Non-Interface Virtual Reality Program Design

[Kilravok]

Moderation note: This post was split from How Long Until We Could Make A Real Sword Art Online (sao) Nerve Gear Type Device, because that long thread is being broken up into threads by subject to make them shorter and more readable.

 

This thread is for discussion of concerns about the design of computer programs for more immersive virtual reality, rather than “FullDive” immersive VR interface devices

 

DHendry, I understand your concerns and for most part they are valid, but I believe that medical panels would hold the authority and integrity to reject any unsafe devices (unless maybe if a panel member is also shareholder or director in one of the developing companies...GitS SAC:Laughingman anybody?).

Of course, there will be a risk there and the waste of resource is horrendous, but the need to be better and faster than others has throughout history proven to be the strongest motivator of mankind.  Passion and goodwill only gets the stone rolling, but you need urgency to keep the momentum.

 

Alos, nothing wrong with sone of the features you mentioned.  FaceAche and Twitt won't be needed since the system would come with it's own native social networking environment which, by the very nature of FDVR, would completely outclass traditional social networks and chat programs; MP3 and 4 implimentation would not be a bad thing, considering that it is the preferable format even today for the immersive ingame sound tracks and video cut scenes; micro transactions and paypal (or similar) would not only be acceptable but also, according to GGO, actual SAO canon; internal adds would have to be immersive, aka. billboards on the wayside of racing games, leaflets on cork boards in roleplay towns, etc....there can be T&C rules banning pop-up adverts;  Java itself ios not evil, how it is used is, but that can be pre-empted with T&C rules.  I aggree though, using Java would be detrement to the security and stability of the system.

 

If of course we could get a global single group, with respectively up-scaled funding and resources, all under one roof to remain fully motivated, without bringing issues like fame, money and ego into the game, from start to end, that would be great.  My sociology teacher however taught me to never loose faith the in the arrogance, greed and stupidity of the human race.  I hope he was wrong.

[DHendry1988]

Kilravok, once again I really do see where you're coming from. Mp3 would be beneficial with music if you wanted it, however, the beauty of sword art online was that it managed to keep the immersion without giving up the fantasy. To look above you and see that massive pillar linking the tiers of the lands together would constantly remind you that you were in a game... that and the health bars.

But to be honest, I dont think I want it to be advert populated or filled with music or immersive to the idea of the real world. I wouldnt want to simply leave this world only to return to it in a video game. Would be like walking through a windowless window. No change except it feels weird.

 

But I appreciate where you're coming from with motivation. It is necessary to find motivation behind everything you do. But look at it this way. We're on an open-discussion forum talking about creating something because we love the very concept of its existence. We're not doing this for fame, fortune or money, just the idea that, at the end we could find ourselves in a large open field, staring at a beautiful sun drenched sky with a warm breeze blessing our skin... all from the comforts of our heavily taxed accomodation in a world bent on greed and destruction. There are the few of us that wish the best, but our voices are barely heard in this monkey cage :(

 

But regardless of all that, I do appreciate where you're coming from, man.

[Kilravok]

DHendry, I agree, the health bars and interface still remind that it is a game, but are the level connecting pillars really an immersion breaker?  Sure, in the real world, such a structure would give any architect a major headache, structurally and statically unsound, center of gravity of each level completely off kilter and way not enough weight bearing structural support.  But that is the physics in that world, it even allows you to jump up ten meters into the air, do multiple flips and saltos, change direction in midair and still land with pinpoint accuracy where you want your tiny little dagger to hit.  If you'd grown up with that kind of laws of physics, you would not know it was a game...who knows, maybe there are low gravity worlds in the real universe that have that kind of physics. Who can tell?  But within the laws of physics of the game world, the pillars add to the realism by giving a non-teleport link between levels, a real physicality to the structure and make up of the castle.  The MP3 integration would, the way I meant it, not be for music but rather for sound FX.  I am no expert, but I believe MP3 is today's norm because it is the optimal compromise between sound quality and data compression.

 

As for the immersiveness, I guess that is a very subjective matter. Some want a better game, some want a new world.  For me, I want a new world. The escapaism present games offer is not enough, I still know I am sitting alone in a dark room in front of a monitor salivating over pixels with a purple frame around their inventory icon.  The people I talk to are as fake as the system controlled NPC because "it is just a game" and they are just playing pretend, not putitng themselves into the personality of the characters.  A full dive game like SAO would give me a "real" world where people are themselves because the play style and interactions are immediate, not via proxy of a keyboard, authority is claimed by skill and experience, not like in the real world given by the Bureaucracy upon proof of or in exchance for currency (unless if it's one of those pesky pay2win games).  In SAO my existence can matter because of my skills, even if I don't have any money, my personality and integrity give me validity without needing "the right documents".  So, while I respect your wish for a game that is not just another world, I want another world that lets me forget at least for two or three hours per day that the first world ever existed. 

