

Some companies have turned to technological solutions to the problem of locomotion, that might also simultaneously address the problem of space. Virtuix Omni, for instance, has gone down the Ready Player One route with its large omnidirectional treadmill. The engineering might be impressive, but the £300 GBP treadmill takes up a lot of space itself. It’s probably safe to say that if people don’t have space for their furniture, it’s unlikely they have space for a science-fiction treadmill.

Another more space efficient option is a pair of Cybershoes. This extremely stylish foot accessory, that recently enjoyed a successful Kickstarter campaign, allows the seated player to scuttle around the VR environment by skimming their feet backwards and forwards on the floor. The shoes are designed to allow for a motion not entirely dissimilar to running. Although a pair of Cybershoes isn’t quite as expensive as an omnidirectional treadmill, starting at circa £150, you’d also have to invest in an appropriate swivel chair and a means of suspending the headset cable above you as you play.

It’s safe to say that technologies allowing players to move around the virtual environment without taking up space in the real world aren’t quite there yet. If they’re to make a real impact in the adoption of VR systems, they’d have to take a considerable price drop, and achieve much higher levels of functionality.

What’s certain is that the space issue in major global cities isn’t going anywhere. Spiralling property prices and the decreasing size of new-build flats mean that more and more people are packing themselves into tighter and tighter spaces.

This is the metaphorical and literal price you pay for living in a modern metropolis, and we understand that, even if we reserve the right to complain about it. To look at rent purely in the context of the space you receive for the money you pay is to tell only half the story. Really, people are paying for the proximity of world-class music, food, theatre, and art. They’re also paying for intangibles such as atmosphere, diversity, and even history. All of this, though, is unquestionably problematic for the VR industry and all those hoping to drive widespread adoption.

Our best hope is a technological leap that will allow for the convincing simulation of physical space, where in fact there is none. The illusion of space could prove ten times more valuable and powerful than physical space itself. Who knows, in some unrecognisable future, flats might only need to be the size of a cupboard, made borderless by our unchecked access to the virtual world.

For now, I’ll settle for a bigger flat.