Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

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SouthernCross
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Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by SouthernCross »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL_8Ugp9zI4

Of all the control methods that appeal to me most for the Oculus Rift is the 80s style glove interface.

Sounds simple enough, whack on some powered gloves and you have virtual hands to match your HMD.

Aside from the numerous technical hurdles, I see a lot of talk about the problem of manipulating virtual objects with your physical hands because you cannot touch them.

My idea, probably not too original is simple.

In VR you have could have two "bodies" that normally move and appear as one more or less identically until you try to manipulate a virtual object...

Image

This picture is relevant because it illustrates the concept of an ethereal, non-physical soul that drives a physical body.

Simply, the two remain one in VR until you try to say pick up a box.

Image

You reach out in real life and in virtual reality, your virtual hands hit the sides of the box and stop at it's physical bounds but as your real hands begin to move through it, you see your "physical/soul hands/red" separate from your "vr hands/green" and move through the virtual box like a ghost. In order to pick it up, you could press the palm of either virtual hand up against a flat side of a box, if your "physical/soul hands/red" clip through it, you will know and be able to adjust, you could even use translate the motion of your "physical/soul hands/red" clipping through an object being grasped by "vr hands/green" as force.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by 2EyeGuy »

I think that's probably the best way to do it. I don't know how important it would be to show your soul hands or not. I never considered the option of actually rendering them, but it does make sense.

Another way is to treat your whole body as a rigid body (resisting the urge for a joke), and push your whole body back, so that all your proprioceptive senses still match and your avatar's pose stays locked to your pose. I think that's what CAVE Quake does, although it does it in a VR CAVE (like a holodeck, only real) so you can physically walk through pillars that you see in the middle of the CAVE, unless it creates the effect of pushing you back (by actually pushing the virtual world away from you).
you could even use translate the motion of your "physical/soul hands/red" clipping through an object being grasped by "vr hands/green" as force.
I tried that before, but I had problems with small objects getting accidentally flung across the room at high speed. It's still probably a good idea to have something like that, but it's more tricky than it first appears.

You're on to some great ideas, and I'd love to see this sort of thing working, but I personally had problems implementing it.
SouthernCross
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by SouthernCross »

2EyeGuy wrote:I think that's probably the best way to do it. I don't know how important it would be to show your soul hands or not. I never considered the option of actually rendering them, but it does make sense.
You wouldn't have to render them except for when you are interacting with an object, you could even give it a cool blue outline effect so it looks like your soul is trying to force your virtual body to do something it can't.
2EyeGuy wrote:Another way is to treat your whole body as a rigid body (resisting the urge for a joke), and push your whole body back, so that all your proprioceptive senses still match and your avatar's pose stays locked to your pose. I think that's what CAVE Quake does, although it does it in a VR CAVE (like a holodeck, only real) so you can physically walk through pillars that you see in the middle of the CAVE, unless it creates the effect of pushing you back (by actually pushing the virtual world away from you).
That makes plenty of sense to me, maybe have a few different interaction methods/styles that are interchangeable on the fly would help cover each styles flaws?
2EyeGuy wrote:You're on to some great ideas, and I'd love to see this sort of thing working, but I personally had problems implementing it.
I have no programming skills at all, I just wanted to give people who are good at programming another point of view from a user perspective I guess.

Virtual reality is often portrayed as another layer of "reality" so I thought treating the real body like an ethereal soul in virtual reality would make sense for when it comes to stuff like interacting with virtual objects.

Just this stuff alone makes me think of a hilarious idea for a VR game with this sort of interface; Possession.

Your "soul body" takes over some hapless VR sim's "virtual body", then you have to accomplish some ridiculous life goal you missed out on due to your death. As long as you don't let your "soul body" get too out of sync with the VR sim's virtual body you retain control, otherwise you risk bouncing your little marionette around so much you become unstuck and have to find a new "body."
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by Namielus »

Did someone delete my post? I posted about Novint XIO, and something like that up to the shoulder would give the feedback needed.
Both stopping your hands and giving the feeling of weight while liftin in addition to feeling the surface texture.

I don't understand where the post ended up.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by SouthernCross »

Namielus wrote:Did someone delete my post? I posted about Novint XIO, and something like that up to the shoulder would give the feedback needed.
Both stopping your hands and giving the feeling of weight while liftin in addition to feeling the surface texture.

I don't understand where the post ended up.
I've been lurking, never saw it. Repost.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by Namielus »

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV3j2Yxv7jY[/youtube]



Here you can see it is mounted on his upper/lower arm plus wrist/hand, and it gives feedback to those limbs. But if you imagine an additional part on the shoulder it could give full feedback to the entire arm.
There are motors in all axis that can push your arm back, vibrate etc, the novint falcon is a smaller desktop device but it really make you feel different surfaces like metal , glass, wood, you can FEEL the difference.

