Category / VR

by dshah1120

My Experience Working Out At-Home During the Global COVID-19 Outbreak

At first glance, this post might sound pedantic, for comprehensive info on the Corona Virus visit the WHO Q&As or CDC. This post is in regard to immunological fitness and how the virus is spread and my personal method of using virtual reality as an additional form of exercise:

The disease can spread from person to person through small droplets from
 the nose or mouth which are spread when a person with COVID-19 coughs or 
exhales. These droplets land on objects and surfaces around the person. 
Other people then catch COVID-19 by touching these objects or surfaces, 
then touching their eyes, nose or mouth


source: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses

For the above reason, gyms and other typically crowded workout facilities are out. However, exercise is still a key part of staying healthy, more on this further down. I’ve been using an at-home workout strategy using virtual reality for over two weeks and I’d like to share why this is working for me.

TLDR

If you own a VR headset; some titles that could be used for cardio are:

- Beat Saber
- Box VR
- OhShape
- Thrill of the Fight
- Synth Riders
- Creed: Rise to Glory
- Until You Fall

Active titles that can be modified to be more of a workout:

- Rec Room
- RacketNX
- Pistol Whip
- Lone Echo
- Superhot VR

For general standing activity to afford you some low intensity movement:

- Racket Fury
- Sports Scramble
- VRChat

Virtual reality is a little known option for folks as it relates to fitness, but now we know at my company YUR that thousands of people use VR games daily to workout in a fun and efficient way. The big difference is that while wearing a VR headset you are completely immersed in playing the role of a player in a game. It’s important to note that this trend towards immersive fitness is visible with Peloton, Les Mills, and other fitness names.

YUR monthly view

My month so far has been characterized by workouts between 250 kcals and 750 kcals as you can see, every day (except for March 4th). I’ll tend to use games such as Box VR or Beat Saber, and with YUR the cool part about this is any game can be played and tracked which allows for constant novelty the moment you feel bored of your current exercise regime. This doubles as a benefit if you are feeling cooped up at home.

… with YUR any game can be played and tracked which allows for constant novelty the moment you feel bored of your current exercise regime

I would characterize the kind of workouts I do in VR as plyometric, and explosive in nature similar to a HIIT workout. However, this is up to your personal preference.

As a perennial gym-goer, I have to point out here what VR workouts are not providing me and others. Hypertrophic or strength benefits from lifting weights, cycling, rowing, calisthenics, and running are all different from VR workouts.

So how does staying immunologically fit factor into this as well as COVID-19? I’m not posing a risk to others (as long as I am the only one using my VR headset). By doing this I’m participating in a community.

To be immunologically fit, you need to be physically fit. “White blood 
cells can be quite sedentary,” says Akbar. “Exercise mobilises them by increasing your blood flow, so they can do their surveillance jobs and seek
 and destroy in other parts of the body.” The NHS says adults should be 
physically active in some way every day, and do at least 150 minutes a week 
of moderate aerobic activity (hiking, gardening, cycling) or 75 minutes of 
vigorous activity (running, swimming fast, an aerobics class).

`source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/mar/08/how-to-boost-your-immune-system-to-avoid-colds-and-coronavirus`

So basically, in the middle of my day between 1 pm or 6 pm, I throw my Oculus Quest on and workout for maybe half an hour or so. I hope that this has been insightful to you and if you have a VR headset perhaps this can factor into your virus response.

This post initially appeared on my Linkedin.

by dshah1120

Oculus Connect 6 Takeaways

Ahead of Oculus Connect 6 (OC6), I attended the Oculus Launchpad and Start dinner tonight. I saw a ton of vibrant communication and hopes for the next few days. In no small order, developers were internationally based, from places such as Canada and New Zealand. I noticed a pattern of developers who seem to be holding full-time jobs all the while in pursuit of publishing an app to the Oculus Store.

by dshah1120

Reblog: Adventure at the 5th Oculus Connect Conference

oculus_connect_5_dilan.png

The following is a write up from a friend, Kathryn Hicks, on the Danse blog. The link to the original is at the bottom. 

