Developing A Game With Fulldive Technology In The Mind

[xTcHero]

Hey there good folks of science!

 

I've been lurking around here for a while, specifically reading through this thread in details, trying to gather information and inspiration for my newest projects.

 

I guess I should do an introduction first, as it seems like most others does this aswell. I am a folk high school student in Norway, currently studying the concepts of game development. In our class, we develop games and software using Unity3D as our game engine, and C# for software development. I've already been developing in Java for 5 years, so transferring to C# was no problem.

 

Anyways, I have lately been studying the brain and nerves of the brain, trying to figure out how I could use this via an EEG headset in video games. As far as I can tell, by using something like Emotiv's EPOC, we are able to read brain waves and decode the data into runnable code in Unity.

 

To which extent is EPOC able to read and transfer data? To give a more specific, understandable example; let's say we want to do player movement with EPOC (walking forward, backwards, turning around, jumping, crawling etc.), is the EPOC capable of doing such smoothly, or are there any other relatively cheap products (300-700$) we can use in education?

 

Thanks in advance, I look forward to update this thread with information regarding the game aswell as useful information for other game developers out there.

[AuraNightheart]

Where as an EEG headset would be awesome to use in video games, it really wouldn't be practical. First, might I ask, are you referring to a complete FullDive system or a system in which your movements are detected by the headset and then sent to a game? Whichever one it is definitely impacts the answers you're looking for. 

[xTcHero]

A complete FullDive system would be the ultimate, but we don't have the technology for that just yet.

 

That's why I want to explore and find the posibilities of the current technology, and develop ideas from there.

Edited September 23, 2015 by xTcHero

[AuraNightheart]

Okay, that's what I thought. A complete FullDive system we would have to figure out how to monitor the brain, at least short wise. However, what you are proposing, a screen that works with an EEG headset to monitor body functions such as fighting in a PC game...That probably will be achievable much sooner than a FullDive system. Obviously, there won't be touch, smell, etc. but basic body functions and sounds shouldn't be too difficult. Obviously, while the game is built, there will be specific motions the character can do and specific motions the human body can do to have it be monitored in the game. Unless the character in the game is built with full flexibility, in which you could simply monitor the arms & legs of the person playing, input physics to the screen, and I could potentially see it working as a very good Hack 'n Slash game style. However, of course, you would have to be moving (similar to Microsoft's Kinect). At the moment I do not believe you could do this by simply sitting down and thinking about performing motions inside the game, though I'm not amazingly knowledgable in that area. I'm only 12, so I might have a lot of mistakes in the information I'm giving you. This is just from what I know personally and what I'm making assumptions about. 

[xTcHero]

That is pretty much what I thought of, though I've been considering getting a dialogue with the hospital nearby, trying to experiment with body paralyzing medicaments. Of course under monitoring by people that knows what they do.

 

I know they have been helping out with other projects similar to this earlier, so I do believe they might help me out. Now, I don't see injecting some body paralyzing liquid as a long term solution, but rather to test out the concept of proper BCI usage in video games.

 

It really is impressive if you're twelve, I wouldn't have noticed. Keep it up! :)

[AuraNightheart]

Haha, thanks.

 

Anyway, the idea of possibly using body paralyzing medicaments sounds interesting, especially if some of this technology ends up being used in the actual medical field (which it most likely will). I agree with you, however, it wouldn't be a long term solution- especially with video games. That would probably be both dangerous if used incorrectly and very expensive. 

[bobbobkilu]

With current technology, there really is no point using EEG type controllers: The best current (or at least soon to be released) VR rig would probably be the SteamVR, which has been shown to accurately allow interaction between real world and virtual elements.

[xTcHero]

The thing is; I want to take VR a step further by combining technologies that usually is not used in game development. This way, I can gather experience for later use, and it is also an interesting concept to try out.

Edited September 24, 2015 by xTcHero

[NotBrad]

As has been suggested in the previously linked discussion, a haptic suit with combined with a neural device like the epoc that could instil temporary paralysis is all that's necessary. The biggest disconnect with Kinect is that while you are moving around in game there is no real feeling of feedback from objects you interact with which makes it very difficult to have any real coordination, now imagine if your gloves and socks gave pressure in real time to the real body parts as you moved around in game, sure, balance would be difficult, but you could potentially have some assist to compensate for that. You would feel the pressure of your feet hitting the ground and when  you move stuff you would feel real force feedback. that would be the first step, and could teach us greatly about the association between the sight of movements and the input of sensory data from the skin.