How Close Are We To The Game Of The Anime Sword Art Online And The Technology?

[Kaito]

Hello. I am Kaito and I was wondering how close we could be.. Now.. I understand everything about this topic vividly and how hard it could get. I lost my train of thought while making an account for this website, so I would like to hear your ideas.. Also, I may sound young (12yrs) but that doesn't mean I am incapable of anything this complex.. Now, I know that you might of heard that the "NerveGear"/Sword Art Online- The Game may come out in 2020 or 2022.. But.. This is just an estimate if you already know, you could also possible know how hard this subject is or how to reply to something like this.. So all I want is just your ideas.. I am basically asking you to day dream it.. Imagine you are creating the NerveGear, and the reply section is your notes.. Jot down anything you believe you would to to create it.. I would also like you to write your ideas on a list; This is because I like the idea of "Organized".. Let's see what you come up with.. And hopefully you can bring my train of thought back.. Because my thought was some really complex sh** that might've even blown your mind.. List your ideas below! thank you!

[Kaito]

And also.. I do not want to hear the word "Young" that includes ageing.. Also, if I see any hate I will delete your reply.. Because hate = hate.. And I don't take hate..

[AuraNightheart]

I can totally agree, I'm the same age-

I'm working on my own theory of something to do with electromagnetic pulses (also mentioned in the Medicuboid sections of SAO) to influence certain areas of the brain via emitters. I put it on the main thread about 10 minutes ago, before I saw this. Good luck getting your thought back!

[nullspaceM]

Don't get "lost" by trying to emulate how the Amusphere and NerveGear work in SAO. SAO is a fictional show, and while there are some scientific roots, most of what you see is creative license on the author's part.

Best way to learn more about this is to start from scratch. Look into how the brain stores and retrieves information, and how electromagnetics work, then put them together.

 

Also if you don't want people to talk about age, don't include it. It's the internet, no one knows how old you are if you don't tell them. 

[TheSoloPlayer]

Well we are advancing at a rapid pace with VR technology. I am also "young" but have researched the idea of Full Dive VR for a while now. The problem wont exactly be the hardware itself, the problem is using all senses to create a artificial world that will seem real. What am I talking about? I'm talking about how do we use our senses such as taste, smell, sight, hearing, and other senses and put them all into one big package. We'll do this by somehow detecting neuronal connections and putting in artificial values. But for a small answer to your question, we are close but far... we still need to research more about our bodies and figuring out how to disable body movement. In years... 10 - 30 years... Depending on how fast we can develop new technologies and research on body functions and neuronal connections. 

[17robots]

Yeah @Kaito, I am currently trying to organize some people together in an attempt to create the NerveGear(not what it is actually going to be named). You can find the forum here: http://www.scienceforums.com/topic/28417-17robots-fulldive-vr-company/. If you would like to join, I am always looking for new people to help.

Edited June 19, 2015 by 17robots

[blaiz3]

I cant post this in the forum i want, but this place will do. 

EEG and other forms of brain scans make a picture of the brain by showing the portions of the brain that are "firing" at that moment. That being said, there is extensive research going on using this technology that may be used to "cure" paralysis. This is done by surgically implanting wiring the bypasses the severed nerves and allows for the electrochemical interaction to continue where it normally would have terminated. This research can be used to create Full Dive VR by mapping the brain while someone is doing different actions and during different moods (anger, fright, happiness, etc). There are many problems with this though. The equipment is extremely expensive and consumes a lot of power. You could have a helmet that saves the images of the brain so you can analyze them later. After analyzing the data, it can be turned into coding that is then used in the game to control your character. This would save some processing power as the computer has the images paired with a certain set of code, but you would need a massive amount of bandwidth and RAM to be able to run that system, and lots of cooling so it doesnt fry. As of right now, this tech is a long way off without proper funding and research. Once it does hit the market it will be an expensive way to game. 

[17robots]

But it will revolutionize gaming as well. I am betting with all of the sao fans out there and the vr fans and the extensive super-fancy-gaming-setup gamers put together, we could easily recover our lost funds and make a serious profit. We are still unclear as to how it will be done, but we are leaning to the area of EEG. So, I hope to see what can be done with it.

[blaiz3]

True, and a lot of games could be revived using the "NerveGear" by giving them new perspectives and new ways to play and interact with the characters they already love.

[17robots]

Yeah. Are you gonna build your own form of mri?

[17robots]

Ok. I see.

[Wizysao]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532436/are-telepathy-experiments-stunts-or-science/ this url explains brain to brain communication not sure if its helpful or not but it seams interesting

[17robots]

That is cool. It is really interesting.

[TwistedCurse]

I have done some research and been looking through a lot of videos and blogs of these ideas. Making a Nerve Gear is possible if we all realize how it can benefit all of us. However that's not what I want to talk about. I want to share my idea for those who are inspired in trying to create this. This idea is not going to involve with the Rift because in the Anime they were paralyzed. I was doing some research about sleep and think I found a good answer that can relate to this subject. It's called sleep Paralysis. Sleep Paralysis is one of the parts of the cycle of REM. There has been many experiences of which people had terrifying experience with this however it doesn't have to be bad. Sleep Paralysis is when your body is asleep but your mind is awake, the opposite of sleep walking. The point of sleep paralysis is to not act out your dreams and to keep you still. We already found out the part of the brain that causes sleep paralysis so if we manipulate it and maybe send a shock to the brain to call for it and keep it until the end of the VR or something (Not an expert of the brain), we will keep our body paralyzed. This is the first step to making the Nerve Gear since we will be able to use our senses inside the game. However, that's the easy part. The other big question is that how we will be able to connect the Virtual Reality to the brain. Wires? This is the question we need to find out in order to be able to start making this into a reality.