Last week I attended the 5th Oculus Connect Conference held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. This two-day conference is held annually during the fall, which showcases the new virtual reality technology from Oculus. It was my second time attending, and it felt even better than the last one.

During the Keynote address, Zuckerberg announced a wireless headset that doesn’t need a cell phone, and an external computer. The Quest, a standalone headset with 6 degrees of freedom, touch controllers and is a potential game-changer for the VR industry. If you are familiar with the Rift and the Oculus Go, the Quest would be a marriage of the two. The Quest is scheduled to come out this spring and will be $399, and a lot of the Rift titles will be available on the Quest. While unfortunately, I was not able to try it, the feedback that I heard from others was positive. The tetherless aspect of the headset creates a more immersive experience and doesn’t feel confined. While the graphics capabilities of the headset are not as high as the Rift, they are good enough and don’t hinder the experience. Plus the optics, as well as the sound, have improved from the Oculus Go. On the downside, the Quest is reportedly top heavy and a denser headset than the Go, which I find the Go to be more substantial than the lightweight Rift. Since the Quest has four inside out cameras on the front of you, if you move the controllers behind you, you could potentially lose tracking. Hopefully, they will make these adjustments before it launches in the spring and add tracking on the strap. I can see much potential with the Quest, such as eSports, education, businesses, medical, engineering, set design; the list goes on. The possibilities are endless, and for the price point, it could substantially increase VR users. Considering that the Quest will be the price of most gaming consoles, without the need of television or home set up.

Walking around the conference was lovely, I felt like a kid in a candy store seeing people putting their full body into the Quest. The well-orchestrated design layouts and theme of the different experiences were terrific. It was a pleasure hearing eSports commentary and cheers as competitors go head to head playing Echo Arena and Onward. Seeing the VR community connect, share laughs, smile, and have a good time, warmed my heart. I enjoyed watching people play the Dead & Buried Quest experience in a large arena and seeing their digital avatars battle each other on screen. I can see more VR arenas being built specifically for the Quest, kind of like skate parks, or soccer parks, but with a sports stadium vibe.

While I was at the conference, I tried a few experiences like The Void – Star Wars Secrets of the Empire, which is a full sensory VR experience. You are an undercover Rebel fighter disguised as a Stormtrooper, as a user you get to interact with your teammates fully, feel, and smell the environment around you. It was a fantastic experience, and I would encourage others to try it at one of the nine locations.

Another experience I tried was the Wolves in the Walls a VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book and created by the company Fable. The audience explores parts of Lucy’s house to try and find hidden wolves in the walls. It was a more intimate experience, and Lucy’s performance felt pretty lifelike. The environments and character designs were beautifully portrayed. Overall it was an enjoyable VR experience.

I also played a multiplayer combat experience called Conjure Strike by The Strike Team. It’s an engaging multiplayer experience, which you can play as a different rock like characters that have different classes like an Elementalist, Mage Hunter, Earth Warden and more. The multiplayer session I had played was similar to capture the flag game. One player has to push a box toward the other side while the opposing player stops the player. It was a fun experience similar to that of Overwatch but in VR. The multiplayer mechanics were excellent, but some of the controls felt foreign to me. Overall it’s an engaging game that seems like it would be popular amongst most VR users.

While I didn’t get to play as many demos as I would have liked, I enjoyed the ones I experienced, especially The Void. It was the most immersive experience I tried, the few things I would change are: update the headset and enhance the outside temperature and wind strength.

