Accidents and Injuries in VR – The Best & Worst of the VRFocus Team

With today being the dreaded April Fools Day, a barrage of ‘jokes’ designed to keep journalists on their toes in sometimes not obvious ways, VRFocus has decided to look at something a little more lighthearted: the accidents suffered by the team at the hands of virtual reality (VR) blindness. From damaged property to personal affliction, each member of the team has suffered in many ways through the passion to bring you the latest and greatest within the industry.

VR has the capability to accomplish a great deal. More than just entertainment, there are use cases across all manner of different industries including enterprise, education, healthcare and more. However, there are also pitfalls to the technology, arguably leading with blindness from the real world. Here’s the best and worst that has happened to the VRFocus team while immersed in all manner of videogames and experiences.

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The Death of a Carpet

During a particularly intense quest in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR late last year, working hard on delivering the ‘My Life as an Adventurer‘ series over the holiday season, I found myself vigorously attacking a dragon with both magic and an equipped short sword. Two arms flying, I wasn’t even aware I had made contact with a refreshing glass of cola flavoured beverage resting upon my desk. It was a good 30 minutes later before I removed the head-mounted display (HMD), and discovered the black sticky contents of the glass had been dispersed across the floor, forever claiming its trophy upon my cream carpet. No amount of scrubbing could save this casualty of VR war.

– Kevin Joyce, CEO/Editor, VRFocus.

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Friendly Fire

Ah, accidents. We’ve all seen, and, let’s admit, taken varying degrees of glee in, footage of Victor Vive-User, Rachel Rift-Wearer and Peter PlayStation falling over themselves, running smack bang into a wall, or hurling their controller through their fancy new television while screaming their lungs out. But let’s be equally honest in that when it’s someone we know who is trying VR for the first time it is a great experience to watch and see them enjoy it.

That said you want to make sure it remains such and incidents like those often play on your mind.

I often used the VRFocus Gear VR to ‘initiate’ newcomers into immersive technology. With I might add, had an 100% rating of “this is awesome”. One such instance was when I was showing one of my best friends what VR could be like. We were at my house and conscious of the possibility of him hurting himself (as well as damaging my nice new television) we moved the furniture to make room and I kept a sort of watchful eye as he stood so he wouldn’t go backwards into the table behind him.

I forget what experience it was but it was some sort of horror title, perhaps Sisters. Creepy goings on were happening in any case. My friend was not scared however, in fact he was laughing.

“Oh. Hello!” He said cheerily to what I can only assume was an embodiment of imminent death and dismemberment. “You alright there? Yeah?” There was much laughter at his cool, couldn’t care less demeanour. Things wrapped up and I moved in to help him off with the headset and th-WHAM!

I staggered a pace backwards. I’d just been hit by a rocket uppercut, straight to the jaw. My friend having seen something had gestured wildly and unexpected me and socked me one. It was so quick I wasn’t even sure what had happened at first. Weirder still my friend did not realise what he’d done. Nor somehow did my other friend, who was watching this all intently from the front, apparently see what happened either.

Slightly stunned, I’d just been unwittingly sucker punched after all, I put the headset down and

“So.” I said, in between flexing my jaw in the way people do when they’re trying to get it to ‘settle’. “Enjoy the experience?”

“Yeah, great.” He replied.

“Good!” I exclaimed happily before thinking I’d hate to think what would’ve happened if he hadn’t!

– Kevin Eva, Digital Content Manager, VRFocus.

Isn’t Teleportation Real?

I spend a lot of time in VR, tending to be the main reviewer for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift titles. For all the videogames I’ve played, whether at home or at an event, I’ve never once properly injured myself or anyone else for that matter. Sure I’ve whacked a wall of two, wandered into a table, or seen a mate crumple to the floor scared shitless, but that’s yet to occur to me – which still surprises me.

However, I’m not completely immune to the powers of VR and its mystical ways. After a particularly long reviewing session I decided that some fresh air, sustenance and a proper leg stretch was in order so I decided to pop down to my local supermarket to grab some food. Stepping into the shop the bright, piercing, florescent lights seemed most dazzling but that wasn’t the issue. Standing at one end of one of those long refrigerated aisles I realised I had a yearning for sausages – about halfway up the aisle – so I turned and then wondered why couldn’t reach the delicious, pork filled food.

