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John Carmacks take: I am skeptical of something like this making an impact for consumer VR, but it should be possible to integrate the sensor input at the Open

John Carmacks take: I am skeptical of something like this making an impact for consumer VR, but it should be possible to integrate the sensor input at the OpenXR level, allowing it to work with all apps without needing per-app specialization. However, it probably doesn’t “solve” motion sickness, because the vestibular system still won’t think you are going forward. The bouncing around motion of walking does have a masking effect that will help some. Source: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1750557236798148613 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1750557236798148613

lttlrck 3y ago
Perhaps headsets that manipulate the vestibular system via ultrasonic are in our future. (a entirely uneducated conjecture)
- modeless 3y ago
  Unfortunately physics can't be fooled. Your limbs will still move according to the laws of inertia, and when that motion doesn't match your sense of balance your brain will likely be just as confused. But more importantly, you will immediately fall over if your sense of balance doesn't match reality exactly. Then you'd have to be supported by a harness. Obviously constantly being prevented from falling over by leaning on a harness is not going to feel like the natural movement that people want these systems to achieve.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    I don't know, humans are pretty adaptable. I'm imagining spending a day "running" around in VR and then running in IRL and having all of this unexpected momentum causing me to fall over whenever I want to stop.
  - Izkata 3y ago
    > Then you'd have to be supported by a harness. Single-person omnidirectional treadmills for VR already exist, and as far as I know all of them use just such a harness: https://www.virtuix.com/ https://www.virtuix.com/
    - modeless 3y ago
      Yes, I know and I've used several types. They remain extremely niche exactly because they don't achieve anything like the natural walking feel people imagine these systems would provide.
      - Animats 3y ago
        Here's a good overview of omnidirectional treadmills by a VR native.[1] There are schemes with rows of endless belts. Ball bearings. Slippery surfaces. Running while going nowhere can be made to work in VR. At least for people who are somewhat athletic. Note, though, that the Disney demo doesn't show any fast motion. Useful advice from the VR native: get on platform, harness up, then put on headgear. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN5RjAW8TV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN5RjAW8TV0
        riwsky 3y ago
        They were born… in virtual reality?
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Or perhaps it can be solved the same way as going from teleporting-only nonsense to normal joystick movement was - people just got used to it. We can adapt to just about anything if we do it for long enough.
  - derefr 3y ago
    The majority of people did not adapt; and instead are currently assiduously avoiding VR for simulation-sickness reasons until it solves these problems. (My hypothesis is that the minority of people who did manage to "adapt" to movement in VR, are people who have lived for years with inner-ear problems that have essentially made their vestibular sense deaf.)
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Please back up your numbers claim, I'll even take a twitter poll. Especially since we have good evidence that most people adapt to boats.
      - riwsky 3y ago
        Says a man clearly in the pocket of Big Boat.
        moffkalast 3y ago
        I believe those are called ships.
wolverine876 3y ago
> the vestibular system still won’t think you are going forward Why not? Movement is relative, of course, and I'm moving relative to the floor and relative to what I see. What does the vestibular system detect that isn't happening?
- jschlesser 3y ago
  Your legs are moving but your head / vestibular system isn’t experiencing acceleration that it expects with those leg movements. Think of it this way, if you are holding a pendulum and take a normal step forward, the pendulum will start to swing. If you take a step forward on the magic floor tiles, your legs move normally but since your body stays in the same place, the pendulum is motionless.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    > Your legs are moving but your head / vestibular system isn’t experiencing acceleration that it expects with those leg movements That's also true on a treadmill. I think the bigger problem would be that the world appears to be moving (unlike a treadmill) and you don't feel any acceleration.
    - Ringz 3y ago
      So can I use the Disney system to simulate running on a treadmill?
    - maximus-decimus 3y ago
      But on a threadmill you're going in a straight line and usually at constant speed. A constant speed, you don't have acceleration.
      - leereeves 3y ago
