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Sci-Fi Entertainment Games

Game Feedback Gets More Intense With Electrodes 81

Posted by simoniker from the mmm-electrodes dept.
ne_ol'schmoe writes "The simple feedback of a Dual Shock is pass&#233 - vomit comet simulators will soon be possible without leaving your chair, since those wacky tech-heads at NTT have come up with a way to change people's perception of balance, using electrodes that fit behind your ear. They expect to integrate it with racing and flight games to have users lean into turns, and also to simulate gravity changes for a more realistic experience. Sounds cool, but now games will have to come with barf bags, I guess."
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Game Feedback Gets More Intense With Electrodes More

Game Feedback Gets More Intense With Electrodes

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  • This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen (Score:4, Funny)

    by gasaraki ( 262206 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:12AM (#7690328)
    Some kid's going to do a barrel roll in Flight Simulator 2006 and become so unbalanced he'll fall off his chair and crack his head open. I don't think it's a good idea to mess with a sense that can seriously affect your ability to stay standing and move around, especially when it's just for the sake of a game.
    • Let them sue.

      The type of situation you describe is something that would obviously be covered by a warning on any possible product this technology leads to. So they can sue all they want and when it's quickly thrown out because there was a clear and explicit warning on the package, they can pay the defense bills of the company who released the game. And just remember, I could be a lawyer! This is Slashdot, you never know.

    • What worries me is if one of the electrodes fails, or someone thinks they're smart and decides to use only one, thus effecting only one inner ear.

      Would it feel like half your body was falling away, or does the body auto-correct such things?

      A splitting headache, indeed.

  • Barf bags was needed with the original Doom too... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arcade ( 16638 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:13AM (#7690334) Homepage
    For those of us who remember "motion sickness" in the original Doom - I guess it's just a matter of time before people get accustomed to the feelings.

    I remember I needed to take hours of breaks after just half-an-hour of Doom the first couple of weeks, because of motion sickness. Far worse than "car sickness" which I used to have when I was a kid.

    I grew up from "car sickness". I grew up from "motion sickness" in games. I guess it'll just take some weeks/months of playing with these electrode-things before one get used to it - and thus simply doesn't need the barf-bag.

    • The same thing happened to me when I played Wolfenstein 3D when I was 12. And here I thought it was because I felt bad for shooting pixellated characters...
    • Any 3D game I play for more than a few minutes spinning around will give me motion sickness. I've been told that playing in a well lit room and staying far from the monitor will aleviate this problem but I don't play games much more anyway to try.
    • "For those of us who remember "motion sickness" in the original Doom..." I never experienced any sort of motion sickness with Doom. Descent, however, really made me dizzy. Guess I needed the third dimension to trigger any response.

      As for "making players' bodies lean as they corner" in the article, I already do this whenever I'm playing a mario kart or F-zero. I even occasionally duck my head when I'm playing a shooter.
    • The only time I ever get motion sickness from video games is when I use one of those goddamn VR helms, I remember trying to play Dark Forces with one of those things on, I wanted to throw up after like four minutes. Worse yet, my buddy had these big screen TV goggles that he used to play playstation on when his roommate would go to bed, I tried playing EA's baseball game and was ready to be sick within 10 mintes ... to be fair I was drunk at the time too :)

  • This is not going to be pretty (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Txiasaeia ( 581598 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:15AM (#7690359)
    If people start associating nausea with video games, the industry is hooped. Imagine the "realistic" sensations applied to your inner ear while pulling a 5+g turn in IL-2 Sturmovik... yeah, that's going to make people want to go back for more.

    In reality, if somebody's shot down in an airplane, it's okay for them to have a screaming headache and red out because they're about to freaking die. In a video game, it's nice to just watch the pretty pixels pass by before you crater.

    • I would imagine they would have to sell this type of thing to people over 18 or whatever arbitrary age they pick to at least make the attempt to look like they're trying to avoid hurting kids. If they're smart, they'll have you sign a virtual waver releasing them from responsibility to activate it.
    • I am sorry but do you have any idea? Not just an idea about the topic just any idea at all?

      The sensation of balance has absolutly nothing to do with g-forces. They often feel related because it is usually movement that cause g-forces to be experienced other then the one pulling us down. But nothing done with a piece of wire by your ear or even shoved into your brain could make you experience g-forces. All it could do is make you think you are upside down. Or at worst feel a little bit sick if it chances to

      • Additionally, if you pull a high-g turn in an aircraft, the turn will most likely be coordinated - so the g-forces are pulling you in a direction you percieve as down. Even with these electrodes, you won't feel out of balance. They could, though, be useful to detect uncoordinated turns - so you could compensate bad rudder positions by your feeling. Great enough!
      • Thanks for your post. Absolutely wonderful.

        I have serious inner-ear problems, which cause the problems mentioned in my post. Blackouts, extreme nausea, headaches... all of these are a result of my fucked up ear.

        "The sensation of balance has absolutely nothing to do with g-forces." True enough - but how do you think that game designers would implement +-G turns using these electrodes? My point is not G-forces, but the whole concept of messing around with only one part of the body, esp. for a game.