I’m looking forward to more development put towards, the Quest and I’m optimistic about the future of VR. As a team member at The Danse, I am excited to work on projects utilizing immersive technology such as virtual & augmented reality. Also, to work in an industry, the is ever changing and improving. It’s nice coming back to the Oculus Connect Conference and see the community excited about the future of VR.

by dshah1120

Acceleration and Motion Sickness in the Context of Virtual Reality (VR)

As I traveled around the world with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, universally first-timers would be fascinated, but a bit woozy after trying VR. What contributes to this? One possibility is the vergence-accommodation issue with current displays. However, the subject of this post is locomotion and the anatomical reasoning behind the discomfort arising from poorly designed VR.

With VR you typically occupy a larger virtual space than that of your immediate physical surroundings.

So, to help you traverse, locomotion or in other words a way of sending you from point A to point B in the virtual space was designed. Here’s what this looks like:

Image result for teleportation vr gif

Caption: This guy is switching his virtual location by pointing a laser on the tip of his controller to move around.

Movement with changing velocity through a virtual environment can contribute to this overall feeling of being in a daze.

That’s why most creators smooth transitions and avoid this kind of motion (i.e. blink teleport, constant velocity movement from Land’s End). Notice how the movement seems steady and controlled below?

Image result for lands end vr gif

Acceleration and Velocity

‘Acceleration’ is, put simply, any kind of change of speed measured over time, generally [written] as m^-2 (meters per second, per second) if it’s linear or in rad^-2 (same but with an angle) if it’s around an axis. Any type of continuous change in the speed of an object will induce a non-zero acceleration.”

The Human Vestibular System

When you change speed, your vestibular system should register an acceleration. The vestibular system is part of your inner ear. It’s basically the thing that tells your brain if your head is up or down, and permit[s] you to [stand] and walk without falling all the time!

Internal ear diagram that show the semi-circular cannals where the acceleartion forces are sensed.

Fluid moving in your semicircular canals is measured and the information is communicated to your brain by the cranial nerves. You can think of this as [similar to how] an accelerometer and a gyroscope works.

[This] acceleration not only includes linear acceleration (from translation in 3D space), but also rotational acceleration, which induces angular acceleration, and empirically, it seems to be the worse kind in the matter of VR sickness…”

Now that you have this grounding for our anatomical system of perceiving acceleration the upshot is that often viewers in VR will experience movement visually but not via these semicircular canals. It’s this incongruence that drives VR sickness with current systems.

Some keywords to explore more if you’re interested in the papers available are: Vection, Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS), and Self-motion.

via Read more on the ways developers reduce discomfort from the author’s website.

by dshah1120

Design Iteration for Oculus Go

 

Design iteration when building for the Oculus Go

With 6 degrees of freedom headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, when working in Unreal or Unity3d, it takes only a push of the play button to test your application in the headset.

There are advantages to seeing your scene from within your headset such as how your first-person perspective is developing, checking performance metrics in HUD, checking in on rendering weirdness, or correcting for relative spacing. However, the constraint of having to deploy by building and running to the Oculus Go each time we needed to check something can lessen your appetite for quick checks like this. Besides, sometimes is not even necessary.

That’s why a quick way of iterating on your scene using traditional desktop inputs is nice. Typically duplicating a currently under-construction scene into two versions. One called “site tour” for example and another called “site tour desktop”. The naming convention splits up functionality so that when you need to test something using mouse and keyboard you quickly hop into the “site tour desktop” scene. Some example mappings include UI navigation with a pointer or locomotion. The UI navigation can be done using the left mouse button and cursor instead of shipping to Go and using the hand controller. The locomotion can be done using your keys ‘w’,’a’,’s’, and ‘d’, as is common to most FPS games, to move around the space and the mouse to click and drag to move your head instead of having to teleport.