        Exactly, you don't have acceleration, and the world around you isn't moving relative to you, so there's no mismatch. The treadmill shows that performing the walking movements without acceleration doesn't generally cause motion sickness.
RobCodeSlayer 3y ago
You don’t need to fully fool the vestibular system. This could be installed in a large room and move users slowly back to center as they approach the edge
- randall 3y ago
  I think this is the most likely outcome. Then you get unlimited walking distance and no vestibular drama (or light vestibular drama). I wonder if it makes you puke if you don't quite move as far as you expected... like each step counts for 3/4ths of a step or something... and then you imperceptibly move backward.
  - persolb 3y ago
    There is an Oculus game Tea for God that had step scaling as an option. It is rooms ale, but every step you take, it moves you 1.25 steps of distance. I get motion sick easy, but this option doesn’t make me sick.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  I tried out an experience last night called "SandboxVR" which would be the perfect customer for such a system - you walk into a room equipped with motion-tracker cameras, the staff straps you into VR gear, then you play an immersive video game with your friends. The games are designed so you don't need to move around much, because a flashing red grid appears in your vision if you get too close to the walls; with a moving floor, they could give you a lot more freedom to explore.
- Rapzid 3y ago
  Or even just a medium room. Let the user accelerate faster and then the system accelerate slower to start centering then.
- rollcat 3y ago
  The characters in "Star Trek" are well aware of the holodeck's limitations. Data can "see" the walls: https://youtu.be/uWWn0fPbcRs?feature=shared&t=192 https://youtu.be/uWWn0fPbcRs?feature=shared&t=192 B'elanna Torres (and many other characters, mostly Klingon) are notorious for disabling the holodeck safety protocols, because the experience is not "real enough" unless one can actually get hurt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30TXMZ_TSjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30TXMZ_TSjk The awareness of the holodeck experience being fake is so pervasive, that Odo actually believes the real Kira Nerys is a holodeck character: https://youtu.be/8_nfZGFEm5k?feature=shared&t=82 https://youtu.be/8_nfZGFEm5k?feature=shared&t=82 I think this is the correct direction for AR/XR development (and why I'm a fan of AR as a concept, but not necessarily of VR): rather than trying to imitate a real experience as closely as possible (and then inevitably nose-diving into the uncanny valley), work with the medium and its inherent limitations and just let it be its own thing. We might discover applications we wouldn't dream of, just like the EMH from Voyager eventually rediscovers himself as a real person.
ehsankia 3y ago
From the video it kinda seemed like to people had to walk quite carefully, and it seemed a little awkward. I can't imagine it working well with a headset on your head in a virtual world not being able to see the real world. Most other VR walking systems, you're strapped in an safe from falling.
- beowulfey 3y ago
  its a tiny setup, too small for normal steps. it may be just fine if it were bigger. and anyway, it probably won't be the final iteration of this. it's just a prototype, a proof-of-concept. people are looking at this like you can go down and buy it today and are writing it off.
  - ehsankia 3y ago
    That's another thing that I found strange. Why make the version you show the public so tiny, especially if you want to show off multiple people on it. I understand it's a prototype, but surely they can scale it up a bit more to a reasonable size before showing it?
    - afavour 3y ago
      You might as well ask “why show it at all”. If you’re a small research outfit you do demos like this to attract potential clients but Disney has more than enough internal applications for this thing to keep them occupied for a long time. My cynical view is that an exec was looking at the share price and thought “ahh crap let’s go film some stuff in R&D to reassure people we’ve got the future in hand”. Didn’t matter they hadn’t scaled the thing up, we’re still all talking about it in the top post of HN.
      - kd5bjo 3y ago
        I believe that these sorts of demos/disclosures are intended to be soft job adverts-- They're cultivating a reputation of being not only an innovative R&D lab, but one that allows researchers to (sometimes) share results without being buried under a pile of NDAs. These are both things that potential new hires will likely care about a great deal.
ambrop7 3y ago
The issue is not motion, the vestibular system cannot measure velocity, only linear acceleration and rotation. The only issue is while you are accelerating in a horizontal direction in VR, but you are not actually acccelerating (remember acceleration is absolute not relative). But I don't expect this will be much of an issue. We don't have a problem speeding up or slowing down on a treadmill.
deleted 3y ago
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lttlrck 3y ago

