Category: Voices of VR Podcast

Posted on

Capturing Holocaust Testimony in VR: A Behind the Scenes Look at ‘The Last Goodbye’

gabo-aroraOne of the most emotionally-moving VR experiences that I’ve had in VR was bearing witness to Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter share his experiences at the Majdanek Concentration Camp in The Last Goodbye. Gutter not only provides a guided tour, but he is able to achieve a level emotional catharsis through the process of sharing his story that his virtual presence within the experience, amplified my own sense of emotional and social presence, which is what helped to make it such a profoundly moving VR experience. The Last Goodbye uses a unique blend of photogrammetry and billboarded stereo video that helped to transport me into a room-scale experience of multiple key locations at the Majdanek Camp as Gutter shared his memories of being there as an 11-year old child.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

The Last Goodbye premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it was an epic collaboration catalyzed by co-creators Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz and included HERE BE DRAGONS, MPC VR, and OTOY on the technical production side as well as the USC Shoah Foundation to oversee the process of capturing testimony about the Holocaust.

Arora is the founder and creative director of LightShed, and is now an advisor and former founder of the UN’s VR initiatives where was able to gain access to the Syrian refugees featured in his famous empathy piece Clouds Over Sidra. In this interview, Arora shares his collaborative process, pushing the boundaries of volumetric storytelling by blending photogrammetry-based, room-scale VR with live-action, empathy-based storytelling, as well as how he had to guide Gutter to achieve the depth of emotional presence that makes the piece so powerful.

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post Capturing Holocaust Testimony in VR: A Behind the Scenes Look at ‘The Last Goodbye’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

‘Bioflight VR’ for Medical Training, Patient Behavior Modification, & Diagnosis

The design team behind Bioflight VR has worked on television shows such as CSI and ER, and they’ve been able to translate their VFX visualization skills into a virtual reality medical education venture. Their original plans were to use virtual reality to help doctors utilize the volumetric information captured in MRIs, CAT scans, and ultrasounds to improve upon medical diagnosis from 2D slices of data, but they started to gain more traction by creating a number of different types of educational VR experiences.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Bioflight VR started creating time-lapse experiences showing the long-term impacts of sodium consumption and smoking in videos meant for doctors to show patients to inspire behavior modification, and they also created a number of interactive medical training scenarios that would allow medical students to experience intense emergency room scenarios that would allow them to be evaluated based upon their competency and performance.

I had a chance to catch up with co-founder and chief creative officer Rik Shorten at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference both in May 2016 as well as a follow-up and update in March of 2017. This interview tracks the evolution of Bioflight VR starting with ambitions to use VR for medical diagnosis, and then their pivot focusing more on medical training and patient behavioral modification and education the following year. There are a lot of opportunities for virtual reality to become a huge part of telemedicine and providing a platform to visualize data that you collect about your body, but virtual reality seems to be making its first strides into the medical field through patient and student education before the more advanced and higher-end applications of medical diagnosis and distributed telemedicine are adopted.

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post ‘Bioflight VR’ for Medical Training, Patient Behavior Modification, & Diagnosis appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

PTSD Exposure Therapy in VR: Importance of Storytelling & Emotional Presence in Healing Trauma

skip-rizzoDr. Skip Rizzo heads the Medical VR Research Group at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, which has been exploring how to use VR for psychological treatments, cognitive assessment, motor rehabilitation therapy, as well as interactions with virtual humans. He’s been on the forefront of using virtual reality to treat soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder with virtual exposure therapy.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

VR is used to incrementally trigger an embodied sensory experience in PTSD patients by placing soldiers within the virtual sights, sounds, feelings, and smells of common combat scenarios in Iraq and Afghanistan. This virtual exposure therapy stimulates the original embodied experience of traumatic events for soldiers so that they can connect to specific details of their memories so that they can engage in cognitive restructuring by telling the story of their experience. Rizzo says that a key component of healing from PTSD is if the patient is able to connect to the underlying emotions of the experience while sharing the narrative of their experience, and that this can unlock a cascade of healing effects that USC has been able to measure over the years.

I had a chance to try out a demo of the VR PTSD Exposure Therapy project during a reception at USC ICT during the IEEE VR 2017 conference in Los Angeles in March, and was struck by their holistic multi-modal approach of using subwoofers, smells, and passive haptic guns. I caught up with Dr. Rizzo to talk about his work in using VR to heal from PTSD, the importance of storytelling and emotional presence, and their future work in expanding treatment scenarios for victims of Military Sexual Trauma, and moving into civilian trauma with first-responders like police and firemen.

He also talked about an episodic, interactive storytelling experience that will be like an emotional obstacle course of navigating different traumatic scenarios with the help of a virtual human that is helps guide the patient through the cultivation of coping skills for stress management, mindfulness techniques, and cognitive reappraisal. This work at USC ICT shows that immersive virtual environments can stimulate a deep sense of embodied and emotional presence that has vast healing potential that goes well beyond just the gaming and entertainment applications.

