Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

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Re: FriiSpace VR Input Device - R&D

Post by CyberVillain »

brantlew wrote: PS. Interfacing the game with the XBox 360 emulator is not simple. A device driver must be written to accomplish this since Microsoft does not supply an API for it. Currently I am using a third-party prototype driver, but I will be writing my own driver soon and will open-source it with FreePIE to support gamepad emulation.
Check out the ppJoy plugin, it allready emulates gamepads and joysticks edit: a missed the 360 part only read the gamepad part, don think ppJoy does 360 emu
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Re: FriiSpace VR Input Device - R&D

Post by JanVR »

I was fortunate to meet up with Brantlew yesterday and try his Red Rovr system. It was spectacular. The feeling of physically walking around in Skyrim is the most immersive experience I've had so far. We used the ST1080, but can't wait to try it with the Rift. There is a ton of opportunities for systems like Red Rovr that translate the physical movements of the user to actions in the virtual world. I think such systems, coupled with hardware innovations like the Rift and Kinect, have the potential to propel VR into every day mainstream life. The Red Rovr immersion I experienced last night was impressive and trumps any form of 2D or 3D entertainment.
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Re: FriiSpace VR Input Device - R&D

Post by cybereality »

Nice.
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Re: FriiSpace VR Input Device - R&D

Post by FingerFlinger »

Sick! There's a highschool football field 4 blocks from my house; I can't wait to try out his system.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Okta »

I haven't read the whole thread but do you think this is something that can be used at home? Having a huge area to walk around would be killer but i cant see many practical opportunities to use it. The idea comes to mind to make a high definition version for home use that will track absolute position for 1/1 game position fine movements combined with another tracking method like walking on the spot/ODT to move large distances? That way a small room Rovr and a head tracker can be used to reproduce 10dof tracker?
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by WiredEarp »

it would be cool if there will be some kind of Virtual Reality Theme Parks. with halls full of omnidirectional treadmills where u pay 10 dollars for an hour and big open courts on which u fight against other gamers.
$10 sounds way too cheap. I'd think you'd need to make more than $10/hr out of all the hardware invested in omnidirectional treadmills, etc.

Back in the last boom of VR, it was $5 for 5 minutes!

I think $10 for 10-15 minutes would be ok however... I mean, people pay $15-$20 for 15 minutes of laserstrike.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

@JanVR: Thanks for the positive feedback. Its always fun to meet up and geek out with people that share enthusiasm for VR.

@Okta: My goals were never to make it really big - just to make it as realistic and natural as possible which unfortunately seems to require a minimum amount of space. But yes, I think there are ways to adapt it to home usage as long as you are willing to trade realism for space. I have been exploring stationary usage quite a bit lately, and I'm planning to offer a two-tier system. A smaller version with reduced functionality designed for indoor usage and a full blown version meant for outdoor usage.

Also - one thing that has improved tremendously since my first prototypes is the simplicity of setup. It's bad enough to require players to travel to a large outdoor area, but then to require a complex 30 minute setup and calibration procedure would be too much to ask. The current setup procedure can be accomplished in 5 - 10 minutes and my goal is to make that no more than 5 minutes.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by FingerFlinger »

brantlew was nice enough to lend me his RedRoVR system about a month ago, and I am just now getting around to doing a short write-up. (I'm very lazy...) I was only able to do 2 long sessions because of time and weather, but I think that I got a decent feel for it. The first few minutes in the system take a little getting used to. Forward and backward walking both work very well, but side-stepping/strafing is a bit funky currently. One pretty neat trick is that I could walk forward and look around with my head, as you would walking down a sidewalk, looking at storefronts and whatnot. The user must take an authoritative first step for the software to correctly recognize his/her intent. This is easy to get used to, and after the first step, walking feels completely natural, with a few caveats:

1. Sharp/violent turns can confuse the accelerometer.
2. The user must lead with their hips, which is mostly how one naturally moves anyway, but there is some nuance.