You can also bump into a box with your hands etc.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by SouthernCross »

Namielus wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV3j2Yxv7jY[/youtube]



Here you can see it is mounted on his upper/lower arm plus wrist/hand, and it gives feedback to those limbs. But if you imagine an additional part on the shoulder it could give full feedback to the entire arm.
There are motors in all axis that can push your arm back, vibrate etc, the novint falcon is a smaller desktop device but it really make you feel different surfaces like metal , glass, wood, you can FEEL the difference.

You can also bump into a box with your hands etc.
Everything I thought of and suggested was based on a lack of feedback.

I like the idea of devices like the one you posted but I think they might be out of my price range for awhile, lol.

>.>

Edit: I'd probably need a whole room dedicated to something like that if I were to use it but a game of virtual pool with friends overseas would be sweet.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by Namielus »

I think its supposed to be around 300 dollars
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by cybereality »

I think showing your real hand position superimposed on the screen is an interesting idea. It should only come up after some threshold has been met, otherwise you would always be seeing double ghost hands and that could be weird. But it would certainly help when things got out of sync. Maybe after some large distance the simulation would pause and the user would be forced to "sync" back up with the virtual hands.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by Owen »

This sounds like it would do more harm than good for the immersion. You know where your hands are at all times without seeing them through muscle proprioception. I think its enough to just have your virtual hands try to move toward your real hands to minimize the discrepancy.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by SouthernCross »

cybereality wrote:I think showing your real hand position superimposed on the screen is an interesting idea. It should only come up after some threshold has been met, otherwise you would always be seeing double ghost hands and that could be weird. But it would certainly help when things got out of sync. Maybe after some large distance the simulation would pause the the user would be forced to "sync" back up with the virtual hands.
You explained it as I imagined it, the "real hands" would only separate from the "virtual hands" if you hit a physical barrier and kept moving.
Owen wrote:This sounds like it would do more harm than good for the immersion. You know where your hands are at all times without seeing them through muscle proprioception. I think its enough to just have your virtual hands try to move toward your real hands to minimize the discrepancy.
I figured that would work most of the time but sometimes it might be useful to know where both sets of "hands" are at once.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by android78 »

One thought. I wonder if it would be possible to have electrodes attached to the main musclesin your arms and shoulders, that would activate the opposite muscle to what you are using, to prevent you from passing your had through in-simulation objects? something like 3 in shoulders, two in upper arms, and two in your lower arm should be enough.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by Omarzuqo »

I think a data glove with an exoskeleton made with today's technology can be cheap and good enough for a VR videogame.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2gk5GT-kEo[/youtube]
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You can also Greenlight other Rift games.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by SouthernCross »

android78 wrote:One thought. I wonder if it would be possible to have electrodes attached to the main musclesin your arms and shoulders, that would activate the opposite muscle to what you are using, to prevent you from passing your had through in-simulation objects? something like 3 in shoulders, two in upper arms, and two in your lower arm should be enough.
...sounds like some poop I did when I "borrowed" my mother's electrical ab-building machine.

I used to hook them up to different muscles on my right arm to remote control it...

Although it didn't work very well, it did work and it was funny as hell.

You would not believe how uncomfortable that is though.
Omarzuqo wrote:I think a data glove with an exoskeleton made with today's technology can be cheap and good enough for a VR videogame.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2gk5GT-kEo[/youtube]
Yeah, that would work well. I was just offering a cheap, software only solution to the lack of feedback.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by Additives »

SouthernCross wrote:Just this stuff alone makes me think of a hilarious idea for a VR game with this sort of interface; Possession.

Your "soul body" takes over some hapless VR sim's "virtual body", then you have to accomplish some ridiculous life goal you missed out on due to your death. As long as you don't let your "soul body" get too out of sync with the VR sim's virtual body you retain control, otherwise you risk bouncing your little marionette around so much you become unstuck and have to find a new "body."

Sounds fun, I'm in.

PS, for anyone who will try and code this, it might help to think of the VR arm as a casing that floats an infinitely small distance from the surface of the real arm, and just tries to constantly get out of the way of the 'pressure' of the real arm moving against it. This is how physical mechanical exoskeleton are starting be programmed, and it seems to be working well.
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Re: Problem of tactile feedback(virtual objects/real hands)

Post by Zaptruder »

Yes, this is the same idea I've been pimping on this forum for the better part of a month.

You can also add audio cues to strengthen the feedback, and provide feedback when you're not looking at the limb.

It would definetly help - proprioception isn't an exact sort of sensory system (i.e. there's no dead reckoning to it) - vision overrides proprioception.

At the very least, it would help to lessen the disjunct between proprioception and vision - i.e. when you touch the side of a box, your hand doesn't keep traveling through the box.

This kind of system is really the bare minimum of what we'll need for complex hand and gesture based input. A niche market for peripherals and accessories such as the Novint Xio and tactile feedback gloves, roller balls, and even in the future exoskeleton haptic feedback suits/gloves will be a thing... but it'll largely be niche until an entire generation (or two) grows up with VR technology and VR content.
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