As reported by The Register :
A Purdue University undergraduate has picked a way to stop virtual reality inducing motion sickness: program in a virtual nose.
Fixed-reference objects help to stop the sickness, Whittinghill says, but not every simulation lends itself to the inclusion of something like the window frames in a cockpit to give the brain something to latch onto.
While discussing this problem, undergraduate Bradley Ziegler piped up with the idea of programming in a virtual nose. The idea is that we're all used to our hooters haunting our field of vision, so much so that we take it for granted that it's always possible to see a slice of schnoz.
Subjects given the virtual nose staved off simulation sickness longer than their noseless counterparts in a variety of simulations, including a sickness-inducing roller coaster ride. The original source provides more information, including a finding that test subjects didn't notice the virtual nose during testing, even displaying skepticism over its presence when told about it later during post-testing debriefings.
Related Stories
Tom's Hardware conducted an interview with Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR. The defining takeaway? Virtual reality needs as much graphics resources as can be thrown at it:
Tom's Hardware: If there was one challenge in VR that you had to overcome that you really wish wasn't an issue, which would it be?
Palmer Luckey: Probably unlimited GPU horsepower. It is one of the issues in VR that cannot be solved at this time. We can make our hardware as good as we want, our optics as sharp as we can, but at the end of the day we are reliant on how many flops the GPU can push, how high a framerate can it push? Right now, to get 90 frames per second [the minimum target framerate for Oculus VR] and very low latencies we need heaps of power, and we need to bump the quality of the graphics way down.
If we had unlimited GPU horsepower in everybody's computer, that will make our lives very much easier. Of course, that's not something we can control, and it's a problem that will be solved in due time.
TH: Isn't it okay to deal with the limited power we have today, because we're still in the stepping stones of VR technology?
PL: It's not just about the graphics being simple. You can have lots of objects in the virtual environment, and it can still cripple the experience. Yes, we are able to make immersive games on VR with simpler graphics on this limited power, but the reality is that our ability to create what we are imagining is being limited by the limited GPU horsepower.
[...] The goal in the long run is not only to sell to people who buy game consoles, but also to people who buy mobile phones. You need to expand so that you can connect hundreds of millions of people to VR. It may not necessarily exist in the form of a phone dropping into a headset, but it will be mobile technologies -- mobile CPUs, mobile graphics cards, etc.
In the future, VR headsets are going to have all the render hardware on board, no longer being hardwired to a PC. A self-contained set of glasses is a whole other level of mainstream.
[More after the Break]
(Score: 4, Touché) by aristarchus on Friday March 27 2015, @01:24AM
Alliteration? I had to read the summary twice just to figure out what the headline is! El Reg is infectious?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @01:25AM
Only it was Marand [soylentnews.org] that composed the headline, not El Reg.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Marand on Friday March 27 2015, @01:35AM
What can I say? I've always appreciated occasional alliteration abuse.
Don't hate; alliterate. :)
(Score: 5, Funny) by buswolley on Friday March 27 2015, @03:41AM
Abuse?!!
I CANT UNSEE my NOSE!
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @02:03AM
Alliteration != Illumination
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday March 27 2015, @03:18AM
But it is better then dactylic hexameter.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday March 27 2015, @05:31AM
I was a bit surprised to learn that "we" are all used to our hooters haunting our field of vision, too.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday March 27 2015, @06:44AM
"we" are all used to our hooters haunting our field of vision
WE??? My eyes are up here, on either side of my schnoz! My gosh there are a lot of Yiddish dirty minds here on Soylent News! Who knew!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday March 27 2015, @01:42AM
Extension: assuming the VR device can detect for the head position and adjust for PoV, would it be useful to include the other face elements in the peripheral vision (e.g. simulated brows if your head is leaned forward, or nose/cheek bones if leaned backwards?).
Would it add to the realism to simulate a head tilt caused by the lateral acceleration on a roller-coaster? (or will the dizziness be worse: visuals tell you the head is tilted, inner ear contradicts that).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Friday March 27 2015, @01:15PM
Well, current VR has a very limited field of view* directly in front of the face. Your nose, being rather front and center, is within that field of view. Try looking past your brows though, and there isn't any screen to project an image on. For now.
*Oculus and peers are much better than earlier "postage stamp" VR helmets, but we're still talking about a diagonal field of view of ~110*, rather than the easily 200+* FOV offered by our eyes when fixed forward, much less the huge range available if you move your eyes.
(Score: 2) by TK on Friday March 27 2015, @02:17PM
I don't see why it would have to matter where your head is in relation to the rest of your body (with a few exceptions, most of them lethal). Your prominent, caveman-like brow and *insert ethnic slur of choice*-nose are in the same position relative to your eyes, regardless of how your contort yourself. As long as you can see them (or their exaggerated CG counterparts) in your peripheral when your eyes move around, there should be no problem. Make the screen a dome and put the features on the periphery.
You do bring up an interesting point: someone not used to seeing a particular feature in their peripheral due to posture, lack of a nose, etc. would either require a different feature, or have to stay away from VR.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 5, Interesting) by martyb on Friday March 27 2015, @02:26AM
From what I can tell, they just have this one, unchanging image of a nose that remains in its place on the display.
I am curious what effect nose lighting might have on nausea reduction. Say one is looking straight ahead to the north, the sun is on one's left (west). The side of the nose on the left should appear much brighter than the side of the nose on the right. I suspect that making this correction should improve the nausea reduction. (Or, conversely, if the lighting on the nose is as if the sun is on the left, but everything else in the scene is lit as if the sun were on the right, I'd think that it might be disturbing to some people. Would be a fun experiment to try!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday March 27 2015, @02:58AM
I am curious what effect nose lighting might have on nausea reduction.
Judging by the lack of reindeer vomit on rooftops Christmas day, I'd guess it helps a lot.
Jokes aside, I'm not sure how noticeable that would even be. Even though I'm always vaguely aware of my nose being present in my field of view -- easily ignored, barely noticed -- I couldn't tell you how it's lit at any given moment. I have to close one eye and make a deliberate effort to check it. That doesn't mean it wouldn't have an effect, though, so it would be interesting to test.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @03:47AM
From the article, it looks like the nose does include lighting effects - one side of the example screenshot is bright and the other is in shadow.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Friday March 27 2015, @07:36PM
I noticed from the screen capture that one side was lighter than the other, but I could not tell whether that was a static image, or a dynamic effect based on scene lighting.
Given the description of how they came about testing it, I could well imagine that they just put up a randomly lit nose, for a first pass, to see if their hypothesis played out (pun intended). I find it interesting that most (all?) of the participants were unaware that the nose was there, even when told about it after the testing. Hence my assumption of a static image. What need is there for dynamic lighting if they don't even know it is there? The results demonstrated it did have a positive effect.
So, my thought was a more accurate simulation, using appropriate lighting, may have an additional beneficial response. And for those for whom the benefit was not as dramatic, assuming a static simulation, may have subconsciously picked up on the incorrect lighting cues and so failed to derive as much of a benefit as they might have.
tl;dr: if it was already dynamically lit -- yay! If it was a static image, I would very much like to see what effect, if any, would result from dynamic nose shading.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Friday March 27 2015, @02:50AM
The only thing I can think of currently is the bacon dog treat commercial from the POV of a dog. The nose is very prominent in the commercial.
I guess it was a good commercial, as it is engrained in my memory. I have no dog, but I could go for some bacon right now.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @04:01AM
Does this mean a simulated schlong will fix the nausea problem with VR porn?
Or is that really due to the skankitude of porn actors in general? 3D pudenda of pimples! (aka the herp)