More:

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post PTSD Exposure Therapy in VR: Importance of Storytelling & Emotional Presence in Healing Trauma appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Phenomenology of Perception’ & Embodied Metaphors

Kai_RiemerI had a chance to catch up with phenomenologist Kai Riemer at SIGGRAPH where he gave his perspective on what phenomenology is and why it’s holistic approach could provide some vital insights for people working in VR.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

The hard problem of the mind/body split and the ultimate nature of consciousness is an open question in the science community, and there are a range of philosophies that try to handle this split. Cartesian dualists explicitly acknowledge this split as different realms, but interactions between the mind and body have started to break this down. There’s a lot of scientific materialists who are holding out that consciousness will eventually be discovered to be an emergent property of our neuroscience. Idealism is the opposite of materialism in saying the subjective experience is primary, and it’s similar to saying that consciousness is fundamental in that matter could be an emergent property of a base reality of awareness or information. Panpsychism sees consciousness as universal in that every photon is conscious or carries a certain level of information processing capability. University of Sydney professor Kai Riemer says that phenomenology tries to get rid of the whole idea of this subject/object split, and that it’s a much more holistic approach of centering everything around the interconnections of the meaning of objects and our direct human experience.

Phenomenologist Gabriella Farina has resisted a precise definition by saying, “A unique and final definition of phenomenology is dangerous and perhaps even paradoxical as it lacks a thematic focus. In fact, it is not a doctrine, nor a philosophical school, but rather a style of thought, a method, an open and ever-renewed experience having different results.”

Speaking with Riemer at SIGGRAPH, he talks a lot about French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception book from 1945 that talks about the role of the body in perception. He also cites George Lakoff’s Women, Fire and Dangerous Things to show how a lot of our primary metaphors for understanding the world come from our direct experience of the world through our bodies. The holistic approach of phenomenology shows that the stories and narratives of direct experience should be given equal weight to the objectified data that is seen as primary by reductionists and physicalist materialists. Archeologists need to be able to understand the full story behind what people thought artifacts meant within the full context of a culture before they can fully understand what they’ve discovered.

What’s clear from talking to Riemer and other philosophers is that VR provides a embodied experience of philosophical discussions that are otherwise pretty abstract and disconnected from our direct experience. Phenomenology is an elusive concept to firmly pin down, but my conversation with Riemer has helped me appreciate its holistic approach to the connection between reality and experience.

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post Merleau-Ponty’s ‘Phenomenology of Perception’ & Embodied Metaphors appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Horror & Gore in VR – Designing ‘Killing Floor: Incursion’

Leland-ScaliKilling Floor: Incursion is a horror game featuring lots of gore that is sure to evoke visceral reactions in players. I had a chance to play a demo at GDC 2017, and I can say that it’s definitely an experience that has stuck with me. The mechanics of beating enemies with their dismembered limbs had an extreme amount of blood splattering that it was a mix of being at the same time grossly disturbing and ridiculously comic. I had a chance to talk with project lead Leland Scali about the horror genre in VR, pushing the boundaries of how far to take gore within immersive VR, and their deeper game design process of creating an experience within their Killing Floor universe.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Scali admits that they’re treading a fine line of it being funny or amusing versus taking it too far, and so it’ll be interesting to see how VR gamers and the larger media react to this experience as it could be a catalyst to larger discussions about the impact embodied experiences of gory violence within virtual reality. He says that this is not an experience about rainbows and happiness, but rather one that’s gory & dark with a dash of quirky humor. Ultimately it seems to be about power—specifically giving the player the power to complete the task, and assaulting them heavily to see if they can handle it.

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post Horror & Gore in VR – Designing ‘Killing Floor: Incursion’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Navigating Paradox, Reality Bubbles, & Multiple Worldviews with VR

Marilyn-SchlitzDr. Marilyn Schlitz is a social anthropologist, consciousness researcher, and co-author of the books Consciousness & Healing and Living Deeply. Her anthropological work has been at the frontier of researching how different cultures use various indigenous practices to invoke mind-body interactions for the sake of healing, and she’s come up with higher order frameworks to describe consciousness transformations from spiritual practices. She’s starting to look at how to invoke states of awe & wonder within VR, and whether this will be able to catalyze collective shifts in consciousness.

