In a recent interview with News Valve CEO Gabe Newell, he discussed a partnership with OpenBCI to improve VR headsets, improve immersion, and resolve VR motion sickness.
The vast majority of the interview focuses on forward-looking predictions for Brain Computer Interface Technology (BCIs), which are hardware that can connect directly to your brain signals to detect emotional reactions, feelings, and more.
‘We are working on an open source project so that everyone can have a high resolution [brain signal] read technologies built into headsets in a bunch of different modalities, ‘Newell said. ‘If you’re a software developer by 2022 and do not have one in your testing lab, you’re making a silly mistake … software developers for interactive experience[s] – you will absolutely use one of these custom VR headbands to do this regularly – simply because there is too much useful data. ‘
There are two specific benefits that VR will have through this discussed by Newell. To begin with, it can significantly increase immersion, such as dynamically increasing problems when a player becomes bored or feels undisputed. Or maybe in a procedure game like the BCI notice when a random layout is something you do not like or particularly like.
Newell then explains that in the future, BCIs will enable the creation of virtual worlds that far exceed our perception of reality, stating that “the real world will cease to be the measure we apply to the best possible visual fidelity.”
Towards the end, there is also a discussion of how BCIs in VR can actually solve VR motion sickness, or the feeling of dizziness that some users mimic during specific types of artificial movement. The feeling can already be artificially suppressed. “It’s more of a certification issue than a scientific issue,” Newell explains.
Maybe that’s why Valve was so quiet about their plans for the Valve Index – they’re working hard in the near future for the next generation of computer interaction.
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