Well because I’d spent so much time teleporting around virtual worlds in VR, in that one moment, the briefest of seconds, I thought I could just teleport over (or more accurately had). Call it delirium if you want, but after realising the fact, my main disappointment was that I wasn’t any closer and now needed to walk on over. It’s never happened again – probably because I use smooth locomotion a lot more – but I’ll always have that moment where I though I could teleport my way out of hunger.

– Peter Graham, Senior Staff Writer, VRFocus.

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An Acid Trip Without The Acid

I’ve been fairly lucky in my VR escapades so far. Up until reasonably recently, my main VR device was the PlayStation VR, and my set-up and the configuration of my living room mostly precludes any seriously wire-related mishaps, as does my habit of using the cable as a orientation aid (as I’ve discussed previously). That said, I did make one mistake early in my days of using VR. I decided it would be an superb idea to spent a good few hours engaged in playing Llamasoft’s excellent trance-shooter, Polybius. I emerged from that surreal neon landscape feeling like I had been on a days-long bender.

I could smell colours. Gravity was sideways. Every light source seemed to have a faint pulsing glow around it. Recognising the symptoms of an imminent migraine, I crawled off to spend some time having a nice lie down in a dark room.

– Rebecca Hills-Duty, Staff Writer, VRFocus.

Losing the VR Umbilical Cord & Female Problems

If you’ve watched any of VRFocus‘ videos where I’m seen demoing a VR videogame, experience or even MR – I’ve cut away all the embarrassing parts. Some of you may have caught the real Nina in a blooper reel done after Gamescom but it is in general a hazard.

I am well known for rolling or crawling across the floor with a headset on and backpack strapped on my back to test the tracking of the headset in a space. I’ve done so with the Oculus Santa Cruz, StarVR and various other out-of-home VR setups that use Optitrack to locate players in a space. What I’ve often found with these untethered experiences is that I’m often found floating around – and when the digital and real world don’t quite match up, I end up walking into a wall or bashing my controller against something as demonstrated in the image below. Future untethered VR will definitely have to have some instructions and soft cushioning that comes in the boxes!

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Another one which quite surprised me was being unable to use the Go Touch VR attachments to my fingers and feel haptic feedback. This was because my fingernails were too long. I might be a rare breed of females playing VR with long fingernails, but that was a first. I certainly wasn’t going to go and find a nailcutter and cut my nails whilst running around the show floor! Something to bear in mind for all developers and engineers out there.

Though this isn’t exactly a cause for injury – for anybody who loves their hair, has big hair or doesn’t like looking dishevelled (especially when you have to stand in-front of the camera for a living); a few pointers. Never wear a ponytail (or style a whole outfit with the ponytail), it’s just not going to happen. Even with the HTC Vive’s audio deluxe headstrap, expect to take your beautiful ponytail out in order to have the headset sit comfortably on your head for the experience. Secondly, it’s advisable to put your hair in a braid of some kind. This is more relevant for the long periods of being in VR, because the moment you take it off – your hair can get entangled. Nobody likes their hair being pulled out.

– Nina Salomons, Video Content Producer, VRFocus.

 

The Sensation of Touch at the Tips of Your Fingers with Go Touch VR

There are various hardware manufacturers who are in the business of trying to make virtual reality (VR) even more immersive by introducing haptic feedback to experiences. From the exoskeletal hands of Senseglove, to sensors inside a glove as utilised by Bebop Sensors, to using ultrasound to project sensations onto the hand as with Ultrahaptics.  VRFocus spoke to Eric Vezzoli, the CEO of French hardware developer Go Touch VR about their first SDK VR Touch devices that allow users to believe they are physically interacting and manipulate objects by adding the sensation of touch to a user’s fingers.

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Go Touch VR devices will allow you to feel sensations on the tips of your fingers.

