- [Host] SwiVRChair: A Motorized Swivel Chair to Nudge
Users' Orientation For 360 Degree Storytelling
in Virtual Reality.
And for presentation we have Jan Gugenheimer.
- [Jan] Thanks, let me try to not break the cable.
Works, great, thanks for the introduction.
My name is Jan Gugenheimer and I'm going
to present the works SwiVRChair that was done
with my colleagues at Ulm University in Germany.
I'm gonna start by showing you
the system that we built.
So what we did, we basically modified--
Oh yeah that's good.
We modified the swivel chair with a motor
to be able to nudge users in virtual reality,
in 360 degree storytelling.
All the footage, all the video footage you're
going to see is about real study footage that we
recorded in our user study.
I'm gonna go little bit on a motivation.
I mean, I think this year is going
to be a big year for virtual reality
in terms of consumer VR.
It's going to be released the HTC Vive,
the Oculus Rift, all the consumer versions are out.
And people are thinking what experience,
what kind of experience people going
to be using in VR.
One thing is obviously gaming.
And the other thing that we were looking
into is storytelling.
How is it to watch a movie or cinematic experience
in VR, actually being there.
And, if you think about the medium itself, VR,
compared to traditional moving telling,
it's probably gonna be a bigger step
than from VR to movie, it's going to be a bigger step
from movie to VR.
And the fundamental thing that you actually
missing is it's a frame which you have
with every movie in every storytelling.
And this frame itself, if you think about it,
so if someone tells a movie, someone tells a
story in a movie he looks into the composition
and the arrangement of objects inside of this frame.
And this is a wonderful quote with
"Cinema in its purest form is visual storytelling
through simple arrangements of images.'
And what all these traditional movie storytellers
do is with this arrangement they, for instance,
guide our attention inside of this frame
or they hide certain things from us.
And, there are certain rules and Alfred Hitchcock
was one of the big things who worked this.
For instance, rules of the size of an object
inside of this frame is gonna be relevant
to the importance of the story.
Or a beautiful example here, a frame-in-frame is
also a technique in this theme
where we get the attention to Dustin Hoffman.
So the author leads our attention to Dustin,
but it also conveys a certain message
because the frame that was done is
through the leg of Miss Robinson so there
also has a sexual tension here.
And for all these things you actually use,
you have a frame, and if you think about VR,
a lot of things with storytelling people say,
"You don't have a frame, you have to think
out of the frame."
Which is basically untrue.
You will always have a frame.
You will always have a field-of-view of something.
The only thing that you lose in VR,
in 360 degree storytelling, is the control of the person.
And with control are gonna be, it's difficult
to say control because what we need to do,
we need take a step back first and think
about traditional storytelling.
So what we know from cinemas and we experience a movie
it is, based on Vosmer et al., it is a lean back experience.
So you sit in a chair, you watch the movie.
A game, on the other hand, is a lean forward experience.
So you kinda engage, you play a lot.
And, what 360 degree movie telling is going
to be, it's a mix of both of this.
We have to combine both of it.
So what I gonna say control what I used here,
we don't want to fully control it.
This what we call nudging.
I gonna go over the implementation that we had.
So what we did is we modified a traditional swivel chair
with a motor, a gearbox, and a clutch.
And it showed this.
So we have a motor here, we have the gearbox,
we control everything through a motor shield
connected to an Arduino, connected to a some type of VR.
And the clutch is essential part here
because we don't force the user to look
towards some direction.
We nudge him, so we can rotate them.
But every time the user decides he doesn't want
to be rotated he can break free.
He can just put his feet on the ground
and he can break out of the rotation
and turn himself where ever he wants.
So we don't taken away the power here.
We just telling him this is maybe
something you want to look at.
And the connection from the toothed belt
to the chair shaft that we have.
So this is how the implementation works.
A chair that we can control the rotation.
We have a sensor, a hall sensor at the bottom of it.
So we always know the rotation of the chair.
We know the rotation of the user itself.
