Meant to be Seen

Imagine a VR game where you are blind.
This does not render something like the rift useless- it can still serve as a blindfold, but more importantly provide head tracking for binaural audio.
You would also want a really good haptic feedback system, as you will be feeling around a lot. Touch would be key.
One use for such a VR game would be testing the systems for these other senses. You can determine how convincing they are without the visual suggestion to go with them.
It could serve as a way to allow blind people to participate in VR. If the game never assumes you can see, being blind is not a hindrance, and may be an advantage as you are used to dealing with it.
It would need to be a rather different experience than we are used to, as those experiences have been developed over the decades with sight in mind. What would such an experience look like?
There are some tasks that come to mind. The first is blind navigation. I once was part of a team building exercise where we went to a fairly large play structure, blindfolded half the people, and had them climb it while getting directions from a partner. The experience of navigating and climbing a fairly complex structure while blind was interesting. For a game, it could be a race to see who can get to the end fastest. The VR experience has the advantage of safety, you can't actually fall off of it and hurt yourself. this can be done with and without verbal instructions. One variant of the game could involve a sighted partner directing their blind companion, as a team exercise.
Another task could be simulated echolocation. This would require a very precise sound simulation, but there are documented cases of people who have learned how to echolocate. Even more interesting is if it allows you to translate the skill into RL.
You could also have tasks involving the manipulation of small objects. For instance, assembling a puzzle based on feel.
You could have a game similar to Marco Polo, where you try to track down other people based on sound. Or as an inversion, try to escape a monster you can only hear. Or have an audible object, which two teams try to capture.

It's an interesting concept. Perhaps the GPU will have enough resources freed up to do an accurate sound simulation in a gameworld (it would be an extremely parallel process which makes it great for the GPU).

A critical feature is that you need to be able to shout into your headphone mic, and have it echo realistically depending on the space.

Stuff like this oughta make it fun:
[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQt1jtDBNK4[/youtube-hd]

I always find that anything that tries to make "more real" sounds just comes out sounding like its in a tile bathroom most the time.

I tried some sound mazes in College since I had access to a motion capture lab but not an HMD. The results worked but people needed a few tries to figure it out.
This was a KB and mouse test of the program. I didn't record video of it in the mocap lab since I presented the project in the room and didn't think about it at the time X.x silly me
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se4ahMwGr1w[/youtube]

Wish I spent more time on the project there just wasn't enough time in the last year to do everything I wanted to do.

Should have a game where you need to rely on echo-location. You ping and either have to figure it out with zero visuals, or you ping and get extremely faint visuals showing you the sound bouncing off objects.

Perhaps as you accomplish challenges you get to see more and more, or start the other way around where you can see, and then lose sight over time.

I think you are talking about convolution from impulse response. I was going to write a more extensive post about it from the perspective of further VR immersion but decided I needed more 'stuff' for a new topic. But this one will do. =)



http://factorial.hu/plugins/lv2/ir

This software lets you recreate the space recorded in the echoes of an audio impulse, such a for example the sound of rolling thunder. Lightning is the Impulse, thunder is the Response. Usually for room correction you would play a rising sine wave sweep, record it and then put it though a deconvolver in order to create an IR, but you can achieve the same result with artillery, a starter pistol, popping a balloon, clapping your hands... Pick one according to the size of the room.

If you can make software the continuously maps a 3D environment to IR you can have VR for the blind. And of course everyone else too. I'll post some more thought about this soon. gtg

Maybe anyone can adapt to a game this great technology for blind users in a HMD:
http://www.eye2021.com/
"EYE21 is a device which represents the environment by a set of acoustic sounds. Its main operation is to detect all obstacles around the user, using stereovision.

Before using the device as a navigation tool, the user must be trained on EYE21 laboratories with some exercises, to feel the location of objects using acoustic sounds through a headset. At the same time, the user will learn to locate those sounds and interpret them, as if they were real obstacles, learning to avoid them and creating its own navigation map.

Once the object appears in front of the user, the system sends an acoustic sound to him with its position. An example could be an object in 2 meters distant and 15 grades to the left. In this case, the system will play an acoustic event in position 2 meters distant and 15 grades to the left. However, if there is nothing in his area, the device will remain in silence. With these data the user will have the following information: the road is free and there is no object around."