        "

    • yes i would LOVE to 'feel' such g forces without actually BEING in one.

      i don't want to blackout while gaming but heck, i do want to get a kick! personally this sounds very cool for driving games and any vr actually.

  • With in game cash and we've got a winner... Never have to leave the computer again, can make money and have experience realism from the comfort of an office chair.

  • motion sickness (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:23AM (#7690450)
    Motion sickness is caused by the lack of sync between what the eyes percieve and what the inner ear reports. By stimulating the sense of motion in sync with the visuals of a game there will in theory be less chance of motion sickness than the current state of the art: visuals are not synced to motion.

    Of course inacurate or inproperly synced motion cues will cause obvious problems.
    • "Of course inacurate or inproperly synced motion cues will cause obvious problems."

      Not to mention the sheer volume of players who will be falling over.

      You may not see it while sitting in your chair, but believe it or not your sense of balance is doing something useful...

    • Of course inacurate or inproperly synced motion cues will cause obvious problems.

      I would imagine this would be a huge problem. Syncing the visual motion/ frame rate, with the motion sensation (and it's frame rate) could take a while to perfect.

      Another problem would be the secondary issue of actual motion related effects. You lean, does the screen skew? Or even more fun, high G turn, counterbalance against the perception, fall out of your chair (sue Jane's?).

      Personally, I'd use this technology to creat

      • I would imagine this would be a huge problem. Syncing the visual motion/ frame rate, with the motion sensation (and it's frame rate) could take a while to perfect.

        It shouldn't be any bigger of an issue than cueing rumble effects in rumble/force feedback controllers. The biggest part will be keeping it from over- or under- doing it with each change, and, assuming they use the full 360 degrees in each axis both in the hardware and the software this might actually be easier than force feedback. It's all a ma
      • "Personally, I'd use this technology to create something truely useless, like another fishing game, but enhanced, by simulating the dizzyness and nausea felt from all the booze you need to consume to keep from being bored out of your skull."

        Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy.

  • Many interesting uses (Score:5, Funny)

    by demo9orgon ( 156675 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:29AM (#7690510) Homepage
    Every First-person-shooter I've played since 1996 seems to produce "sim-sickness" quite effectively without horking the inner-ear. I've found the newest "console" FPS games are even more effective at it. There's been several (Time-Splitters3,Warhammer40k,Quake3,etc...) that become so intolerable so fast that I can't even get through a level without wanting to just lay down and die. Unless this piece of kit can reduce or eliminate sim-sickness (where your inner ear wants a piece of the action your eyes/motor cortext are having fun with) by giving us another input it's not going to catch on.

    Of course, it would be a blast for modders to create a program which would specifically be used to "torture", like a centerfuge. Keep that puppy around for when someone has been drinking too much, wrap them up in a blanket and clear the area. This could also see use in interrogation. It's one thing to wear people down from the outside (physical exertion, exposure, witholding food/water) but hook them up to something like this and you have a low-tech device that produces severe discomfort and disorientation. We'll know the real-deal when 3rd world countries start buying them by the pallet.

    I could go on, but this is about as clean as it gets, because...
    • I don't think 3rd-world torturers were waiting for this breakthrough before they could use electrodes to "produce severe discomfort".
      • I concur. However, if you're less interested in outright brutality and disfigurement it's an interesting development. Since electricity has become so ubiquitous, cheap and effective electro-convulsive torture methods have flourished. But it's crude. This would be a sophisticated means of producing a very pronounced disorientation that affects the body and mind. Using drugs can be dangerous and there's so much miscibility with allergies and side-effects, and of course what happens when the staff starts enjo
    • Timesplitters 3? I wanna try THAT out! What system is it for?
  • It seems the timing is right for me to now sell my collection of Defibrillator Capacitors on eBay for big bux.
  • At least now we know where the future of video games is headed... "NEW FOR PLAYSTATION 4... VIRTUAL TILT-A-WHIRL!"
  • Yeah, players will now be falling out of their chairs all the time and inuring themselves, as they lean into a corner that doesn't really exist.
    Gravity will still pull down.

  • Sucks when the game crashes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @11:49AM (#7690692) Journal
    Sucks when the game crashes. Having to find the reboot button in the dark and upside down. Whee.

    Yes of course you could just pull the thing off but that isn't funny oh this wasn't either? Bleh.

  • We all know that gaming and porn drive the electronics industry, right? This has to be the next step in combining the two of them.

    Mark my words, in a few years it will be 'Virtual Girl 4, now with Electrodes!' Use your imagination on where those electrodes connect, boys and girls...

  • This is just what I have to say. I agree motion sickness would suck, however I dont think that many people would be falling out of their chairs. If it makes you feel like you're tilting to the side then moving your body to the side would just make it worse. So if people are smart enough they wouldnt do that, if they do then they deserve to tip over and crack their skull on something.