Five2Fly mentioned several aspects that most dedicated gamers try to escape.  I don't try to escape any of those, what I am trying to escape is that all those conditions are caused and prevented on an individual basis by paperwork.  There are those with the right titles and documents and those without.  How much income you can have depends fully on what documented degrees and qualifications and titles you have, not on your actual skill.  The work places are full of academics who have a degree from the big universities but zero actual experience and still are supoerior to those who know how it's done from first hand experience.  And those in power who don't have the papers have gotten there because they happened to have gone to the same school as someone who does have the papers.  In our today's world it is almost impossible to get anywhere just by skill, in fact, if you got skill, your boss will prevent you from rising because you are more profitable to him as a drone in the ground level work force.

I have nothing against evil people either, what I hate is that I need a badge to be allowed to protect myself and my friends against them.  What I hate is that there are evils that get away with it on ground of holding a certain political office (I have a lot more respect for a con artist than a politician, even if technically there is no difference).  Besides....what fun is there being the hero, if there is no evil to fight against?  In a game world, poverty is the result of not making enough of an effort, in the real world it is the result of what school you went to, what neighborhood you greew up in and what important people you never got to befriend.  Greed is also not a problem, I myself am greedy, I am full of wants, greed only gets bad if it allows those who don't work for it to get what they want.  A game world is a meritocracy.  You get what you deserve, you are not limited or priviledged by what others give you, only by the results of your own actions and skills. .....but enough about fairytales....

 

I am aware that we are talking as enthusiasts about the system and share the common goal and wish to make it real, but that is just that. We are enthusiasts, some of us not even with actual scientific experience or knowledge, unable to give technical contribution to the development.  How far are we going to get on enthusiasm alone?  When enthusiasm reaches past dedication and commitment and become a duty and then a chore, how many of us will be able to remain motivated out of pure enthusiasm for the dream?  At what point will it stop being working on a hoby in our spare time and become work that we expect payment for?  How can we ensure that the discussions in the open forum are not picked up by some corporation that throws money towards huge teams of scientists that are willing to cut corners for a big pay check and fast release, ending up monopolising on and corrupting what we worked on?

 

I am sorry if I come over as overly negative, but I grew up in all the wrong parts of society and while I have no technical use in the development, I have 25 years experience in being a cynic and devils advocate.  Give me an idea and I WILL find a hundred problems.  Tell me how bad it is and I WILL find a silver lining.  I hope you don't hold that against me.

 

 

Shodan, I think we need to add to the input sub-points adressing the visual and audial center of the brain (or nerves leading towards them) for hearing and seeing, since using headset and vr goggles would be insufficiant for the entire system and directly disqualify the hard of seeing and hard of hearing from benefitting from the system.  Also, lining up taste and scent to the input system would be a nice thing.  But I guess, if we find oout how to input into one part of the brain, it won't be much different for the other parts as well.

 

Another thing we should already start research early on is what non-game applications can be found and societal and psychological effects such a system would bring (negative and positive).  While for practical application, we don't need to worry about those in the development phase, they will need to be given serious consideration for fund raising.  Even if we are all willing to give our time to it without payment, we still will need equipment, software, resource and quite likely have to occassionally hire outsourced services and specialists (pizza and instant ramen are not cheap, and neither is electricity).

 

 

Sorry to be so negative in this post...maybe I just had a bad night, dunno. But I feel these things need discussing almost as much as the technicals.  The science is done as soon as all the numbers are right, but opinion and socials have as many aspects and issues to consider as there are people on the planet.  And it is better to get the bad stuff out of the system at the beginning than to have it bring everything to a grinding hold after two years of work.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Kilravok

[Puppy7718]

Has anybody even started to model out any thing for building this? I mean all we're doing is discussing what we want to do, but not actually doing anything to build it. We have to separate the people who just want to see someone else build this from the people who want to make this real by their own hands. 