The sense of touch is conveyed through haptics, the Go Touch VR devices being designed around the neuroscience of manipulation and touch. Using separate devices for each digit, actuators inside the units provide up to 1.5N (Newtons) of pressure to the user’s finger allowing for multiple types of feedback. From touch feedback, click and button feedback, vibration and material compliance feedback. Vezzoli promises a lot more to come. The headset does also need to include a Leap Motion attached for it to work. and Go Touch VR have been working on correcting Leap Motion’s problem with occlusion. The battery life for the devices can last from 30 minutes with intensive use to an hour and is compatible with every Windows-based headset

Go Touch VR has managed to raise almost $1 Million (USD) through their fundraising effort and since their sales campaign last October the team’s developer kit has already shipped to several companies – among them the automotive giant BMW.

Vezzoli explains that they only work B2B at the moment across four verticals; professional training, data manipulation, engineering and showcasing. The VR content can range from an automotive training simulation, to selling a house or surgery. Vezzoli explains that in future iterations they are looking to make the Go Touch VR devices half the size and half the weight, they will be able to feel different textures, stiffness, programmable buttons, gesture recognition and hand tracking system correction.

To find out more watch the video below.

Go Touch VR Raises $1 Million for Haptic VR Tech, Shows off DK1 Design

Go Touch VR, which is developing a simple haptic device that’s surprisingly effective, has raised €837,000 (approx. $1 million) in venture capital for ongoing development. The company has offered a look at the latest version of the VRTouch DK1 dev kit, which has come quite far from the 3D printed prototype we saw earlier this year.

Back in March I first saw Go Touch VR’s VRTouch haptic device, a small module designed to attach to the ends of your fingers which presses against your fingertips when your virtual hand comes in contact with objects in the virtual world. It’s a simple but smart approach that’s surprisingly effective for touching and holding small virtual objects—when I tried the prototype earlier this year I found that having something that’s not part of your body ‘pushing back’ against your fingers offers a convincing sensation of poking and grabbing that rumble just can’t provide.

Image courtesy Go Touch VR

Go Touch VR has announced nearly $1 million in venture funding, and is now showing off their VRTouch DK1 dev kit, which is being sold on a select basis through an application process.

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Far from the 3D printed prototypes I used in March, the VRTouch DK1 appears to be made with molded plastic, and now has an integrated IMU to assist with finger tracking—which is for now reliant upon Leap Motion, though Go Touch VR has plans to support the Vive Tracker, Optitrack, and ARTrack in 2018. The unit also now has buttons built in to offer more input options, and the company says the current version can provide up to 1.5 newtons of force on each fingertip.

Image courtesy Go Touch VR

Go Touch VR plans to be at CES 2018 at the beginning of January where we expected to get a fresh hands-on with the new design. I’ll be most interested to see if they’ve managed to increase the friction between the device and the finger so that the elastic band doesn’t need to be pulled as tightly in order to stay securely on your finger.

The post Go Touch VR Raises $1 Million for Haptic VR Tech, Shows off DK1 Design appeared first on Road to VR.

Making VR Accessible for Everyone

Most human beings are right-handed. This means, that by and large, most things are designed for use by right-handed people. Can openers, scissors, even pens are all biased towards the right handed community. Videogames are no different, as any leftie who has tried to play Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword or Sonic and the Black Knight will tell you. There are other, similar biases at work too, present in the virtual reality (VR) world. Lets look at some of them.

Gesture Controls

The popularity of gesture controls is growing slowly, but for obvious reasons, the vast majority of people testing the applications and videogames that use these functions are right-handed, and for the most part the player avatars default to being right-handed as well. This can cause some serious issues for left-handed players when they are using the ‘wrong’ hand to control an action, such as swing a sword or fire a gun, aim could be badly off or simply not register. Some titles have a ‘lefty flip’ option, but many do not.

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Form Factors

Several smaller, more petite people have reported problems with the HTC Vive headset, complaining of its front-heavy weight, and the lack of suitable adjustment on the strap, so it would not fit correctly. Conversely, people with large hands trying to use the Oculus Touch controllers have likewise experienced problems, such as hand cramps.