The only time I really noticed these issues was during “moments of immersion”. For instance, a wolf would attack me in Oblivion, and I would frantically try to get away, only to end up confusing the accelerometer with violent, bouncy motion. Because of this, RedRoVR is best with exploration games for right now. Although I know that brantlew is continuing work on his sensor fusion algorithms.

The quality of the redirection is very dependent on the size of the play-boundaries. I used an American football field and a square-shaped field about 60 meters on a side. Both of these worked well, and I think that the redirection would be too aggressive in a smaller area. At the same time, a much larger area would be even better. As it was, the redirection was still slightly noticeable, and I approached the boundaries maybe once every 10-12 minutes. I think that much of this can be remedied with levels designed specifically around this technology, and this is something I want to experiment with once I have a Rift.

I was somewhat limited by my setup. I used my netbook as a backtop and I was also borrowing brantlew's Vuzix Wrap 920. Despite framerate issues and a low FOV, I had a good experience; the potential is certainly there.

I saw just an early prototype, so obviously it was not in a state ready for Joe-gamer. Despite that, I think that the RedRoVR portion of the setup was fairly painless; it was mostly the general hassle of a backtop that I had an issue with. And using an HMD with an integrated headtracker should simplify that further.

A big limitation is software that is not designed with considerations for VR. One of the big issues is dealing with WASD controls. brantlew's system can detect motion over 360 degrees on the ground, but is artificially limited to only 4 directions. Similarly, games typically only have two movement speeds, walk and run. Being able to use true motion vectors will help quite a bit, I think. Something else that never occurred to me before actually experiencing it is the importance of sound effects. RedRoVR can detect the user's footfalls, and could communicate that information to the game engine, thus synching the sound effect with the user's action. Obviously, this isn't a feature that any games support yet, but it is important.

One last curiosity that I'll mention is that, once I got settled and was freely walking around, I had the sensation of not physically moving anywhere, as if I was walking on a treadmill. I suspect that this is due to the HMD's low FOV. My biggest frame of reference was the screen hanging in front of my face.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

Thanks Finger. I still feel bad that you were saddled with the Vuzix for this demo. It really dampens the effect.

I've had a dozen friends and forum members try out the system so far and all the impressions have been very informative and valuable to me. Generally the response has been positive. Even guys that have used professional VR systems have commented that the freedom of unconstrained movement feels like something "new" and adds an additional layer of immersion that they had not experienced before. So it works great as a VR demonstration. But I am also acutely aware that the system is not ready for active gameplay yet. The motion detection is simply not robust and accurate enough. Consequently I think I need to delay/suspend any plans for release until I can work through another round or two of basic R&D.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by FingerFlinger »

I think it's definitely worth having as mature a product as possible before releasing it. And a purpose-built demo would push it to the next level.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Flassan »

I have also been lucky enough to try Red Rover on the WizDish and I have to say that I'm completely blown away by it.
The word that keeps coming into my mind to describe it is 'uncanny'. I find it hard to understand how it works that well.
It manages to sense walking whether you just slide your feet a few inches or take confident strides, so you can decide yourself how much energy to expend.
The overall sensation of standing and looking around or walking along and turning your head to see things pass is extraordinary.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by WiredEarp »

I have also been lucky enough to try Red Rover on the WizDish
I thought the whole point of Red RoVR is that its for walking around large areas. How can it work with a Wizdish?
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

I have a "walking-in-place" version that uses inertial sensors for motion and works just as well with the Wizdish. The stationary version is more restrictive and less immersive than the free-walking version but it still works to a degree and can provide a reasonable experience in an indoor environment. Unfortunately Flassan is using a Vuzix which suffers from low FOV and head tracker latency. The level of immersion doubles with the use of an ST1080 + Sparkfun tracker, and I hope that the Rift will then double the effectiveness yet again.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Okta »

