When it comes to interfacing with virtual reality (VR) worlds currently you really only have the option of physical controllers or very basic hand tracking unless you have the cash to buy expensive gloves. The future could very well be in brain-computer interface’s (BCI) like the one Valve, Tobii, and OpenBCI are currently collaborating on, Galea, with a beta programme slated to launch early next year.
Brooklyn-based neurotechnology company OpenBCI its Galea hardware and software platform last year, a combination of mixed reality (MR) headset with state-of-the-art biosensing and brain-computer interfacing (BCI) tech. The device features a wealth of sensors including electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculography (EOG) electromyography (EMG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and photoplethysmography (PPG) to detect human emotions.
The project jumped into the spotlight last month thanks to New Zealand’s 1 NEWS interview with Valve’s Gabe Newell confirming the company had been working with OpenBCI. “If you’re a software developer in 2022 who doesn’t have one of these in your test lab, you’re making a silly mistake,” Newell said.
The latest news on the project sees Tobii as another partner, so alongside all the kit above built into a headset with elements from the Valve Index, it’ll also include eye-tracking.
Image credit: Mike Ambinder/Valve Corporation
“We are excited to work with Valve and OpenBCI to explore the future of immersive gaming by combining the power of Tobii eye tracking and OpenBCI’s advanced brain computer interface technology,” said Anand Srivatsa, Division CEO of Tobii Tech in a statement.
BCI could well be built into all future headsets to see when people are happy, sad, surprised or bored because as Newell himself puts: “simply because there’s too much useful data.”
If you’re a developer interested in how neurotechnology can transform VR experiences then head over to OpenBCI’s Galea beta project website to register. Limited quantities of developer units will be shipped to beta program participants in early 2022. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell previously revealed Valve was working on a brain-computer interface (BCI) with OpenBCI, the minds behind open source BCI software and hardware solutions. Now Tobii, the eye-tracking firm, announced it’s also a partner on the project and that developer kits incorporating eye-tracking and “design elements” of Valve Index are expected to first ship sometime early next year.
Update (February 5th, 2021): Newell’s interview, which is referenced below in the original article, didn’t reveal whether OpenBCI project ‘Galea’ was the subject of the partnership, however now Tobii has confirmed that it is indeed the case along with a few other details.
Tobii will be lending its eye-tracking technology to Galea, which it says will incorporate design elements from Valve Index. Developer kits for early beta access partners will ship in early 2022, the companies say.
Reading between the lines somewhat, it appears Galea will not only include the sensors-packed strap, but also an eye-tracking enabled, possibly modified Valve Index headset.
Original Article (January 28th, 2021): Newell hasn’t been secretive about his thoughts on BCI, and how it could be an “extinction-level event for every entertainment form.” His message to software developers: start thinking about how to use BCI now, because it’s going to be important to all aspects of the entertainment industry fairly soon.
How soon? Newell says in a talk with News 1 that by 2022, studios should have them in their test labs “simply because there’s too much useful data.”
Gabe Newell (right), psychologist Mike Ambinder (left) | Image courtesy Valve
Newell speaks about BCI through a patently consumer-tinted lens—understandable coming from a prominent mind behind Steam, the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming, and not to mention an ardent pioneer of consumer VR as we know it today.
To Newell, BCI will allow developers to one day create experiences that completely bypass the traditional “meat-peripherals” of old in function—eyes, ears, arms and legs—giving users access to richer experiences than today’s reality is capable of providing.
“You’re used to experiencing the world through eyes, but eyes were created by this low-cost bidder that didn’t care about failure rates and RMAs, and if it got broken there was no way to repair anything effectively, which totally makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, but is not at all reflective of consumer preferences. So the visual experience, the visual fidelity we’ll be able to create — the real world will stop being the metric that we apply to the best possible visual fidelity.”
On the road to that more immersive, highly-adaptive future, Newell revealed Valve is taking some important first steps, namely its newly revealed partnership with OpenBCI, the neurotech company behind a fleet of open-source, non-invasive BCI devices.