Diving deeper on the locomotion example

By throwing on headphones and using a Fly script applied to the Main Camera to test quickly using WASD within the Unity editor, you’ll be able to check relevant aspects of your lighting, audio, animations, etc without needing to wear the Go.
sample:

void Update()
{

    if (Input.GetMouseButton(0))
{
yaw += Input.GetAxis(“Mouse X”) * lookSpeed;
pitch += Input.GetAxis(“Mouse Y”) * lookSpeed;
pitch = Mathf.Clamp(pitch, -90.0f, 90.0f);
}

transform.localRotation = Quaternion.AngleAxis(yaw, Vector3.up);
transform.localRotation *= Quaternion.AngleAxis(pitch, Vector3.left);

transform.position += transform.forward * moveSpeed * Input.GetAxis(“Vertical”);
transform.position += transform.right * moveSpeed * Input.GetAxis(“Horizontal”);
transform.position += transform.up * 3 * moveSpeed * Input.GetAxis(“Mouse ScrollWheel”);

}

For the purposes of testing out spatial audio, I’ve noticed it’s great––mimicking head movement by panning using the mouse x.

 

​

Turning to the Oculus Rift

For what it’s worth in a post that’s supposed to be about the Oculus Go design iteration loop. In progress with an Oculus Go app currently, I and a friend find the utility of swapping a project over to the Oculus Rift to be really helpful.

What this does for you is, allow you to take advantage of the Oculus Rift during Play Mode (in Unity) which gives way to much faster iteration time. Perfect for quick fixes to code and cohesion of various parts (for example, like Teleportation and UI).

by dshah1120

Reblog: The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark

The idea of the extended mind or extended cognition is not part of common parlance; however, many of us have espoused this idea naturally since our youth. It’s the concept that we use external, physical or digital, information to extend our knowledge and thinking processes.

Today’s “born-digital” kids––the first generation to grow up with the Internet, born 1990 and later––store their thoughts, education, and self-dialogue in external notes saved to the cloud. [1]

“… [Andy Clark describes us as] cyborgs, in the most natural way. Without the stimulus of the world, an infant could not learn to hear or see, and a brain develops and rewires itself in response to its environment throughout its life.”

via Read the full version from the author’s website.

[1] McGonigal; “Reality is Broken” pg. 127

by dshah1120

Rapid Worldbuilding with Probuilder

Rapid Worldbuilding with ProBuilder

ProBuilder is totally free available through the package manager.
If you’re using 2017 or 5.6 you’ll get critical bug fixes. However, from 2018 onwards there’s more support, using 2018.1.0b3 I dealt with a considerably severe crash bug, so update to b12 IMO.
Polybrush and Progrids are things you’ll have to go get individually from Unity.
To replace Probuilder objects with polished geo you can play around with the Unity FBX exporter

Real Quick Prototyping Demo

  • Main Probuilder window (found by going to tools>probuilder>probuilder window) – has tools and Probuilder is designed so that you can ignore it when you’ a new to using Probuilder
  • Face, Object, etc. mode – will allow you to touch only the variable selectable
  • A good way to learn the tool is to go through the main probuilder window and check the shortcuts
  • It really helps to keep things as simple as possible from the get go. Don’t add tons of polys
  • Shape selector will help you quickly make stuff
  • Connect edges and insert edge loop
  • Holding shift to grab multiple
  • ‘R’ will give you scale mode
  • Extrude is a fantastic way to add geometry
  • Grid Size – keep at 1 for 1 meter this is important for avoiding mistakes when creating geo and knowing your angles
  • Use the ortho top down view to see if your geo fits your grid
  • Detach face settings is a way to split geo selected but it’s still part of your item
  • Detach face using a different setting to create a new game object
  • Pivot point needs to be rejigged often (solutions: object action or set it to a specific element using “Center Pivot”)
  • center pivot and put it on the grid by using progrids
  • Settings changes become the default
  • Use the Poly Shape tool to spin up a room + extrude quickly
  • Merge objects
  • think in terms of Quads
  • try selecting to vertices and connect (Alt + E) them
  • select hidden as a toggle is a great option, because in 3D you are seeing an orthographic projection so you will click on the thing that is drawn closest to the camera!
  • Crafting a doorway, can be done using extrude and grid meter changes, toggle the views (X, Y, and Z) to help with that
  • hold v to make geo snap; this will save you time later on
  • Alt+C will collapse verts (as in the ramp option where the speaker started with a cube)
  • Weld vs. Collapse — weld great for merging to hallways, or collapse which is more like pushing all verts within a specific distance together
  • Grow selection and smooth group

