Virtual Reality for Training, Learning, Collaboration and

Visualisation

A White Paper

© 2013 www .daden.co.uk

Who are Daden?

Immersive 3D learning and visualisation specialists Founded 2004, but experience since late 1990s

Times Higher Education Winning Projects 2009/14

US Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge winner 2010

Nearly 50 projects in immersive environments

History

The early work on virtual reality in the military and aviation fields

Early thoughts and works by computer pioneers such as Doug Engelbert (inventor of the mouse) back in the late 50s/early 60s.

1990s saw rise in public awareness, e.g through Virtuality's VR entertainment VR pods

During 2000s reverted to defence and aviation and related area (eg medicine, design)

The Oculus Rift kickstarter in 2012 brought it back into mainstream awareness, and made it more generally affordable

VR Centenary Square

● 3D model of Centenary Square Birmingham, developed on Unity3D, experienced in Oculus Rift

● Fly over and around the new Library of Birmingham (LoB)

● Sense of unease and danger when navigating through dim and narrow spaces around the LoB building site

● Contrasts with the more common, and vertigo inducing, “superman” experience of flying around the 3D space.

Current Hardware

Whilst Oculus Rift has the mind-share there are many more VR Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) around – although like the Oculus none of them are yet available as consumer items.

Two main types:

Purpose built/integrated units (such as the Oculus Rift),

So-called mobile HMDs which use conventional smart phone in a special head mounted holder.

VR Library of Birmingham

● We know that the Library staff and the general public got a huge benefit from the “2D” Virtual Library of Birmingham model – but imagine what more the VR experience would have given them.

● Architects, builders and commissioners should also take the opportunity to create the full multi-user social model of a building rather than simply bolt a VR headset onto a 3D architecture, CAD or BIM tool.

● A virtual model of the new Library of Birmingham developed by Daden for Birmingham City Council in 2011 in Second Life

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● Some Second Life browsers offer Oculus Rift support enabling an “immersion squared” experience

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● The VR experience of new building 3D models is likely to become de rigur.

Immersive Environments

Virtual Reality experiences are really just a special case of immersive environments.

By experiencing the environment through the 3D headset they definitely heighten the sense of immersion - “immersion squared” – but fundamentally it is still all about that subjective experience of a 3D space.

If users can only look at a 3D environment and choose from a menu it's not going to be very immersive. If they can wander through that environment, have a sense of purpose (and possibly urgency), do things AND make mistakes then we are on our way to creating an immersive environment.

A truly immersive experience should also include virtual people – bot non-player characters and other users

VR is the same “sort” of experience as a conventional immersive environment, but can have a different qualitative feel due to the nature of the headset interface.

VR Benefits

Since VR is just a type of immersive environment then it follows that the benefits of VR will broadly follow those of immersive environments – although in many cases the advantage may be even more perceptible – that “immersion squared” again.

VR Skiddaw

● With the Rift the experience is “even more so”. Ambient sound recordings so having both the immersive visuals and the audio gives us almost “immersion cubed”.

● Running in multi-user mode you also get a more realistic spatial sense of where your colleagues were – particularly with the ability of just being able to turn your head to see where they are. Flying in VR gives you a real “crow's-eye-view” of the landscape.

● The piece-de-resistance of the VR experience is picking up a rock to examine it more closely. The rock just hangs there in space, boulder sized, in front of you, and you can peer around, under and over it. And we've lost count of the number of people who have then tried to reach out and touch it!

● Developed for the Open University

● Lets students go on a virtual field trip, roaming over 100 sq km of the English Lake District,

● Examine detailed models of rock outcrops, and pick up specific rocks scanned at an even higher level of detail at particular sites of interest

VR – What's Added?

Natural 3D: Since VR is using two (offset) screens/viewpoints the eye is seeing depth in an almost natural way – but this soon becomes second nature

Forced First-Person: This makes the experience far more subjective – things come at you, not the avatar – but may affect identification with your “avatar”.

Lack of Distraction: With a VR headset on there is no distraction, no breaking the flow – all you see is the virtual space.

Isolation: You feel as though it's just you and the virtual world, and the things in it... - and it's harder to ask for help!

Removal of Safety: A net result of all this is that much of the safety net of using a conventional immersive environment gets removed – no help, no reassurance, which can step the whole experience up into a higher gear.

VR Datascape

● We've actually been initially underwhelmed by the Oculus experience of data for two reasons:

● With data you often want to see a lot of it, and having to do continual head movements to look around soon becomes tiring, and disorientating. The “flat” immersive 3D experience is actually better at taking the whole of the data-scape in.

● Datascape is a visual analytics tool, not purely a data visualisation tool – so you need to be able to use the UI to change and interrogate the visualisation. But VR systems don't like 2D UIs, so we'd have a major rebuild task to make the UI usable with the Rift – and at current text resolutions this may not even be practical.

● DARPA, the US defence research agency, is using the Oculus Rift to look at cyberdata as part of its $million Plan X

● At Daden we've been using the Oculus to look at cyberdata with our Datascape application for at least a year, and at almost no cost!

To VR or not VR?

VR will NOT always enhance the 2D experience, and just the practicalities of buying many VR sets and trying to co-ordinate a class of VR users means that we are a very long way from VR being the default for immersive experiences.

VR should still be approached on a case-by-case basis, using conventional immersion when that works/is practical, and VR when it's clearly adding something to the experience, and is affordable and manageable.

However if you develop an immersive environment/experience in a generic way, rather than as a VR showcase, then it is actually relatively easy to deploy it either to a 2D monitor, mouse and keyboard set up, or to a VR headset.