Im glad you have merged both systems with the stationary tracking option for home use. I was banging my head trying to come up with a simple cheap system for walking on the spot movement when the rift arrives but i don't want to re-invent the wheel if there are other (better) methods out there.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

95% of my effort goes into development of the free-walking system. I was only going to throw the stationary feature in there because it's such a simple add-on, but if lots of people are interested in the stationary version I could consider releasing that individually.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by JanVR »

To Brantlew's point, I was able to test Red Rovr in an open space with a ST1080 + Sparkfun tracker, which created an impressive sense of immersion, better than with Vuzix glasses. That being said, the stationairy version with Vuzix glasses works well too, allowing you to walk forward while looking sideways - impressive. Solutions like these are great to translate the user's movements to movements in the virtual world, which adds an additional layer of immersion. I have also been experimenting a lot with the Microsoft Kinect (with thanks to Flassan), which might be even slightly more accurate, reacting to the exact movements of the user's feet. Also allows for recognition of jumping, crouching, arm movements to reload, etc.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Flassan »

Two things Finger said intrigued me.
"I had the sensation of not physically moving anywhere". I was expecting that to be free-walking's key advantage.
"The user must take an authoritative first step for the software to correctly recognize his/her intent". That wasn't my experience so is the gentle uniform 'WizDish walk' delivering less ambiguous raw motion data?
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

To be fair, Finger used a stable, older(June) release which has a low sensitivity.

The Wizdish model that Flassan uses was quickly developed using less than 5 minutes worth of recorded data so it is probably tuned very badly. Very sensitive but also with a high false positive rate. However, Wizdish locomotion is much less variable than natural motion and so can more easily be tuned to a higher sensitivity.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by FingerFlinger »

I really think that the sensation of not moving was due to using a low FOV headset; I think it was separate from Brant's technology.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Okta »

Can you tell us anything about your 'home' version for walking on the spot as refereed to in my Walking thread? What will Rovr capabilities/limitations be? What components are required? Will you be selling this system as a complete system or just the software?
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by EdZ »

To alleviate the 'walking on the spot' effect (assuming the RIFT's FoV doesn't do so on it's own), a small fan could be added to blow air towards your face when moving forward? It sounds gimmickey, but I just did a quick test of walking around at a normal pace with my eyes closed and face covered/uncovered, and there is a quite noticeable difference. I suppose if you wanted to go all-out you could use several fans in an array to determine the 'wind' direction more accurately, as well as simulate virtual wind.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Okta »

EdZ wrote:To alleviate the 'walking on the spot' effect (assuming the RIFT's FoV doesn't do so on it's own), a small fan could be added to blow air towards your face when moving forward? It sounds gimmickey, but I just did a quick test of walking around at a normal pace with my eyes closed and face covered/uncovered, and there is a quite noticeable difference. I suppose if you wanted to go all-out you could use several fans in an array to determine the 'wind' direction more accurately, as well as simulate virtual wind.
Dude fans are 'cool' :lol: Great idea, i would hope future HMD's have this feature option. Perhaps a little indulgent for my simple hopes at the moment though.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

Okta wrote:Can you tell us anything about your 'home' version for walking on the spot as refereed to in my Walking thread? What will Rovr capabilities/limitations be? What components are required? Will you be selling this system as a complete system or just the software?

For a baseline, I would expect forward walk/run detection with independent head direction (so you could walk sideways while looking forward to effectively strafe). Also - side dodging and ducking. Maybe jumping - although I don't think jumping with a worn computer is a good idea. I think a jump button is better. I also have an idea for stationary backwards walking, but I am not sure that I can achieve the accuracy and robustness necessary for that feature. Backwards walk detection is probably easier with the Wizdish, and I have an experimental version of that in use but the performance sucks right now. If backwards walking cannot be achieved then I think a button to toggle backward/forward motion is the next best thing.