[NotBrad]

The issue lies within the technology. Certain companies hold patents on several technologies that would be suitable candidates for the field of full immersion virtual reality. The real question is, do you have the resources to purchase this necessary equipment or build it yourself? Ignoring potential patent violations completely, could you even afford the costs associated with a working prototype assuming the concept is actually plausible?

[Puppy7718]

No I would not be able to partly because I'm still a kid and have no job. I'm 14 but I can help if I did have one.

[CraigD]

Has anybody even started to model out any thing for building this?

Answers to this question depend critically on what is meant by “this”.

 

If by “this”, we mean virtual reality rendering software, then certainly work is not only started, but very mature. Software that realistically simulation 3D environments is at the core of a large part of the video game industry, and although the majority of it is used to render images on high resolution, non-stereoptical screens rather than with immersive VR display devices (eg: the Oculus Rift and Sony Morpheus), supporting these devices is not technically difficult, requiring no major innovation or replacement of popular engine software.

 

Something I’ve written a lot about in these forums is that reasonably good immersive VR has been around for a long time – about 25 years – but despite many well-financed efforts, has not approached the popularity of ordinary screen-and-mouse/keyboard/controller interfaces. Many, perhaps most technologists and fiction makers assume that VR technology will largely or entirely replace previous display technologies, but so far reality has defied this prediction. At the moment, the trend is if anything in the opposite direction, with interest shifting from large field-of-vision-filling screens to the small one on mobile devices.

 

None of this is to say that immersive VR doesn’t have a market, but I think it’s important to consider that it may be, initially or even forever, a small, niche market.

 

Another possible meaning of “this” is procedurally generated content software. It’s strongly implied in the Sword Art Online anime, and I understand described at length in its manga, that almost none of the detailed content, from graphical elements to the underlying worldbuilding background and plots of its many interactive heroic adventure stories, is written by a human being. Although procedurally generated content is an old concept – most count the 1980 video game Rogue as the first important implementation of it – and continues to be interesting to developers and producers, such as those of the hopefully soon-to-be-released No Man's Sky, no software of which I’m aware generates true story background and plots. Human authors do, then human developers implement their “screenplays”.

 

Procedurally generated content of the kind imagined in SAO seems to me closely related to “character agent software” – more commonly called AIs, though I don’t like to use this term, because such software is not necessarily “artificially intelligent” in the sense of realistically simulating what happens in a human mind.

 

For me, the nonprocedureal content generation in SAO is more interesting and important than its Nervegear brain-computer interface hardware. It’s also more accessible, requiring only computers and software design and coding skill, as opposed to BCIs, which likely require you to be an elite brain surgeon.

[NotBrad]

I agree entirely.

[Andathar]

For those who are still here if you want to get this underway it's bust to move to something instead of talking about moving to it. Part of the problem of why it isn't getting done is people print moving on it. You want your dream to come true then let's do something.

 

A better way to throw ideas at each other with out the subject dying it a instachat program text and/or verbal. Because if it's silent for a while people forget. Out of sight out of mind. That's step one of getting things done.

 

Step two is finding what people you need. Example: a project manager, nero specialist, programmer, hardware engineer, network specialist, and ect (specialist: someone who specializes in. It doesn't mean there the best so don't think it's super hard to get one). By the way the way they would have to work with no pay and all projects would have to be self funded or kick started. This will denture a lot of people from helping. Unless you can get a lot of money. And if you can find people who are willing to work without pay then there someone of great value to the company because there doing it because it's what they like not cause of money. That being said once you get the money to pay them then do it cause eventually they will leave cause a big project with no income doesn't get food on the table.

 

Third you would have to work on one thing at a time I see a lot of people talking about everything that they could implement. If you don't work little by little and set an end goal you will lose sight of where it is you are going and nothing will get done. Not to mention that if you try to get everything done at once you'll have too much on your plate and get overwhelmed.

 

Forth you need a place where you and these "friend's" can meat to get the work done for hardware and the like (you could also ship stuff to each other but it's most ideal to be in one place).

 

There's much more but I wanted to keep it short. I am a hardware engineer, electrical engineering and I know a little bit of lots of different things like nero since and biology of human anatomy. I've researched a lot of different task out there and know how how they work more or less.

 

If any one wishes to chat or get this going and wants to invite me you can get a hold of me at

 

Email: [email protected]

Steam: Thegreateruler

Twitch: andatharthegreat

Discord: Andathar#3723

 

Let me know what's happening.

[Andathar]

Sorry for all the weird random words that don't belong task is supposed to be tech and so on the other miss spellings and others I think are obvious on what they are.