This problem extends to accessories such as Data Gloves, which are often designed to fit generic ‘common’ sizes are are not designed to accommodate people with very large, or very small hands. It isn’t really practical to get a custom glove made, though one solution is present in the form of the Go Touch VR ‘gloveless’ data hand sensors.

Disabilities

Much has been written about the ‘simulation sickness’ problem with VR. While that is indeed an issue, there are other, slightly more subtle issues that may wish to be looked at. Many VR titles are designed to be standing, or room-scale, particularly for the HTC Vive, which presents a problem for those with limited mobility, or people who have problems standing for long periods? Any company should be looking to expand the market as far as possible, so it seems a great shame to leave out a potential market. One potential solution is Walkin VR, a middleware application that can map movement to a controller button to make things easier for players with disabilities. This sort of solution ought to be given more attention and integration.

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Lighting Options

When watching something on a TV, tablet, PC monitor or smartphone, there are multiple options to control the brightness and contrast, and even special applications to adjust the colour to reduce eye fatigue. While there are some workarounds for some high-end VR platforms, for the most part these options are unavailable for VR displays. Research has shown that certain types of light can prevent restful sleep and cause other problems such as headaches if the light is too bright, at the wrong frequency, or using too much ‘blue’ light. While it could be argued that altering the lighting messes with the immersion and artistic vision of a videogame, those same tools have existed for PC for years with little complaint.

In conclusion, a few small tweaks and additions could go a long way towards making VR a more comfortable place for everyone.

A VR Haptic Glove Without The Glove

Virtual reality (VR) is all about immersion. To truly feel as though the user is present in the virtual location, there should be as few reminders of the ‘real world’ as possible. Standard controllers can break that sense of immersion, tracked motion controllers help, but for the best experience, many firms are working on haptic control gloves. Then there is Go Touch VR, who thinks haptic motion control should be possible without the glove.

Go Touch VR are a French start-up who are working on an innovative solution for VR haptic controllers by stripping away the actual glove and leaving just the haptic feedback. The current form of the VR Touch is a small motor in a plastic case that attaches to the user’s finger, looking somewhat like the monitoring devices that get clipped to patient’s fingers in hospitals. The device is modular and up to three of the devices can be worn by a single user.

Tracking works by using a Leap Motion attached to the front of an Oculus Rift headset and the Go Touch also contains an Inertial Measurement Unit or IMU for better finger tracking. The demos currently available allow users to push buttons, play a xylophone or the drums, with the device offering a type of ‘push’ feedback more like what you would feel when pressing down on an object that the rumble feedback commonly found on controllers like the PlayStation Dual Shock.

When asked about why the Go Touch was designed the way it was, CEO Eric Vezzoli said: “With a glove you need different sizes, you need to wash it, you have to wear it, you could have breathability issues in the summer,” Vezzoli told us. “Also a glove you have to put it on, with this we are working to get to less than one second to get it on.”

The product is still in early prototype at the moment, but Vezzoli and his team are hoping to have 100 developer kits available by September.

VRFocus will bring you further information on the Go Touch when it becomes available.

Hands-on: Go Touch VR’s Haptic Feedback is So Simple You’ll Wonder Why You Didn’t Think of it First

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are also the smartest. Go Touch VR’s approach to VR haptics achieves surprising effectiveness out of small, simple haptic devices that provide stimulation to the end of your fingers.

Call it “obvious,” but this is the first time I’ve seen Go Touch VR’s approach to VR haptics, which provides nothing more than a variable force against the top of your fingertip using a flat piece of piece of plastic that moves back and forth with a little motor. Simple, and yet surprisingly compelling. The sensation is much like what you feel when you press your finger against a flat surface like a desk.

While oldschool ERM rumble (like you’ll find in today’s gamepads) and more modern linear-actuator based rumble (like you’ll find in VR motion controllers) both offer various rumbling sensations as an added dimension of feedback to users on top of visual and audio cues. And while sometimes that rumble can be interpreted as direct feedback (ie: vibration caused by shooting a gun leads your hand to rumble), often times the haptic sensation is a bit more abstract than that, like feeling a rumble when you press a button; but pressing a button doesn’t exactly cause your hand to ‘rumble’ in real life, and thus the rumble in this case is abstract rather than direct (ie: it requires a level of interpretation from your brain to make the connection between the information being conveyed and the sensation).

