Motion Sensor VR Headset

Hello Virtual Reality freaks! It’s been a good year for our favorite technology; as we have seen in this blog VR has been invading our day to day lives in more ways than one, from resurrecting dead icons to training our doctors, and from the barracks to our living rooms!

Although traditionally we have thought of VR as a ways of enhancing leisurely visual experiences, most of the posts on this blog have been more centered on how it is making our lives better and how virtual reality can actually sharpen our real world skills. Nonetheless last week we went back to the basics, focusing on Sony’s VR headset for our personal use. As you recall this device essentially projects the same thing a TV monitor would, and the headset would simply serve to enhance your viewer experience.

This week I want to talk about something very similar yet much more sophisticated. There is another headset that’s designed for personal that has not yet hit the market. This headset is much more elaborate in that it has motion sensors that track the direction in which you are facing. The idea is that when you place the headset on your head you are immersed in a world in which you have to literally look around in order to view what is being projected, as opposed to just simply look at something that’s pre-recorded in an enclosed environment, as in the case with Sony’s unit.

The headset I am talking about does not have a name, it’s still a prototype. It was developed by Id software founder John Carmack, maker of famous video games such as Quake and Doom. The headset was being used to enhance and promote the launch of Doom 3 at the recent E3 Expo, the world’s premier video game convention.

Doom 3 is the third installment in the First-person shooter (FPS) series. The headset required users to look around in order to find enemies and to aim properly at their targets. The following article (Click Here for Article) summarizes how this is performed: “the HMZ-T1 offers a 45-degree viewing angle, creating the impression of a 3D screen floating in space in front of you. Carmack's device has a 90-degree viewing angle, almost fully encompassing your forward field of vision. It puts you inside the image”.

Although the buzz on this new headset will surely be about the potential it has specifically on video game enhancement, it will probably need to incorporate a broader use (like Sony’s version) in order to sell adequately. Nonetheless what I think is remarkable about this product is that it is incorporating much more sophisticated technology than I would have expected. I suspect, for example, that the military must be using something similar in the headsets they provide their soldiers for training. In order for soldiers to properly use their headsets to simulate combat situations they have to be able to look around and find their targets, as in Doom. If you haven’t read our articles on VR and military training I suggest you do.

Whether John Carmack’s headset or not sells well I cannot say. It really depends on price vs. value. Regardless of its impact in the market what we must really focus on is how far VR technologies have gone outside leisurely use. VR headsets have been around since I can remember, and only now are they becoming accessible enough to have in our homes. The wait has been worthwhile though as the functional development of VR will make the leisure version of it that much more enjoyable and useful for us when it reaches our homes in the very near future. 

Sony's New 3D Headset

While browsing youtube.com for all things virtual reality I came across this review for a Sony 3D headset:

This came out a few months ago and I’m surprised I just found out about this. Nonetheless this headset is quite cool. It essentially does the same thing as a TV and monitor; it projects images from things like cable boxes, computers, video game systems, Blu-Ray/DVD players etc. The difference is that the headset provides a very unique personal experience where you are essentially immersed into the environment of whatever it is that your watching.

If you watch the video review you probably noticed these guys were quite impressed with the performance of this unit. Personally I thought they were very nerdy and annoying but I still wanted to test the freakin’ thing out! The unit projects both 3D and 2D images, depending on what you feel most comfortable with, and the prospect of playing a video game such as Modern Warfare on this thing seems very intriguing.

Aside from the fact that this new product has a high “wow” factor to it, I find it to be quite functional for daily use. The first thing I want to point out is the price point; at $799.00 I think this is a reasonable price. Initially you might think this is high, but a decent sized 3D television will cost you a lot more and will not provide the virtual reality experience of these headsets. Although an Ipad may have more uses, you would think a 3D headset as sophisticated as this one would cost more, and yet this it is cheaper than many of the newest Ipad’s, depending on the model.

Click Here to see pricing on Amazon.com

The second thing is that one of these bad boys can be quite useful. If you have a significant other with whom you share a bed you probably have fought for control over the TV at some point, or you may have wanted to fall asleep while your partner continues to watch TV, which can be annoying. With this headset you can both stay in bed and watch different things if you so choose; in fact you probably will be fighting over the rights to watch TV over the headset. This applies to any situation in which one person wanting to use a TV or monitor will bother someone who does not. This headset provides the intimate experience that earphones provide when listening to music ( although the headset does not have the benefit of being portable, like earphones).