She says that we’re each living within our own reality bubbles, and that some of the most important skills in the 21st Century will be able to come to an awareness of our filters and to cultivate the capacity to understand, empathize, and interact with people who are living in completely different models of reality. We talk about some of the game design work that she’s doing in order to achieve this, as well as how virtual reality might provide a window into our multidimensional nature and help us become more aware of our own aspects of inattentional blindness.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post Navigating Paradox, Reality Bubbles, & Multiple Worldviews with VR appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

‘VRChat’ Anecdotes and Dealing with Harassment & Tolling in Social VR

gunterGunter S. Thompson has been hosting VR meetups in VRChat for the past three years where he will give guided tours through the latest additions to the VRChat metaverse, and he also hosts a live talk show every Tuesday called ‘Gunter’s Universe.’ I had a chance to catch up with Gunter at SVVR about two months after VRChat launched on Steam on February 1st where we talked about highlights from his social VR adventures, the challenges of dealing with harassment and trolling with VRChat after it’s public launch, and hanging out at the most popular bar in the metaverse, which is called ‘The Great Pug’.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

More:

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post ‘VRChat’ Anecdotes and Dealing with Harassment & Tolling in Social VR appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Avatar Creation with Morph3D & Social VR Anecdotes from Chris Madsen

chris-madsenCustom avatars in social VR add a lot of fidelity of identity expression and creative flair in applications like VRChat or High Fidelity. Morph3D is a custom avatar solution that offers a number of free avatars within VRChat, but they also have a custom tool where you can customize your own virtual avatar. I had a chance to catch up with Chris “DeepRifer” Madsen, Morph3D’s head of VR/AR at GDC where we talked about some of the reactive avatars that they’re working on. 

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Chris has tried to explore something new in VR every day for the past four years, and he also shares some of the highlights of his social VR experiences from the last four years.

Editor’s Note: Chris Madsen has previously contributed articles to Road to VR.

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post Avatar Creation with Morph3D & Social VR Anecdotes from Chris Madsen appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

The Gift Economy Dynamics of ‘Anyland’ & Social VR Anecdotes

Anyland is a social VR experience focusing on worldbuilding and avatar creation tools that allow you to create interactive experiences while in VR. They’ve also implemented an open sharing feature that makes it easy to collect objects from the world and share them with other people. Stephanie Mendoza is a VR developer and artist who has spent a lot of time creating worlds and exploring the gift economy dynamics within Anyland, and I had a chance to capture some of her stories and social experiments.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR

Stephanie talks about the social status that comes with discovering bugs and glitches, documenting her adventures of agency expression and interactions with trolls, and how VR has been helping her have lucid dreams that have featured Anyland’s worldbuilding user interfaces.

Here’s an overview of Anyland:

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post The Gift Economy Dynamics of ‘Anyland’ & Social VR Anecdotes appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Reflecting on AltspaceVR’s Technical Achievements & Social VR Lessons Learned

amber-royAltspaceVR held its final official Good Bye gathering on Thursday, August 3rd after announcing last week that they had run out of money and their investors decided to not invest any more. News of the social VR platform’s closing rippled throughout the VR community over the past week, and some are wondering if it’s any type of bellwether about the overall health of the VR ecosystem. There have been a number of discussion threads on Oculus subreddit, Vive subreddit, and Twitter that had employees chiming in on imminent plans and the challenges of dealing with trolls and harassment in VR.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

I dug through my archives of unpublished Voices of VR interviews to pull out a discussion that I had with AltspaceVR’s Amber Roy in March 2016 talking about the platform’s JavaScript SDK that she was working on at the time. She ended up leaving the company in July 2016 to go to work at Oculus on the React VR framework, but this discussion we had before GDC 2016 highlights the technical innovations AltspaceVR made with integrating web technologies within their social spaces. The platform may have been too early with their three.js integrations as WebVR will be finally officially launching on Firefox this August with the release on Chrome hopefully coming later this year.

At the end of this podcast wrap-up, I share some of my reflections and lessons learned from AltspaceVR including if optimizing for both mobile & high-end PC was too limiting, the potential importance of more robust options for identity expressions and world building, the importance of virtual economies being built into large social VR applications, and the challenges around harassment in VR. I also compare and contrast AltspaceVR with other social VR applications including Rec Room, VRChat, High Fidelity, Anyland, BigScreen, JanusVR, Facebook Spaces, Project Sansar, vTime, WebVR, and Decentraland. Amber also talks about her AmberVR YouTube channel where she plays GearVR games, and the importance of promoting mobile VR applications.

SEE ALSO
'Decentraland' – Using Ethereum Blockchain ICO to Sell Virtual Real Estate

AltspaceVR was a pioneer and innovator in the social VR space creating the first bridge between mobile VR and high-end VR, and they published a video of community members sharing their favorite memories within AltspaceVR:

Here’s my previous six Voices of VR interviews with AltspaceVR since May 2014:

Here’s a sample of some of the experiences people had inside of AltspaceVR:

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

The post Reflecting on AltspaceVR’s Technical Achievements & Social VR Lessons Learned appeared first on Road to VR.