And while rumble is widely applicable for that abstract approach, it seems best suited for shooting games if you want to make use of the more immersive direct approach. And yet in VR we find lots of experiences where you aren’t shooting, but are instead grabbing, touching, and manipulating objects in VR which wouldn’t vibrate in real life, making it difficult to use rumble to convey meaningful, direct feedback.

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Photo by Road to VR

It’s that grabbing, touching, and manipulation where Go Touch VR’s ‘VR Touch‘ haptics hopes to excel. Based on what CEO Eric Vezzoli says is a ‘Real Contact Sensation’ haptic approach, VR Touch is a simple, compact device which straps to the end of your fingers and provides nothing more than a plastic pad which can exert varying levels of force against the top of your fingertip.

That force can create a surprisingly compelling sensation of touching and grabbing objects with your fingers. Rather than abstract rumble, VR Touch gives the illusion of objects pushing back against your fingers directly.

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For non-controller VR input solutions like hand tracking, VR Touch fills the significant need of informing the user when they have actually initiated a ‘grab’ of a virtual object; having something that is not your own fingers to push back against your fingers as an indication of contact turns out to be far more immersive than the ‘air grab’, where you create a grabbing gesture with your hand, but have no idea if you are making the ‘correct’ contact with the virtual object because there’s no real object providing feedback to your fingers. This issue presently plagues non-controller VR input, and it’s one that VR Touch is poised to solve.

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Photo by Road to VR

Demonstrating VR Touch haptics at SVVR 2017 this week, Go Touch VR showed the device in action using an Oculus Rift with attached Leap Motion for hand tracking. They placed three of the VR Touch units across my thumb, index, and middle fingers, secured with a small elastic band with velcro.

Through the series of demos, I found that the VR Touch haptics are great for things like pressing buttons and poking & grabbing objects.

Again, the key is providing useful feedback to indicate that your virtual fingers are interacting with the virtual objects. But it isn’t just useful; the sensation is a good stand-in for the forces you expect to feel and the places you expect to feel them. The direct nature of the feedback clicks instantly with your brain which expects to feel a force specifically against your fingertip whenever you touch something.

Among the demos I tried was an abstract usage of the feedback which attempted to convey the heat coming off of a small fire when I placed my hand over top of it. And while the feedback was useful from an informational standpoint (to tell me perhaps that the fire is dangerous), as you might expect, this use of the haptics was much less convincing because fire doesn’t actually push back against your hand.

I also tried using just one VR Touch unit instead of three, though I found that three was far more immersive.

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For how small the VR Touch device is, I was actually surprised how much force it can apply; it easily provides enough force in its current state to emulate the sensations as you’d expect them when touching and holding small objects.

That’s not to say the device is ready for market however. The prototype VR Touch units I saw were 3D printed and hand-built. Still, the team says they can already last for two hours on a single charge (and my guess is that there’s more progress to be made there as the device matures). After about 10 minutes of use, the elastic band securing the units to my fingers caused a reduction in circulation which I could easily feel once I took them off. CEO Eric Vezzoli tells me that the final model will fix this by using materials which provide greater friction between the contact points of the device along your finger, allowing it to rely less on the elastic band to keep the device in place (indeed, the current 3D printed plastic was very smooth and offered little friction).

He also says that the final VR Touch form-factor is expected to become significantly more compact, and will smartly include a few physical controls on the device as well, like buttons, to aid in interaction.

vr-touch-haptics-3Each unit is also planned to include its own IMU which can be fused with other tracking solutions to enhance the finger-level tracking necessary for VR Touch to work effectively. And while I saw VR Touch demoed using Leap Motion’s hand tracking, Vezzoli says the device can work across a number of tracking technologies, including integration into glove-based systems.

Go Touch VR is currently soliciting interested in dev kit pre-orders of the device and they are also actively fundraising to continue growing the company.

The post Hands-on: Go Touch VR’s Haptic Feedback is So Simple You’ll Wonder Why You Didn’t Think of it First appeared first on Road to VR.