Perhaps headsets that manipulate the vestibular system via ultrasonic are in our future. (a entirely uneducated conjecture)

modeless 3y ago
Unfortunately physics can't be fooled. Your limbs will still move according to the laws of inertia, and when that motion doesn't match your sense of balance your brain will likely be just as confused. But more importantly, you will immediately fall over if your sense of balance doesn't match reality exactly. Then you'd have to be supported by a harness. Obviously constantly being prevented from falling over by leaning on a harness is not going to feel like the natural movement that people want these systems to achieve.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I don't know, humans are pretty adaptable. I'm imagining spending a day "running" around in VR and then running in IRL and having all of this unexpected momentum causing me to fall over whenever I want to stop.
- Izkata 3y ago
  > Then you'd have to be supported by a harness. Single-person omnidirectional treadmills for VR already exist, and as far as I know all of them use just such a harness: https://www.virtuix.com/ https://www.virtuix.com/
  - modeless 3y ago
    Yes, I know and I've used several types. They remain extremely niche exactly because they don't achieve anything like the natural walking feel people imagine these systems would provide.
    - Animats 3y ago
      Here's a good overview of omnidirectional treadmills by a VR native.[1] There are schemes with rows of endless belts. Ball bearings. Slippery surfaces. Running while going nowhere can be made to work in VR. At least for people who are somewhat athletic. Note, though, that the Disney demo doesn't show any fast motion. Useful advice from the VR native: get on platform, harness up, then put on headgear. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN5RjAW8TV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN5RjAW8TV0
      - riwsky 3y ago
        They were born… in virtual reality?
moffkalast 3y ago
Or perhaps it can be solved the same way as going from teleporting-only nonsense to normal joystick movement was - people just got used to it. We can adapt to just about anything if we do it for long enough.
- derefr 3y ago
  The majority of people did not adapt; and instead are currently assiduously avoiding VR for simulation-sickness reasons until it solves these problems. (My hypothesis is that the minority of people who did manage to "adapt" to movement in VR, are people who have lived for years with inner-ear problems that have essentially made their vestibular sense deaf.)
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Please back up your numbers claim, I'll even take a twitter poll. Especially since we have good evidence that most people adapt to boats.
    - riwsky 3y ago
      Says a man clearly in the pocket of Big Boat.
      - moffkalast 3y ago
        I believe those are called ships.

wolverine876 3y ago

> the vestibular system still won’t think you are going forward Why not? Movement is relative, of course, and I'm moving relative to the floor and relative to what I see. What does the vestibular system detect that isn't happening?

jschlesser 3y ago
Your legs are moving but your head / vestibular system isn’t experiencing acceleration that it expects with those leg movements. Think of it this way, if you are holding a pendulum and take a normal step forward, the pendulum will start to swing. If you take a step forward on the magic floor tiles, your legs move normally but since your body stays in the same place, the pendulum is motionless.
- leereeves 3y ago
  > Your legs are moving but your head / vestibular system isn’t experiencing acceleration that it expects with those leg movements That's also true on a treadmill. I think the bigger problem would be that the world appears to be moving (unlike a treadmill) and you don't feel any acceleration.
  - Ringz 3y ago
    So can I use the Disney system to simulate running on a treadmill?
  - maximus-decimus 3y ago
    But on a threadmill you're going in a straight line and usually at constant speed. A constant speed, you don't have acceleration.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      Exactly, you don't have acceleration, and the world around you isn't moving relative to you, so there's no mismatch. The treadmill shows that performing the walking movements without acceleration doesn't generally cause motion sickness.