I don't have a release date in mind however. There are some major factors in play right now that may change this entire project.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by FingerFlinger »

Oh, major factors sounds like a good thing!
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL3J1EnnNOg

It's been three months since I worked on this project. I got side-tracked with some related research, and just recently I accepted a job at Oculus (thanks again Palmer), so I'm going to be shutting down this project indefinitely to concentrate on my new job.

I'm not going to open source it or anything, but I have decided to release some previously secret details of Red Rovr and also release some video of it in action. Originally the concept was to use optical tracking. My small experiments were working fine, but I was starting to run into some scaling problems at the sizes that I expected for redirected walking, so early last year I secretly switched to a GPS/inertial system. In short - a smart phone. That's right. Red Rovr is essentially just a phone app.

The video that I released last year was a version 0.1 system that worked completely off of GPS which was the reason for the 2 second latency. The silly ball on my head in those videos is just empty plastic and not used for anything. Using GPS enabled me to scale the system to any size I wanted and focus on the implementation for redirected walking instead of optical scaling. It worked so well that I just decided to continue down that path with the addition of inertial motion detection. The bulk of my research since that time has been refining the motion detection algorithms. The image below shows the current Red Rovr 0.2 hardware - an iPhone and a Sparkfun tracker.
tn_RedRovrApp.JPG
The new video shows version 0.2 in action. I think it works surprisingly well - especially considering that I am only using a WASD and mouse emulation interface. The latency on this system is about 300 - 400 milliseconds which doesn't feel too bad for walking. My version 0.3 is half-way completed and reduces that down to about 150 - 250 milliseconds and adds a lot more directions and actions, but it's going to be shelved for now.

I still strongly believe that free walking is the best solution to the motion problem, and I hope this video gives you guys an impression of how immersive it is. In my opinion the act of physically moving through the environment adds as much immersion as wide FOV visuals do. I'm only using the ST1080 now, but I've had experiences where I walk up to a 20 foot drop and my stomach tightens and my body just refuses to step forward - its very surreal how involved you can become after doing this for 10 minutes. And the strangest experience to me and to everyone that has tried this is the sensation of teleportation. You put the glasses on, run around, and when you take them off you are completely disorientated since you are not where you started. I understand that ODT devices have practical uses but they all have some serious limitations with regards to movement and realism. If your goal is maximum immersion, then I believe free walking is the only way to achieve that. And as a bonus - it's also the cheapest method :)

I want to continue this research at some time in the future and my hope is that by surrounding myself full-time with VR technology and experts, I can develop a much better implementation.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by JohnnyGrant »

Congratulations on the new job! I'm excited for you! I've been following your projects for months now, and think you totally deserve it! :) The freewalking looks so liberating, i just imagine how cool of an experience it would be using red rovr with the rift :)
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Okta »

Brent that new video is awesome. A real breakthrough. And congrats on the job at Oculus but... does this mean the brilliant new indi innovation that is Red Rovr has been killed by Oculus corporation? The Irony....j/k
Can you tell us what you will be doing at Oculus? Is it related to Rovr?
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by jf031 »

brantlew wrote:... I got side-tracked with some related research, and just recently I accepted a job at Oculus (thanks again Palmer), so I'm going to be shutting down this project indefinitely to concentrate on my new job...
I'm subscribed to you on YouTube, and I saw this video before this post. As I saw the video, I thought "Oculus really needs to hire this guy!"

Congrats!
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by cybereality »

Awesome video, and congrats on the new job!

Just want to say that I was able to get a demo of the Red Rovr system and it was one of the most immersive experiences I've ever had. Actually walking and having your character walk in game I think is the key to fully immersive VR. Even with the moderate FOV of the ST1080, I was fully immersed. I can only imagine how cool this would be with the Rift.

