Virtual reality gets real
| A cheap VR simulator has been created by exploiting a motion illusion of the human brain Creating close to real-life virtual reality (VR) experiences has proven to be costly and has had rather poor results. In response, a European research team has explored how exploiting visual and auditory illusions can possibly lead to low-cost virtual reality simulators of the future. Nowadays virtual reality is used within a wide range of areas such as medicine and the car manufacturing industry. However, due to problems with cost and quality, the technology has not yet reached a wider market. Instead of trying to simulate the sense of the person’s motion by physically moving the person, which often causes motion sickness, the Swedish-German POEMS project, used a perceptually-oriented approach towards self-motion simulation. Thanks to funding under the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies initiative of the IST programme, their work and findings resulted in a simulator prototype, presented at the 8th International Presence Conference, held in London 2005. At the event a group of 20 participants tested the prototype simulating the market place in Tübingen, Germany. Although seated, with headphones and a screen in front of them, participants got the distinct feeling of moving as the image on the screen in front of them turned around the square. Basically the simulator exploits a vection illusion of the brain, which makes us believe we are moving when actually we are stationary. The same can be experienced, for instance, when you are stopped at a traffic light in your car and the car next to you edges forward. Your brain interprets this peripheral visual information as though you are moving backwards. Read more... This was seized 4 u at Information Society Technologies |
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