Polybrush Stuff

  • Add more detail with loops or subdivide (smart connect)
  • Polybrush will let you sculpt, smooth, texture blend, scatter objects, etc.
  • Modes like smoothing
  • todo explore something prefabs
  • N-gons are bad because everything is made up of tris

Texturing stuff

Open up the UV editor
  • By default, everything is on auto which means that on in-scene handles toggle
  • When you’re prototyping this allows you to not use fancy toolbar stuff

Question

  • Why is progrids helpful? Short answer: if you’re not super familiar with 3D modeling and creation software (i.e. Maya) you can create simple geo without leaving Unity editor.
  • Why would you be obsessive about making sure your geo fits your 1 meter grid size? Short answer: This helps you avoid errors with geo creation such as horrid angles and hidden faces.
  • Can you talk a little bit about automation with Probuilder?
by dshah1120

Reblog: 3 ways to draw 3D lines in Unity3D

Just as I was thinking about an interesting demo to play with drawing functions in Unity3D, Mrdoob published his Harmony drawing tool made with HTML5/Canvas. It looks really cool, so I though how about doing this in 3D? I only had to figure out how to draw lines.

I did some research and below I present 3 different solutions. You can grab the source of the examples discussed below here.

Drawing lines with Line Renderer [demo]

When it comes to lines, the first thing you’ll bump into in the Unity3D API is the Line Renderercomponent. As the name suggests, it is used to draw lines so it seems the right tool for the job. Lines in this case are defined by 2 or more points (segments), a material and a width.

It has an important limitation: the line must be continuous. So if you need two lines, you need two renderers. The other problem is that the Line Renderer acts very strangely when new points are added dynamically. The width of the line does not seem to render correctly. It’s either buggy or just wasn’t designed for such use. Because of these limitations I had to create a separate Line Renderer for each tiny bit of line I’m drawing.

It was easy to implement, but not very fast since I end up spawning lots of GameObjects each with a LineRenderer attached. It seems to be the only option if you don’t have Unity3D Prothough.

Drawing lines as a mesh using Graphics [demo]

The Graphics class allows to draw a mesh directly without the overhead of creating game objects and components to hold it. It runs much faster than Line Renderer, but you need to create the lines yourself. This is a bit more difficult but also gives you total control of the lines – their color, material, width and orientation.

Since meshes are composed of surfaces rather than lines or points, in 3D space a line is best rendered as a very thin quad. A quad is described with 4 vertices, and usually you’ll only have the start and end points and a width. Based on this data you can compute a line like this:

Vector3 normal = Vector3.Cross(start, end);
Vector3 side = Vector3.Cross(normal, end-start);
side.Normalize();
Vector3 a = start + side * (lineWidth / 2);
Vector3 b = start + side * (lineWidth / -2);
Vector3 c = end + side * (lineWidth / 2);
Vector3 d = end + side * (lineWidth / -2);

First, you get the normal of the plane on which both start and end vectors lie. This will be the plane on which the line-quad will located. The cross product of the normal and of the difference between end and start vectors gives you the side vector (the “thin” side of the quad). You need to normalize it to make it a unit vector. Finally calculate all 4 points of the rectangle by adding the side vector multiplied by half width to both start and end points in both directions. In the source code all this happens in MakeQuad and AddLine methods, so take a look in there.

It wasn’t easy to implement, but once I was there it runs pretty fast.

Direct drawing with GL [demo]

No fast is fast enough! Instead of leaving this topic and live happily with the Graphics solution, I kept searching for something even better. And I found the GL class. GL is used to “issue rendering commands similar to OpenGL’s immediate mode”. This sounds like fast, doesn’t it? It is!