That same experience can also be delivered to web users, tablet users (iPad or Android), and even the users of larger smart-phones. If you work in true 3D, with flexible tools, then the immersive environment can be delivered in a wide variety of ways.

User Modes

Two “modes” of using a VR headset are emerging, and whilst one of them minimises the control problem (at the expense of some immersion), neither solve it.

Sit down: The user wears the VR headset whilst sat down. Their head movements control the direction of look, and a keyboard/mouse/joystick/game controller controls the direction of their movement. Keeps controllers in front of the user and also gets around the problem of tying yourself in knots - but not as immersive.

Stand up: The user stands up wearing the VR headset, and uses a controller to move themselves forward or back, but only in the direction they are looking. This feels far more immersive, but soon results cable getting caught or all the actions being carried out facing into the rest of the room. 360 degree treadmills can take the experience even further.

VR Controllers

Pointing and control devices: Even in VR you need to activate things and pass basic control instructions.

Game Controller: The simplest solution but remember even though you are holding the controller you can't see it!

Wand: A Playstation/Wii style wand controller can also work, and if we can give it a presence within the VR scene then all the better.

Gesture controllers:

Kinect: But depends on you facing a camera you cant see

Leap Motion: Leap Motion converts the space in front of your monitor into a gesture zone – but again needs you to face front – unless you stick it on the Oculus headset...

MYO: A cuff that you wear around the upper arm, and detects arm and hand movement independent of where you are facing.

Movement controllers:

Apart from using mice and joysticks researcher are also looking at ways in which we can take real leg movement to control walking

VR Apollo

● In the simulation we've tried to get close to the “bunny hop” of a low gravity walk.By looking at the equipment and clicking the controller button you can bring up information about each item.

● One feature that worked less well in VR was the use of the original photos triggered at the spots they were taken – again the challenge of 2D material/UI in a pure 3D VR world.

● Originally created our Tranquility Base simulation in Second Life, for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing in 2009, then ported to Unity

● Experience is “immersion cubed” - not only an audio element (the pings of the comms system, but also the isolation and the “helmet on” experience of a restricted field of view and over done head movement.

Key Sectors

Main sectors likely to benefit from VR headsets follow those for immersive environments in general:

Education

Heritage and Virtual Tourism

Training

Medical and Care

Built Environment

Engineering

Collaboration

Always been a lot of talk (and some practice) of using immersive environments for virtual collaboration

A lot of companies have based their business model around this (e.g. QWAQ) but have fallen by the wayside – the value add over Skype/GotoMeeting doesn't balance the extra hassles except for those already deeply involved with virtual worlds.

VR might be enough to shift that balance, although a collaboration session may well have a longer duration than a training session, and breaks may be less natural – and people's willingness or ability to wear a VR headset for a long time is yet to be tested in the public at large.

However for short durations the VR space can provide a fascinating environment in which to facilitate collaboration, particularly if it includes collaboration and creative thinking tools optimised for VR use.

VR Campus

● With the Rift the fact that you aren't being thrown around, and that you are focussing on the task NOT the environment we found actually increased the immersion and decreased the sense of motion-sickness. You were right “in the flow”.

● Another interesting aspect is that since our standard interaction model with the Rift has become “look and click” the whole experience is akin to suddenly being given telekinetic powers – its almost as though you just look at something and it moves to where you want it to go. Who would want to go back to the physical world......

● Inside the Daden Campus the VR focus is on task not “experience” - which can lessen the motion sickness problem

● Daden Campus shows how immersive 3D environments can be used outside of a task specific training simulation to support collaborative learning, education and working.

Design Challenges

2D User Interface: Doesn't work well in 3D VR – there is no 2D application surroudn to anchor it to

2D Assets: Reading text and looking at images close-upalso doesn't work well for similar reasons

Text Input: It's hard to use a keyboard when you can't even see where it is!

Motion Sickness: A common curse of VR systems

Latency: The delay between your body making a head movement and the VR headset showing you the updated view – gradually being solved by the VR system makers

Audio: Often the poor relation but having good ambient audio can significantly improve the sense of immersion in “ordinary” 3D, and in VR it is again a sense of immersion squared (or even cubed in this instance).

Do It Now!

Even though there is no commercial “consumer” VR headset in mass production yet there are still plenty of ways that organisations can take advantage of VR right now. For instance we can:

● Run VR experiences and impact sessions at corporate study days to help you better understand what potential this technology has for your organisation and your industry

● Create VR experiences for use at trade shows and in public spaces

● Create prototype VR applications for use in R&D projects to help inform future decisions

● Create VR applications that you can make available to the growing community of developers with VR headsets to help position your brand

● If your project is developed in full 3D then it can be converted at a later date to work with the Oculus Rift and other headsets

● A lot of the benefits of immersive 3D are delivered just through ordinary computers and mobile tablets and don't need a VR headset.

● So there's nothing to stop you delivering an immersive 3D training, education, collaboration or built-environment project now, and then growing into the use of Vrwhere it adds value and as it becomes more available.

VR Futures

VR Futures - Caprica

If you want to get a sense of where VR could be heading check out the holobands and “V-worlds” of Caprica – the mini-series prequel of Battlestar Galactica

White Paper

The full white-paper is available for download:

http://www.daden.co.uk/conc/resources/whitepapers/whitepapers_download

Web: www.daden.co.ukEmail: info@daden.co.ukVideo: www.daden.co.uk/vimeoTwitter: @dadenlimited