Have you ever tried VR?
Did you ever feel a little sick?
Maybe it’s not all in your head, maybe it’s in your chromosomes.
Hey guys Julia here for DNews
Virtual Reality is racing full steam ahead into being one of the fastest growing areas
of future entertainment.
I’ve tried it.
Full headset with goggles and headphones.
I found it kind of fun, but it’s still a ways off from revolutionizing the world.
One main challenge is that men seem to have a better experience with it than women.
Before we get to that let’s take a look at how VR works in the brain.
One study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience found that the brain treats the
space in VR as different from the real world.
Neurophysicist from UCLA were originally searching for clues on Alzheimer's, specifically in
regards to the hippocampus.
A part of the brain that deals with memory but also with spacial awareness and creating
a mental map of the environment.
In the study they tracked the neuron activity of rats as they entered a room and then as
they entered the same room but only on a VR system.
They were studying to see if the brain would respond the same way with both rooms, even
though the VR room wouldn’t have smell or sound.
The researchers found that the brain responded very differently depending on the situation.
When the rats were in the VR room their neurons fired randomly, suggesting they had no idea
where they were in space.
And what’s more interesting, half the neurons that fired in the real room were fired in
the VR room.
It was like half of their neurons were shut down in the fake space.
So maybe there’s something missing from VR with our other senses.
The researchers think we take in clues from sounds and smells to figure out where we are
in real space.
But headphones easily fix the sound problem, but other problems are a little tricker to
solve.
VR is also missing virtual movement, our inner sense called theta-phase precession, and our
sense of where our body parts are, which is called proprioception.
But some companies are working on this, like the Virtuix Omni, which is treadmill to walk
on as you use the Oculus Rift.
You’re attached to this harness and almost buckled into this cage so you won’t fall
off.
Writer Raymond Wong compared it to a baby walker.
And VR is missing things from its visual systems too, something that could lead to gender bias
in VR.
Basically there’s two ways your eyes perceive things like depth.
Motion parallax, is when something is moving towards you it gets bigger in your perception.
And shape-from-shading, when you move around an object your eye picks up on subtle clues
from shadows.
As you move around the object, the shadows change.
But your eye does this by flickering just ever so slightly.
But sex hormones act on the eye, strongly.
So men and women literally see things differently.
Women tend to rely on shape from shading to judge depth and dimension, men seem to rely
on motion parallax.
VR, while it’s made great strides in the past decade, still isn't the greatest when
it comes to shape from shading.
According to Danah Boyd Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and the founder of Data
& Society Research Institute, computers are terrible at simulating that tiny, constant
flickering of your eyes.
So VR systems mostly rely on motion parallax.
What does that mean?
Well Boyd suggests it could be a possible reason so many women get sick from VR.
A system that makes half the world’s population sick, still needs more research.
But it’s definitely something to look forward to in the future.
Just like all the cool innovations Intel is working on!
Intel creates the breakthrough technologies that make amazing experiences possible.
Having Intel inside makes for better experiences outside.
Intel drives innovation with products like processors, wearables and IOT devices, and
within data centers.
In the PC and beyond.
While VR gets better every year, one thing it seems to be getting really good at is virtual
sex!
Check out this video from our friends over at Seeker:
So what improvements do you want to see from VR?
Have you tried it?
Tell us about it in the comments below