Researchers Fight VR Focus-Switching Headaches 46
An anonymous reader writes: One of the biggest problems virtual reality headsets have yet to overcome is the headaches they cause in a subset of users. For a lot of users, this is caused by needing to rapidly switch your focus between objects that are (virtually) near and far away. "Trying to focus on 'far away' objects on that stereoscopic screen means keeping a fixed focal distance but changing the 'vergence' angle of your eyes—in essence, going a little cross-eyed for a moment." Fortunately, researchers at Stanford have figured out a partial solution.
They "created a prototype headset (PDF) that includes a translucent LCD panel sitting about 1cm in front of a standard, opaque LCD. With some GPU pre-processing, this 'light field stereoscope' headset can display nearby objects on the front LCD and farther-away objects on the rear, creating what the researchers call a '4D' image that layers a basic virtual light field on top of the usual stereoscopic left/right eye 3D separation." This provides an easy, low-tech way to let the eyes focus more easily, and alleviate the strain that causes headaches.
They "created a prototype headset (PDF) that includes a translucent LCD panel sitting about 1cm in front of a standard, opaque LCD. With some GPU pre-processing, this 'light field stereoscope' headset can display nearby objects on the front LCD and farther-away objects on the rear, creating what the researchers call a '4D' image that layers a basic virtual light field on top of the usual stereoscopic left/right eye 3D separation." This provides an easy, low-tech way to let the eyes focus more easily, and alleviate the strain that causes headaches.
Go Stanford (Score:2)
Yeah science, bitch!
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Either way, eating someone else's tossed biscuits doesn't sound all that appealing.
* well, not yet, anyhow.
Eye tracking (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Eye tracking (Score:4, Funny)
I'm really looking forward to horror games that can use eye tracking. Keep something just on the edge of your vision, or hide things almost-not-quite-entirely in your blind spot.
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Yeah, this seems to beg for a more elegant solution, as it sounds like you'll never be able to build enough depth planes to really fix the problem. Cameras looking back at your eyes should theoretically be able to pinpoint where you're currently looking, and if precise enough, maybe even the depth to which you're focusing. This is already being researched with software used for people to manipulate a computer with only their eyes. The software can then feed this information back to the application to adj
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It seems the long-term solution will involve eye tracking so that the device can "focus" with you.
I was thinking that would be ideal, however there is another issue to overcome with that solution, the Inter Pupillary Distance (IPD) would have to change with your focus.
We have two IPDs - near and far. With current headsets you set the IPD to your far (or relaxed) IPD measurement. If your IPD is off (your pupils aren't in the center of focus of the lenses) then the image will appear blurry. So some sort of modification will have to be made to the optics or the IPD adjustment will have to be motorized
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Actually I think the long term solution looks to be holography. It is really quite phenomenal if you look into the physics of it, and it sounds like MagicLeap is making real progress in bringing something to market.
That being said, it is only a theory that the focus issue is what is causing the nausea. It may be something else, or a combination of factors, in which case the long term solution is likely to be a drug that inhibits whatever mechanism causes the sickness.
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A better solution is that instead of two screens, a projector projects a true light field toward your eyes. A virtual light field with only two focus levels is not really the first step on the way there.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~gord... [mit.edu]
4d = 3d, right? (Score:3)
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really they're almost up to 2.5
Re:4d = 3d, right? (Score:4, Informative)
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It's more like "Dual 2D".
Yeah but marketing, we're up to 6D.
Lightfields capture 4D to observe 3D (Score:2)
The trick lies in the fact that the picture is a projection, not the scene. There do exist 3D displays, which are volumetric, but a lightfield display doesn't replicate the objects, only the light passing through the screen. This is just like a hologram (although digital lightfield processing is far from the fidelity of chemical holography). The more commonly advertised "3D" screens approximate the effect for two points that represent your eyes, which breaks down in several ways: The points may be misplaced
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It really is 4D in a sense that a lightfield "pixel" has 4 coordinates : your regular x,y coordinates like in a traditional image plus two other coordinates that define the angle from where the light is coming. The resulting data fits in a 4-dimentional array.
And even if the underlying world is just 3D, the lightfield image is still 4D.
But what about motion sickness (Score:2)
Ok, they got a handle on the headaches. Now what about the horrible, horrible motion sickness?
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Dramamine.
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I have a solution to the motion sickness problem. I am designing a totally immersive VR experience that allows you to feel what it is like to be paralyzed from head to toe. No matter how much you try to move your head around, the images presented to your eyes remains the same. As a bonus, this virtual reality experience only requires a Pentium and a VGA card, so you can experience it on a shoe string budget. And did I say, no motion sickness? It's gonna be the killer app for VR, I guarantee it!
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How big is this subset of user with headaches? (Score:1)
If only a small subset of users have this problems, then it's not really a big problem for VR headsets.
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It will be once it's a 30 second clip on the news. Tune in at 11.
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The best games will be those where the person is seated virtually and in real life - racing cars, space & flight sims etc. Even those may suffer unless they figure out how to do huds and so on that minimize eye strain as people switch from looking at infinity to a p
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I suffer from headaches when watching 3D movies in cinema. My wife has nausea. My brother-in-law has headaches. Two of my three close friends get headaches. The third tested a VR in a store and embarrassed himself by performing an otherwise awesome explosive vomiting action. Would have looked great in a fart joke comedy movie.
Yes, it's all anecdotal evidence, yet I highly doubt the "small subset" thingie.
Or just get old. (Score:2)
Funny thing -- along about age 40 or so, that vergence-focus mismatch goes away all on its own, as your eye loses the ability to change focus. Not that there are that many advantages to aging, but this is definitely one.
I once got my eyes stuck cross-eyed. (Score:3)
going a little cross-eyed for a moment
Funny story involving close focusing and crossed eyes - So a couple years ago I watched about an hour or two worth of Family Guy from Netflix on my phone. I held the phone less than a foot away from my face while doing this, without any breaks. You know how they say don't cross your eyes for too long or they'll get stuck that way? Yeah... That actually happens. I had to walk around with one eye closed for the rest of the day (it didn't matter which one, I just couldn't do both or one would go all wonky). When I woke up the next morning I was fine again.
Somebody already invented that ... (Score:2)
... and even patented it.
Not easy or low-tech at all! (Score:2)
This provides an easy, low-tech way to let the eyes focus more easily, and alleviate the strain that causes headaches.
So it doubles the number of LCD panels, introduces one that is a different kind from the other, and changes the rendering process. How is that easy and low-tech? (Maybe the software just looks at the Z buffer to distinguish near and far?) Nice job though. This seems like a great trick and might just be the start of something even better.
Now how about the real headache causer... (Score:2)
Latency. VR headsets are going to cause motion sickness and headaches until their response time is as transparent to the user as the average PC game.
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Two layers or multiple layers? (Score:2)
It's unclear to me whether the two LCDs just give the user two individual planes to focus on, or whether through some computational wizardry two is enough to generate multiple virtual planes. If it is the latter, I am very impressed and am curious whether this technology could be applied to TVs or other devices.