Besides the metaverse I’ve already mentioned, here’s another one:
Through my work I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to use CAVE environments developed at UC Davis and UC San Diego in analysis of planetry data. Search for “3d CAVE” on youtube and you should fine plenty of videos showing what this experience is like.
The effect of being able to immersively interact with this data is incredible. The classic example I gave visitors was some of the first published data to come out of the UC Davis computer science / geology visualization partnership: a buckling of subduction zones that was previously unknown despite having sufficient data available for the last century at least. They loaded earthquake data overlayed on a globe basically as a test of the system, and almost immediately discovered the subduction buckling from straight visual inspection.
Analyzing geometric data directly in an immersive 3D environment is so much more productive than traditional techniques, because it exploits the natural machinery we have inbuilt in us for aggregating and extracting out details of sensory data. Already it sees use in many areas—I sat next to someone on a plane once who’s job it was to install these things in oil exploration ships, where the energy companies would use it to quickly analyze the terrabytes of data coming in from the sea bed.
I expect that in nearly all fields of engineering, physical science, and biology there are great efficiencies to be gained by utilizing the immersive CAVE experience. But a traditional CAVE will cost you half a million dollars, putting it way outside the reach of most organizations. An Occulus Rift + Kinect + decent graphics card puts you back less than a thousand dollars, on the other hand.
(BTW, experience in immersive CAVE environments is that with suitable precision and capability in the technology motion sickness-like symptoms disappear for all but a few percent of the population)
I actually agree with you here. As I mentioned in my first reply, I can easily imagine virtual/augmented reality headsets being used for creative professions, and I can also easily imagine them being used for science/engineering and so on. It’s just hard for me to imagine them being widely used in gaming, at least in their current form. Maybe future, more advanced iterations of the technology would have better chances.
What makes the Oculus Rift special in that regard? There have been numerous head-mounted VR solutions that have been able to do that for many years. Yet they have not seen any serious use for such purposes.
The Rift is different in that it provides full hemisphere viewing angle. There is no ‘tunnel vision’, and you get full peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is important to the HVS for motion sensation and situational awareness.
Its immediately different as soon as you turn your head, there is a definite wow factor over a monitor.
The tradeoff of course is the terrible resolution, but its interesting in showing the potential of at leas solving most of the other immersion problems.
1080p in each eye is hardly enough to ‘solve’ the resolution problem. There is a fundamental tradeoff between FOV and effective resolution—a reason why other manufactures haven’t attempted full human FOV. For a linear display its something like 8k x 4k per eye for a full FOV HMD to have HDTV equivalent resolution.
In that case, the chances of success look much better.
Can you give some examples?
Besides the metaverse I’ve already mentioned, here’s another one:
Through my work I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to use CAVE environments developed at UC Davis and UC San Diego in analysis of planetry data. Search for “3d CAVE” on youtube and you should fine plenty of videos showing what this experience is like.
The effect of being able to immersively interact with this data is incredible. The classic example I gave visitors was some of the first published data to come out of the UC Davis computer science / geology visualization partnership: a buckling of subduction zones that was previously unknown despite having sufficient data available for the last century at least. They loaded earthquake data overlayed on a globe basically as a test of the system, and almost immediately discovered the subduction buckling from straight visual inspection.
Analyzing geometric data directly in an immersive 3D environment is so much more productive than traditional techniques, because it exploits the natural machinery we have inbuilt in us for aggregating and extracting out details of sensory data. Already it sees use in many areas—I sat next to someone on a plane once who’s job it was to install these things in oil exploration ships, where the energy companies would use it to quickly analyze the terrabytes of data coming in from the sea bed.
I expect that in nearly all fields of engineering, physical science, and biology there are great efficiencies to be gained by utilizing the immersive CAVE experience. But a traditional CAVE will cost you half a million dollars, putting it way outside the reach of most organizations. An Occulus Rift + Kinect + decent graphics card puts you back less than a thousand dollars, on the other hand.
(BTW, experience in immersive CAVE environments is that with suitable precision and capability in the technology motion sickness-like symptoms disappear for all but a few percent of the population)
I actually agree with you here. As I mentioned in my first reply, I can easily imagine virtual/augmented reality headsets being used for creative professions, and I can also easily imagine them being used for science/engineering and so on. It’s just hard for me to imagine them being widely used in gaming, at least in their current form. Maybe future, more advanced iterations of the technology would have better chances.
How about an architect walking his clients though their soon-to-be house?
What makes the Oculus Rift special in that regard? There have been numerous head-mounted VR solutions that have been able to do that for many years. Yet they have not seen any serious use for such purposes.
Have you tried it?
The Rift is different in that it provides full hemisphere viewing angle. There is no ‘tunnel vision’, and you get full peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is important to the HVS for motion sensation and situational awareness.
Its immediately different as soon as you turn your head, there is a definite wow factor over a monitor.
The tradeoff of course is the terrible resolution, but its interesting in showing the potential of at leas solving most of the other immersion problems.
Solved in the consumer version which is still being worked on (at least 1080p in each eye).
1080p in each eye is hardly enough to ‘solve’ the resolution problem. There is a fundamental tradeoff between FOV and effective resolution—a reason why other manufactures haven’t attempted full human FOV. For a linear display its something like 8k x 4k per eye for a full FOV HMD to have HDTV equivalent resolution.