RobCodeSlayer 3y ago

You don’t need to fully fool the vestibular system. This could be installed in a large room and move users slowly back to center as they approach the edge

randall 3y ago
I think this is the most likely outcome. Then you get unlimited walking distance and no vestibular drama (or light vestibular drama). I wonder if it makes you puke if you don't quite move as far as you expected... like each step counts for 3/4ths of a step or something... and then you imperceptibly move backward.
- persolb 3y ago
  There is an Oculus game Tea for God that had step scaling as an option. It is rooms ale, but every step you take, it moves you 1.25 steps of distance. I get motion sick easy, but this option doesn’t make me sick.
marssaxman 3y ago
I tried out an experience last night called "SandboxVR" which would be the perfect customer for such a system - you walk into a room equipped with motion-tracker cameras, the staff straps you into VR gear, then you play an immersive video game with your friends. The games are designed so you don't need to move around much, because a flashing red grid appears in your vision if you get too close to the walls; with a moving floor, they could give you a lot more freedom to explore.
Rapzid 3y ago
Or even just a medium room. Let the user accelerate faster and then the system accelerate slower to start centering then.
rollcat 3y ago
The characters in "Star Trek" are well aware of the holodeck's limitations. Data can "see" the walls: https://youtu.be/uWWn0fPbcRs?feature=shared&t=192 https://youtu.be/uWWn0fPbcRs?feature=shared&t=192 B'elanna Torres (and many other characters, mostly Klingon) are notorious for disabling the holodeck safety protocols, because the experience is not "real enough" unless one can actually get hurt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30TXMZ_TSjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30TXMZ_TSjk The awareness of the holodeck experience being fake is so pervasive, that Odo actually believes the real Kira Nerys is a holodeck character: https://youtu.be/8_nfZGFEm5k?feature=shared&t=82 https://youtu.be/8_nfZGFEm5k?feature=shared&t=82 I think this is the correct direction for AR/XR development (and why I'm a fan of AR as a concept, but not necessarily of VR): rather than trying to imitate a real experience as closely as possible (and then inevitably nose-diving into the uncanny valley), work with the medium and its inherent limitations and just let it be its own thing. We might discover applications we wouldn't dream of, just like the EMH from Voyager eventually rediscovers himself as a real person.

ehsankia 3y ago

From the video it kinda seemed like to people had to walk quite carefully, and it seemed a little awkward. I can't imagine it working well with a headset on your head in a virtual world not being able to see the real world. Most other VR walking systems, you're strapped in an safe from falling.

beowulfey 3y ago
its a tiny setup, too small for normal steps. it may be just fine if it were bigger. and anyway, it probably won't be the final iteration of this. it's just a prototype, a proof-of-concept. people are looking at this like you can go down and buy it today and are writing it off.
- ehsankia 3y ago
  That's another thing that I found strange. Why make the version you show the public so tiny, especially if you want to show off multiple people on it. I understand it's a prototype, but surely they can scale it up a bit more to a reasonable size before showing it?
  - afavour 3y ago
    You might as well ask “why show it at all”. If you’re a small research outfit you do demos like this to attract potential clients but Disney has more than enough internal applications for this thing to keep them occupied for a long time. My cynical view is that an exec was looking at the share price and thought “ahh crap let’s go film some stuff in R&D to reassure people we’ve got the future in hand”. Didn’t matter they hadn’t scaled the thing up, we’re still all talking about it in the top post of HN.
    - kd5bjo 3y ago
      I believe that these sorts of demos/disclosures are intended to be soft job adverts-- They're cultivating a reputation of being not only an innovative R&D lab, but one that allows researchers to (sometimes) share results without being buried under a pile of NDAs. These are both things that potential new hires will likely care about a great deal.

ambrop7 3y ago

The issue is not motion, the vestibular system cannot measure velocity, only linear acceleration and rotation. The only issue is while you are accelerating in a horizontal direction in VR, but you are not actually acccelerating (remember acceleration is absolute not relative). But I don't expect this will be much of an issue. We don't have a problem speeding up or slowing down on a treadmill.

deleted 3y ago

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