[NotBrad]

Hello, I am quite new here and would like to share some constructive feedback based on various pieces of information I have picked up over the last few years through curiosity. There seems to be a great deal of enthusiasm here and I would like to share in it with you. SO HELLO!

 

Now I am sure you want me to get on to my constructive and relevant information right? Well I personally believe that the technology that exists today is more than sufficient to achieve a world similar to that represented in SAO though potentially not to the exact specifications imagined by the author, but easily to the extent represented in the show. In the first episode when Klein and Kirito are discussing how the game knew what they looked like and what their body shape and size was, Klein states that during some sort of calibration he had to "touch his body all over" to calibrate the system. Using this as a point of reference we can assume that the system does not know the physiology of the player prior to their first use of the system, but rather gives instructions tailored to help map out the location of the nerves associated with each muscle and sensation. I think that the design of this calibration process could be tailored to match the capabilities of current generation equipment to create a crude prototype which could then have superior sensors substituted in as they become available advancing the system while also maintaining backwards compatibility similarly to how games are today when played on the PC(how old hardware can run new games but are less immersive and pretty on last gen hardware). This would provide the industry with sustainability and profitability on the hardware side and create competition to advance the hardware, which is necessary for an industry of high quality AAA games to be built around.

 

But it is also noteworthy to state that in the show there were games that came before SAO that simply did not take full advantage of the possibilities of the NerveGear rig. This said although SAO was the first world to truly be photo-realistic while also being a VRMMO, there were others that came before it that were just less pretty and less immersive. So we can safely assume that although SAO may be a long time in coming, but a VR game that had the graphics of a game like Battlefield would be more than enough to drive the industry forward and begin the long journey towards a truly immersive VRMMO.

[17robots]

That is true. There are certainly elements of the NerveGear that will be significantly different than how the author pictured it. And I see what you are saying with the lesser games not taking full advantage of the NerveGear compared to the VRMMORPGS.

[CraigD]

Hi NotBrad – welcome to hypography :) If you’re so inclined, please start a thread in the introductions forum to tell us all your life story.

 

In the first episode when Klein and Kirito are discussing how the game knew what they looked like and what their body shape and size was, Klein states that during some sort of calibration he had to "touch his body all over" to calibrate the system. Using this as a point of reference we can assume that the system does not know the physiology of the player prior to their first use of the system, but rather gives instructions tailored to help map out the location of the nerves associated with each muscle and sensation.

I agree. Though attention to details like this appears only in a few episodes of the anime (I’ve read little of Reki Kawahara’s SAO manga, but understand it expounds on the fictional technology at much greater length), it’s certainly implied that the technology “learns” a lot about the user as part of its built-in calibration programing.

 

I think that the design of this calibration process could be tailored to match the capabilities of current generation equipment to create a crude prototype which could then have superior sensors substituted in as they become available advancing the system while also maintaining backwards compatibility similarly to how games are today when played on the PC(how old hardware can run new games but are less immersive and pretty on last gen hardware).

I think you underappreciate how crude current generation real world equipment is at sensing things like “the location of the nerves associated with each muscle and sensation”, which the fiction take for granted can be done with a fairly inexpensive and un-intrusive device like the NerveGear.

 

Short of surgically implanting electrodes, present day “nerve reading” technology senses at best large collections of nerves associated with many muscles and sensations. Present day device that superficially resemble the fictional NerveGearl, like the EPOC, for example, work primarily by recognizing “brain waves” produced by billions of brain neurons in concert, and also by detecting facial muscle activity.

 

Present day ability to “write” to nerves is even more limited. Nonintrusive systems like TMS have an effect so vague that it’s difficult for a subject to tell if it’s on or not. These and more intrusive system, like the Dobelle Eye, can produce only crude phosphenes, blotchy false perception of flashes of light that subjects can train themselves to use to perceive such input as from cameras, allowing them to vaguely perceive large objects and large print characters.

 

Not all present day technology is crude. For all practical purposes, visual and audio systems are perfect, capable to producing images and sounds our visual and auditory systems can’t distinguish from natural sources. We have reasonably sensitive devices that can sense and produce pressure, suggesting that device like inexpensive, high-quality haptic gloves could be made as soon a sufficiently large market for them emerged.

 

 

This would provide the industry with sustainability and profitability on the hardware side and create competition to advance the hardware, which is necessary for an industry of high quality AAA games to be built around.

 

So we can safely assume that although SAO may be a long time in coming, but a VR game that had the graphics of a game like Battlefield would be more than enough to drive the industry forward and begin the long journey towards a truly immersive VRMMO.

I agree – but I expect the first generations of these systems will look more like this

Than this