Being much easier to implement that the Graphics solution it is a clear winner for me, the only drawback being that you don’t have much control over the appearance of the lines. You can’t set a width and perspective does not apply (i.e. lines that are far behind look exactly the same as those that are close to the camera).

Conclusion

For massive & dynamic line drawing LineRenderer is not the best solution, but it is the only one available in Unity free version. It can surely be useful to draw limited amounts of static lines and this is probably what it was made for. If you do have Unity3D Pro, the solution with Graphics is reasonable and very flexible but if it is performance you’re after choose GL.

via Did you enjoy this article? Then read the full version from the author’s website.

by dshah1120

Games as Medicine | FDA Clearance Methods

 

Games as Medicine | FDA Clearance Methods

Noah Falstein, @nfalstein
President, The Inspiracy
Neurogaming Consultant

Technically software and games are cleared and not approved by the FDA.

By background, Noah:

  • Has attended 31 GDCs
  • Been working in games since 1980 (started in entertainment and arcade games with Lucas Entertainment)
  • Gradually shifted over and consulted for 17 years on a wide variety of games
  • Started getting interested in medical games in 1991 (i.e. East3)
  • Went to Google and left due to platform perspective one had to have at Google
  • Game designer not a doctor, but voraciously learns about science and medical topics

Table of Content:

  • Context of games for health
  • New factor of FDA clearance
  • Deeper dive
  • Adv. and Disadvan. to clearance

Why are games and health an interesting thing?

Three reasons why games for health are growing quickly and are poised to be a very important thing

  • It’s about helping people (i.e. Dr. Sam Rodriguez’s work Google “Rodriguez pain VR”)
  • It’s challenging, exciting, and more diverse than standard games (i.e. games need to be fun, but if they’re not having the desired effect, for example restoring motion after a stroke, then you encounter an interesting challenge). The people in the medical field tend to be more diverse than those in the gaming space.
  • It’s a huge market* FDA clearance = big market
    IMG_2271

So what’s the catch?

Mis-steps along the way

  • Brain Training (i.e. Nintendo Gameboy had popular Japanese games claiming brain training)
  • Wii Fit (+U) (i.e. the balance board)
  • Lumosity fine (i.e. claims made that were unsubstantiated by research)

upshot: lack of research and good studies underpinning claims

Some bright spots

  • Remission from Hopelab (i.e. they targeted adherence: using the consequences of not having enough chemotherapy in their body)

FDA clearance is a gold standard

  • Because it provides a stamp of good, trustable, etc.
  • The burden is on the people who make products to go through a regimen of tests that are science-driven
  • Noah strongly recommends Game Devs to link up with a university
  • Working on SaMD – Software as a Med Device
  • Biggest single world market drives others
  • Necessary for a prescription and helps with insurance reimbursement
  • but it’s very expensive and time-consuming

IMG_2272

FDA definition of a serious disease
[missing]

MindMaze Pro

  • FDA clearance May 2017
  • Stroke Rehabilitation
  • Early in-hospital acute care while plasticity high

Pear Therapeutic

  • Positions its product as a “prescription digital therapeutic”

IMG_2273

Akili Interactive Labs

  • Treats pediatric ADHD
  • Late-stage trial results (Dec. 2017) were very positive with side effects of a headache and frustration, which is much better than alternatives like Ritalin
  • Seeking De Novo clearance
  • Adam Gazzaley – began as aging adult research with Neuroracer, a multi-year study published in Nature

The Future – Good, Bad, Ugly, Sublime

  • Each successful FDA clearance helps
  • But they still will require big $, years to dev
  • you have to create a company, rigorously study it, stall production because changing your game
    would make results invalid from studies, then you need to release it
  • Pharma is a powerful but daunting partner

Questions

  • Can FDA certification for games then reveal that some games are essentially street drugs?
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