VR is the ultimate reality - What is VR ? - What is the current state of the VR market ? - How to create VR applications ? - What's the future ? London - Oculus Rift VR Meetup 12-13 December 2013

1. VR!
The ultimate reality
Sébastien ‘Cb’ Kuntz
@Cb_VRGeek

2. Sébastien ‘Cb’ Kuntz
(French railways)
“Creating Virtual Reality Games:!
The Fundamentals”
Founder & President

4. • Simplify VR (software)!
• So YOU can spend more time creating apps!
• MiddleVR for Unity

5. Plan
• What is Virtual Reality ?!
• VR applications!
• MiddleVR for Unity!
• Future

6. What is VR ?
• VR is reborn ?!
• VR never died !!
• Market!
• 2013 Europe: 100M$!
• Peugeot: 7M€ since 99!
• Renault: 3M€ new VR system!
• 2018: Between 400M$ and 1B$!
• Because VR is used to improve reality!
• Saving time, money and lives

7. What is VR ?
• Growing because of!
• Proved usefulness & ROI!
• Democratization!
• Projectors!
• Trackers!
• HMDs

8. Virtual reality
Presence in a virtual world

9. CAVE

11. Sony

12. Experience of presence
is in your brain !

13. “VR works because
reality is virtual”
Lawrence Stark
• Perceive reality through
(imperfect) senses!
• Drugs / dreams create
perception!
• Allegory of the Cave (Plato)
Natural reality vs Virtual Reality

14. Cognitive presence
Perceptive presence

15. To create and maintain presence,
you need to ...
• Build hardware
• Build software
• Build user experience

16. VR Applications

17. Prototyping
Design / Ergonomy
• Car, aircraft, boat, tractors, house
appliances!
• Work on objects or environments
that don’t yet exist!
• Identify conception errors early!
• More iterations, better products!
• Test usage !
• Train!
• Maintenance!
• Communication tool
(c) Peugeot PSA

18. Marketing
• Market study!
• Virtual showroom

19. Training
• Military, surgeons, firefighters,
mine safety, oil & gas platforms,
nurses, building industry!
• Practice actual gestures!
• Repeat until master!
• Analysis, replay!
• Practice rare/dangerous
situations!
• Easy accessibility!
• Reduced costs!
• Save material

20. Phobia treatment

21. Current VR Games
• Very early stage!
• Similar to origin of radio & TV!
• People accept low quality because new and not
paying!
• Rift is not (yet) a complete VR platform!
• “Just” display, missing interaction devices!
• Missing hand & head position tracking, joystick

22. Current VR Games
• We don’t know how to make simple VR games!
• Adding as much hardware as possible won’t work!
• Presence is fragile!
• Adapting existing games!
• Automatic drivers conversion can’t deliver on promise!
• “Can be played with any game using keyboard/
mouse”

23. MiddleVR for Unity

24. • Platform for creating
interactive 3d applications!
• Widely used!
• 2 million registered
developers

25. Desktop

28. Deployment
• Modify application to!
• Change drivers!
• Change displays!
• Change interactions

29. To create and maintain presence,
you, the author, need to ...
• Build hardware
• Build software
• Build user experience

30. “VR is mainly a software problem”!
! aron Lanier!
J

31. What is MiddleVR ?
• Generic VR plugin
!
• Functionalities
○Manage input devices
•3D trackers, keyboard, mouse, joystick
!
○Manage display
•Viewports, cameras, stereoscopy, cluster

32. Desktop

35. Supported Devices
• Native drivers
• Oculus Rift
• Leap Motion
• Kinect (Microsoft SDK)
• PNI SpacePoint
Fusion
• GameTrak
• Razer Hydra
• Motion Analysis (beta)
• Via VRPN :
• A.R.T
• Vicon
• Optitrack
• Wiimote
!
• Polhemus Fastrak Tracker, 3Space Tracker,
Patriot Trackers,
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ascension Flock of Bird
Intersense IS600, IS900
3dTech HiBall-3000 Wide Area Tracker,
Advanced Realtime Tracking Gmbh DTrack
Client,
World Viz Precision Position Tracker PPT
1.2,
Natural Point Optitrack Rigid Body Toolkit,
Phasespace optical tracking OWL,
...

36. Supported displays
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Virtually any HMD
VR-Wall, Powerwall
Workbench, Holobench
HoloStage
CAVEs
3D TVs
zSpace
Igloo Vision
…

37. MiddleVR 1.4
• Free edition!
• Oculus Rift!
• Leap Motion!
• Kinect!
• …!
• http://www.imin-vr.com/download!
!
• Future!
• Haptics (IPSI - Haption)!
• More interactions!
• Menus & GUI (HTML5)!
• Warping / blending!
• Collaboration / multi-user!

38. Future

39. Perceptive illusions
• Perceive reality through (imperfect) senses!
• Sensitivity of senses!
• Selectivity of attention

40. Perceptive illusions
Redirected walking
(c) Franck Steinicke - Wurzburg
University

41. Perceptive illusions
Change blindness
Change blindness :
(c) Evan Suma - USC/ICT

45. Perceptive illusions
• Playing with limitations of human perception!
• Useful to lower cost/complexity of VR systems

46. Conclusion

47. http://www.imin-vr.com/download
!
Thank you !
Questions ?
!
Sebastien.Kuntz@imin-vr.com
@Cb_VRGeek
@imin_vr