Obviously not everyone has a football field in their back-yard, so there is still a place for ODTs or other locomotion devices. But I think that most people don't realize how much this adds to the experience.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by MSat »

Congrats on the new job, brantlew! I'll be looking forward to the awesomeness you guys come up with! 8-)
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by PatimPatam »

Wow! Congratulations brantlew, i'm officially jealous!
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by geekmaster »

Getting paid to work on a project you would do for free in your spare time is always a good thing. Congrats brantlew!
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

Thanks guys. I feel very lucky (no pun). You know the old saying about being in the right place at the right time...

It's bittersweet though because I will miss being as involved in the chatter around here and being able to go off on wild experiments. And half the fun of the Rift is just speculating about it ( but now I already know all the secrets ;) )
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Apotheosis »

Bittersweet indeed, this was the most exciting project I was following on here. I hope red rovr will live on in some form or another at occulus. Congratulations on the new job, it's exciting to be on the bleeding edge of something new. As Dave said. "something wonderful is about to happen"
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by BillRoeske »

Hey Brant,

Congratulations! The video looks great and I think we all know that Oculus scored pretty well. Like everyone, I'm a little sad to see the project put on official hiatus, but I'm sure that cool things on are the horizon. It's too bad that I didn't ever have a chance to pop over and try it!

Anyway, congrats again! Waking up in the morning to work on your passion is a great feeling, believe me. The only weird part is being on the weekend and looking forward to the work week starting. ;)
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Chriky »

Whhaaaaa you work for Oculus now? That's awesome! :lol: :lol:
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by Flassan »

Thank you for sharing the video. You must have been very pleased with it and its a very useful reference.
I particularly liked the boundary enforcement. Did you consider carrying a metal detector so no one would ask what you were doing? :D
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by WiredEarp »

The video looks great, congrats on scoring a role @ Oculus brantlew!
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by geekmaster »

Flassan wrote:Thank you for sharing the video..... Did you consider carrying a metal detector so no one would ask what you were doing? :D
Carrying a game controller that may appear from a distance as a possible weapon (as seen in the video) may be a problem if you are wearing headphones, and you cannot see the police crouching behind their squad cars, and you cannot hear them telling you to "drop your weapon". Even toy weapons can cause problems on school property (such as a local football field). Getting your precious and delicate VR gear riddled with bullet holes would suck (especially while wearing it), but a youtube video of the incident would certainly go viral and bring fame (or infamy). Survival is optional.
:woot
It might help to paint your controllers blaze orange, but I wouldn't want to bet my personal safety on it...

However, even so, I can't wait to experience what I saw in that demo video. Perhaps a smaller field could be used with the assistance of GVS for tighter directed walking. There is research suggesting that a basketball court is big enough to support multiple players, with interplayer collision avoidance via coordinated directed walking choreography algorithms. And an indoor playing field would be less likely to draw unwanted or potentially dangerous attention from uninformed concerned citizens or armed authorities.
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Re: Red Rovr Motion System (formerly Friispace)

Post by brantlew »

geekmaster wrote: Perhaps a smaller field could be used with the assistance of GVS for tighter directed walking. There is research suggesting that a basketball court is big enough to support multiple players, with interplayer collision avoidance via coordinated directed walking choreography algorithms.
You can tighten the radius up a bit, but you will start noticing the turn more. I can imagine some people would just tolerate the turn as a necessary compromise to fit within a small space but it does break the immersion a bit. Different content can make a difference though. Something like Skyrim just begs for long extended walking sequences so it would be difficult to do in a basketball court without you feeling like a pinball, but I can imagine slower paced indoor environments working pretty well in a small area. However, GPS has the inverse problem of optical - it doesn't work very well for small spaces. A basketball court is just about the minimum size you can go, and only if your GPS signal is rock solid.

On a related note: my father owns a small ranch, and I was able to test Red Rovr once on about a 4 acre region. Other than the weeds and cow turds - it was a pretty cool experience never feeling a turn and never hitting a boundary.

PS. Blind walking is dangerous enough on a featureless field. Adding other blind people to the mix sounds like a disaster waiting to happen :lol:
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