In retrospect this is just another example of how Virtual Reality is becoming more integrated into our daily lives. Technology that we used to read about in magazines and see in movies is now available for purchase. How long will it take before you own a piece of the future?

Virtual Reality Contact Lenses

When you mention Virtual Reality to most people the first thing that will probably come to their mind is a clunky helmet that covers your face and projects life like images. Although this may be a primitive image of how people perceive virtual reality, this technology usually requires some kind of heavy and large hardware in order to function. Consider some of the other topics we have discussed in this blog such as helmets for the military, holographic projectors that transmit life like images, TV screens and large controls that simulate an operation, among others; each one requires a heavy piece of machinery in order to function.

Nonetheless this may change in the very near future as various companies are trying to develop contact lenses that enhance our visual capabilities as human beings and have the capability of projecting virtual and computer generated images. If developed properly this particular advancement in technology can have a huge impact in how we live our lives; the amount of computing hardware we use and have may become increasingly obsolete.

The most important factor in developing such sophisticated eyewear is that humans will be able to see things better than what their natural capacity allows. Aside from correcting defective vision, digitally enhanced contact lenses could enhance our ability to focus and zoom on things. Theoretically humans can have “eagle vision”, or potentially something even better.

But more than enhancing our natural vision these contact lenses can replace a lot of things we consider essential today; the first thing that comes to mind is your smartphone and tablets. These units have increasingly become part of our lives due to their portability and the amount of functions they provide. We can browse the internet for instant information, view movies, read books, answer emails and phone calls etc. With a “virtual reality” contact lens you could theoretically transfer most uses of a smartphone directly to your eye. To write emails and phone calls you could simply incorporate a small microphone somewhere on your body so as to give commands. You could also project movies and read books through the contact lens. These are just some of the functions that smart phones have that we could see being transferred to a contact lens, but the potential for it is definitely there.

Another potentially important use of digitally enhanced contact lenses is for the military. In order to not go into much detail of the potential benefits of this type of technology in the military, simply try to remember the terminator movies. If you recall the Terminators had a very cool computer vision that gave them data regarding their targets and environments which gave them a competitive advantage over regular humans. Essentially soldiers would have “Terminator Vision”.

Most of this technology is being tested today and should be market ready for 2014. We must consider that this technology may have to go through some trial and error before it is incorporated in everyday life or even in the military, but the potential benefits could significantly alter how we live our lives moving forward.

Click to see article on development of Contact Lenses

Virtual Reality for Surgery Training

Does anyone remember the board game by Milton Bradley “Operation”? If you don’t then you’re probably not a child of the 1980’s and 1990’s; this game essentially tested the sensitivity of your hand when picking out plastic organs from an electronic board with the form of a cartoon man. If you happen to touch the sides where an organ was placed an electronic buzzer would go off signaling that you had failed in your attempt to remove whatever part of the body you were designated. Here’s a video to refresh your memory:

Even as a little boy I wondered to myself if this game actually meant something with regards to maintaining a calm hand when executing delicate maneuvers and if this could actually help real doctors.

The reason I bring this up is because today doctors and doctors in training are using virtual reality to simulate the real thing. Please watch this next video to see exactly how:

Reuters Video on Doctors Using Virtual Reality to Simulate Real Life Surgeries

This here is real ground breaking stuff people! You would be surprised at the amount of operations that students and apprentices perform on regular people under the watchful eye of a senior doctor. You’re not aware because you’re asleep during the operation, but this is actually quite common. As a patient this can be very unsettling because not only is your health at stake, but many times we are paying a premium for recognized doctors to perform particular surgeries on us.

Since this practice is quite common we can at least trust that students and apprentices that participate in our surgeries have been well trained. The real interesting thing about this particular technology is that a doctor doesn’t have to wear a helmet to simulate the operation; he has handles that accurately represent what is used in real surgeries, and these handles or controls are connected to a system that transmit a virtual  3D image to a TV of the inner parts of our bodies. The person with the handles can then virtually operate via the TV, like a video game. The handles actually provide resistance when managing the organs within the game that simulate their real life weight.

Not only does this make us feel that our doctors and surgeons are better prepared to perform surgeries but it also reduces the need for “guinea pigs”. The video mentions that doctors either learned on the fly with real patients or were provided with animals with which to practice surgeries on before they had this system.

Maybe the developers of this technology used “Operation” as influence, because virtual operations seem to be a more sophisticated version of the original board game. Nonetheless medicine has found a very efficient and effective way to train their surgeons. We can now feel safer when “we go under the knife”, and for animal rights activists this has to be considered a victory for them as many animals will be spared the label of “guinea pig”