So what did, we were scared initially.
Oh, first, the concepts that we create
now the basic narratives that we have now.
One is we can guide a user's attention now.
We can turn into certain positions
and showing certain compositions
that the author can create inside
of this 360 degree scene.
And also, a new interesting narrative
that we come up with is the blocking of something.
So in this scenario, for instance, you can the
user can hear a monster approaching from the back
but he cannot turn back.
He will see his shadow, but the chair will block him.
Of course, if he like actually wants to turn back
he can, he can break free.
But if he wants to experience this,
he wants to be immersed, he can just accept it.
And, initially when we built it we were scared
about we created a vomit come.
So we turning people in the chair,
we were scared there's got a lot
of simulator sickness things.
We run a initial evaluation.
I'm just gonna go quick over the evaluation.
For details, please look into the note.
We had 18 participants and we used two conditions.
One with the motorized chair,
one without the motorized chair.
And, we wanted to measure for immersion
engagement and measure for simulator sickness.
And we created two demo scenes.
One with a little witch house which you can explore.
One with a warehouse where they can look around and see.
And we created little, little stories
that you would go through.
And we let people experience this.
So, once again, this is real study footage.
One interesting thing that we found is
that people felt more relaxed using the chair
and they accepted the rotation
because what ended up coming up is that they didn't
had the pressure of looking around, trying to find
where the next narrative is gonna to start.
They didn't had the feeling of missing out.
They just relaxed, they had this lean back experience.
And, another interesting thing was they also
enjoyed, just they did this well, of fighting the rotation.
Where the participants said "Ok."
This participant should be rotated actually,
but she decided no I don't wanna.
I don't wanna be rotated, I wanna continue looking here.
And the one point she gonna give in
and she's gonna be rotated to the direction
that we gonna we want to.
In terms of the data, so we had less simulator sickness.
We expect this because the people with the chair
were looking around less in VR.
They had less head movements because
they were more lean back and actually look forward.
So we assume this is one of the reasons.
In terms of enjoyment and presence were significant higher,
enjoyment and presence.
So in conclusion we presented, present the concept
how to nudge attention in VR for storytelling.
And, we showed the technical implementation, and
showed initial user study.
How it impacts immersion and simulator sickness.
That's it.
(audience applause)
- [Host] We do have time for a few questions.
- [Jan] Was it good on time.
- [Host] Was the same.
- [Jan] Wonderful.
(host murmurs to audience member)
- The, let me rephrase the question,
no very nice work.
Actually I thought your point about the framing
I haven't really seen discussed at this conference before.
And I think it is a very salient point
and I understand that your chair is a way of sort
of sort of dealing with that but, can you maybe
elaborate a little bit more on how fundamental
the breakdown of movie making might be
in a virtual reality environment where users
can essentially choose their own frame?
Is that a fundamental problem?
- [Jan] I mean this is one thing, I think we
are storytelling, it's gonna be partially
it's gonna still have old concepts
from movie telling that we have right now
which is also gonna create new and evolve.
And we kind, of course this is a good argument,
we kind of trying to stick to old things that you have.
But are incredibly powerful as well.
So I think it's going to be a mix of both.
The same from traditional, how can I say,
theater to movie, this transition they had.
They had some parts that they took,
but also movie telling cinema created new technologies
and new transitions like several cuts of things like this,
not just one stage.
So it's gonna be a mix of this and this is kinda
what we try to do.
We kinda have this mix of this new thing
and the old experiences.
- Yeah I think it's one thing in gaming
is really poorly done is you get these sort of
cinematic explanations of what your next
action is going to be - [Jan] Yeah.
And you got the first-person shooter.
And I think it's awful to have these kinds of mix modes.
So I think there's really a lot of work
to be done in that area.
- [Jan] Yeah.
- Thank you.
- [Host] Thank you Jan, thank you for thought.
This is the end of the session
and I would like to thank all of the speakers
and I would also like to thank all of the people
listening to the speakers.
I think it's time for lunch.