  • Now with vomit-vision (Score:3, Insightful)

    by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:25PM (#7691009)
    I may live in the minority on this issue, but I sort of like that concrete separation of games and reality. I don't have any interest in the feelings or lives of my various avatars; I just want to play the game. That doesn't mean though that I don't find this interesting on a sort of passive level. I don't think I am ready to have vomiting induced when I get poisoned in game though. (Actually that sounds sort of cool)

    This is going to be a big deal (assuming they can get consumers to bite on it, seems like one of those things that various watchdog groups are going to get uppity about) but I suspect that it will be embraced the same way that rumble technology has been; it will eventually get included in everything, even those things in which it does not fit or seem appropriate and eventually many gamers are just going to leave it turned off.
    • I guess it won't be so hard to make "them lil' devices" work in a game only with some kind of pre-tuning for each game... and only work in approved strap-on seats, lol.

      "You will be experiencing a 30' left tilt... ...now a 60' left tilt... ...now a 90' left tilt..."
      [twiddle intensity]
      "...now right tilt..." ...
      [twiddle, twiddle]
      "calibration complete.
      Test settings ? y/n ...
      90' clockwise turn, 180' anticlockwise turn, 90' clockwise turn ...
      Re-calibrate? y/n"

      Or something like that.
      So users will be able to comf

  • Imagine... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lord Graga ( 696091 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:29PM (#7691048)
    HAHAHA! Imagine what a virus writer could use these for:


    "I was playing Flight Simulator with those new balance thingies... and suddenly, I started to rock forward and backwards, very very fast, and I barfed all over my keyboard, and then I fell off the chair and broke my left arm. Dammn thingies.

  • Personal experience of why this is a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by novakane007 ( 154885 ) on Thursday December 11, 2003 @12:47PM (#7691222) Homepage Journal
    I spent yesterday in the hospital with my mom. They thought she had a small stroke because her balance was off and she kept falling to the right. Turns out it was a condition called labyrinthitis [vestibular.org].
    Messing with your inner ear through electrical pulse could certainley have some long term effects, like swelling or neuron damage.
    An artificial vertigo sensation while playing a game isn't a fair trade off for possibly days of irregular balance.
    • Anybody seen people use AbGymnics or whatever those electrode-muscle-training gimmics are called in your country?

      Same argument on both devices.
      Do people use the AbGymnic? Some do.
      Do they know the risk? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe there's no risk for most, maybe there is.

      Point is, a LOT of people will rather experience everything in a game, while less concerned with their long-term health.
      Until this new device is proven to be at least 95+% "safe" for average-duration use, and no short-or-long-term damage is
    • I wonder if this could be used to feed corrective balance information to people who do have balance and vertigo problems? You could figure out how to calibrate it to counteract whatever false information your real sense of balance is sending. Of course it wouldn't work if the medical condition can't be quantified as a constant.
  • ...might want to try this:-

    Xshok [techtv.com]

    Sorry if its been posted before, I didn't find anything in the search.

  • Medial Implications (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pragma_x ( 644215 )
    I wonder if this technology could have other, more-useful medical implications for people with types of Vestibular Disorders (inner-ear/balance problems). Attach the electrodes to a computer-controlled gyro in a small box (say something you wear around your waist) and say goodbye to self-balance issues.

    All the same, I'm looking forward to seeing what impact this will have on future games.
  • Sure, you'll get a few hardcore fans into it, but notice how, for example, the GBA sells better than fancier products. Bigger and more expensive find small niches at best.

    *Peripherals tend to sell much lower; 1/10 of what the system sells for upgrades to the system and what not.

    *Uninformed users will link this to plugging into their brain. This frightens the general public.

    *It's unlikely to be perfectly in time with the screen, as distance from the screen will change the required electrical output.

  • I posted an "Ask Slashdot - Games" question about this... well here's the quote from my submitted stories page. Look at the date!

    2001-05-03 15:11:42 What ever happened to Virtual Motion? (askslashdot,games) (rejected)

    There was a company called Virtual Motion that was trying to bring this to market around 1999. I wanted to know if anybody knew what had happened to them.

    Now some other company is trying to do it and it's all big news because one of the editors found out about it. What a bunch of crap.

    Ye
  • Attach the electrodes to your NADS and THEN we'll see some high gain negative feedback gaming!

  • Actually, a thingy that synch's my inner-ear to the motions I'm experiencing in VR-world would be ACE. I get full on motion sickness after playing VR flight simulator for more than 30 minutes or so. Very annoying as it's the best I ever fly on a computer.

    I remember a NASA tech saying that the whole puking thing went like this:

    1. Wwwwaaayyyy back on the savannas, if your eyes said you were rolling around but your inner said you were straight up, odds were that you'd eaten something nasty - brain sends sign
  • Does this remind anyone of the film "eXistenZ"? I find that film to be a way more intriguing future of gaming than the "electrodes". Granted, the electrode idea is basically a primitive version of the system used in eXistenZ, and also a lot more realistic given our current technology. If this story at all intrigues you, check out eXistenZ. (Think Matrix and Videogames colliding and that's the synopsis of the film)

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