Newell says the partnership is working to provide a way so “everybody can have high-resolution [brain signal] read technologies built into headsets, in a bunch of different modalities.”
Back in November, OpenBCI announced it was making a BCI specifically for VR/AR headsets, called Galea, which sounded very similar to how Valve’s Principal Experimental Psychologist Dr. Mike Ambinder described in his GDC 2019 vision for VR headsets fitted with electroencephalogram (EEG) devices.
OpenBCI hardware | Image courtesy OpenBCI
Although Newell doesn’t go into detail about the partnership, he says that BCIs are set to play a fundamental role in game design in the very near future.
“If you’re a software developer in 2022 who doesn’t have one of these in your test lab, you’re making a silly mistake,” Newell tells 1 News. “Software developers for interactive experiences — you’ll be absolutely using one of these modified VR head straps to be doing that routinely — simply because there’s too much useful data.”
There’s a veritable laundry list of things BCI could do in the future by giving software developers access to the brain, and letting them ‘edit’ the human experience. Newell has already talked about this at length; outside of the hypotheticals, Newell says near-term research in the field is so fast-paced, that he’s hesitant to commercialize anything for the fear of slowing down.
“The rate at which we’re learning stuff is so fast that you don’t want to prematurely say, ‘OK, let’s just lock everything down and build a product and go through all the approval processes, when six months from now, we’ll have something that would have enabled a bunch of other features.”
It’s not certain whether Galea is the subject of the partnership, however its purported capabilities seem to line up fairly well with what Newell says is coming down the road. Gelea is reportedly packed with sensors, which not only includes EEG, but also sensors capable of electrooculography (EOG) electromyography (EMG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and photoplethysmography (PPG).
OpenBCI says Galea gives researchers and developers a way to measure “human emotions and facial expressions” which includes happiness, anxiety, depression, attention span, and interest level—many of the data points that could inform game developers on how to create better, more immersive games.
Provided such a high-tech VR headstrap could non-invasively ‘read’ emotional states, it would represent a big step in a new direction for gaming. And it’s one Valve clearly intends on leveraging as it continues to both create (and sell) the most immersive gaming experiences possible.
Interested in watching the whole interview? Catch the video directly on 1 News.
OpenBCI, the neurotech company behind the eponymous open-source brain-computer interface (BCI), are making a new hardware and software platform specifically for immersive headsets.
Called Galea, the company says its new hardware is designed to attach to both AR and VR headsets, arriving with a multiple sensors designed to monitor biometric data streams in real time.
Galea is said to include a bevy of sensors, such as electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculography (EOG) electromyography (EMG), electrodermal activity (EDA), and photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors, which are intended to measure data from the brain, eyes, heart, skin, and muscles.
OpenBCI hardware | Image courtesy OpenBCI
The company says Galea will allow researchers and developers to measure “human emotions and facial expressions” including happiness, anxiety, depression, attention span, and interest level—and use it to create more immersive content tailored to the individual. The idea is very similar to what we heard from Valve’s resident experimental psychologist Dr. Mike Ambinder during last year’s GDC talk on how BCI will change the nature of game design.
OpenBCI says it will provide researchers and developers early access to Galea, intended for commercial and research applications. Galea will also include SDKs to bring its stream of biometric data into “common development environments,” the company says.
“I believe that head-mounted computers integrated with human consciousness will drive the next major technology paradigm shift,” said Conor Russomanno, CEO of OpenBCI. “Galea is the realization of six years of research and development. We are providing the world with a playground for experimentation and development using multi-modal biometric data in tandem with next generation wearable displays.”
Founded on the back of a successful Kickstarter campaign in late 2013, OpenBCI creates consumer-grade biosensing systems built with open-source software and hardware. Today, the company’s hardware is used by researchers, academic labs, artists, and developers across 89 countries.
