Philip Rosedale & High Fidelity Working with Neuroscientist & 3D Brain Map to Improve Avatar-to-Avatar Interactions

I mentioned how Philip Rosedale aims to achieve extremely low latency to improve avatar-to-avatar interactions in his new Oculus Rift-compatible High Fidelity virtual world; but it's not just a matter of shortening ping time -- he's also working with a neuroscientist and 3D brain scans to improve that experience too:

"Basically," Philip tells me, "you can see things like 'I feel a certain way toward you' in the scanner and we can look for that data and then test breaking it with various different transformations of person into avatar." Philip demonstrated this at South by Southwest last March with Dr. Adam Gazzaley of UCSF, but media coverage at the time didn't quite explain Philip's purpose, which is to improve the avatar-to-avatar sense of presence in High Fidelity:

"Adam and I have know each other for a while, and have been exploring ways to work together to use his expertise and lab to help us understand the experience of 'presence' between avatars/people." Here's how:

"We're interested in whether there are neurological signals that are visible either to EEG and/or fMRI that can help design High Fidelity by showing us how to bridge the gap between the face-to-face experience and the avatar-to-avatar one."

At SXSW, they showed off the "Glass Brain" (video above), which they demonstrated live with Philip's wife Yvette hooked up to the scanner.

"The 'GlassBrain' itself is entirely Adam's lab's work," adds Philip. "The demo we did at SXSW had both a demo of the latest High Fidelity avatar stuff and then the Glass Brain with Yvette. We are looking at ways to combine both technologies in future work."

In other words, we're getting to a point where virtual world/VR interactions are modeling our awareness of each other on the neurological level. If we're lucky, we'll hear more about High Fidelity's progress at Philip's SVVR keynote next week.

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Comments

[melponeme_k]

Interesting.

It makes me wonder how much military money is behind all of this.

[James OReilly]

@mel I would imagine No Military Money...

High Fidelity and Linden Lab have not taken the effort to be appraised as quality vendors under Capability Maturity Model Integration CMMI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMMI
as required by U.S. Dept. of Defense!

[Ajax Manatiso]

Of course, if all else fails, you resort to ....umm... talking.

[James OReilly]

Historical Analogy?

Wright brothers 3D axis control 1903 > The brothers' fundamental breakthrough was their invention of three-axis control, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and to maintain its equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers

World War I Aeroplanes in 1914 - the Wright brothers were no where to be seen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_aircraft#World_War_I

USA 1916 > Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Co. (Wright brothers are still not seen) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_Aeroplane_and_Motor_Company

Curtiss-Wright Corporation 1929 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss-Wright_Corporation

Steam-Linden Lab Corporation 2029?

[James OReilly]

The military positions their money by benchmarking opportunities with competitive technologies...

- The U.S. Army Research Office has taken a keen interest in the possibilities of 4D printing. How keen? US $855,000 worth
http://www.core77.com/blog/digital_fabrication/us_army_research_office_backing_4d_printing_with_855000_grant_25690.asp

- RAF jets fly with parts produced on 3D printers
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/raf-jets-fly-with-parts-produced-on-3d-printers-9040292.html

High Fidelity and Linden Lab are obviously not in this league of opportunities.

[Metacam Oh]

Hope he isn't spending a lot of time on it, cause no one really wants this.

[Adeon Writer]

Do they plan on consumer grade brain scanners going mainstream or something?

I don't want Facebook to have access to my brain scans.

That's creepy, the kind if creepy thing that would keep VR from going mainstream.

[melponeme_k]

@James

Military was highly involved in SL(revealed during the Snowden leak). They also had a big estate, I remember I visited those sims before they moved to a private opensim.

To think that they wouldn't be interested how VR affects people along with brain scans is naive. But who knows, maybe they have moved on. I doubt it though.

[Account Deleted]

Maybe Philip has good intent but the idea of using others desktops & phones is really going to shy away many as not everyone can afford these newer devices to do this.

I offer Philip another solution if he really wants it to go mainstream then we should be offered corporate sponsorship of our worlds as a cost saver and alternative host
Example would be a garden but instead would be Coca Cola Gardens sponsored by coca cola while we may lose a few creative rights and need to work within certain guidelines for our sponsor we would have higher freedoms from cost.

This is an avenue i have not heard him mention if he really wants to win over supporters for his new baby then he needs to offer more options to own your own world even if it means sponsorship The real winning ideas are not the ones he has not thought of but the ones he never revisited.
he needs to look into the past to find the future

[Hamlet Au]

"The military positions their money by benchmarking opportunities with competitive technologies"

The US Army is spending a lot of money on OpenSim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Open_Simulator_Enterprise_Strategy

But as any US taxpayer can tell you, military spending is itself not a good benchmark of competitive technology. Far more often, it's a benchmark of how much defense spending a Congressperson can get for his or her constituents.

[James OReilly]

Kevin Simkins from Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge reports on Nov 13, 2013:

"Sad news to report: Due to the fiscal uncertainty and issues with conference attendance within the U.S. government the Federal Virtual Challenge (formerly known as the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge) has been discontinued effective immediately. I learned this unfortunate news late last week when I spoke with the challenges founder & creator Tami Griffith, Science and Technology Manager, Virtual World and Game-based Training Architectures for the U.S. Army Simulation & Training Technology Center (STTC). The FVC website was just updated with the news scrolling across the top bar of the homepage: http://fvwc.army.mil/
According to Tami: "The challenge itself has been an remarkable tool for the military specifically and the government in general to locate focus areas within the Immersive Synthetic Environment space that they would want to expand on. It has been a great way to recognize the real innovators in the field." Tami also shared with me that it's unfortunate that they had to discontinue the challenge but also wanted me to know that "nothing is off the table" in regards to the possibility of reactivating the challenge again in the future. The inaugural year on the challenge was 2010 and it ran for a total of 4 years. This event was being conducted in order to reach a global development community to provide innovative and interactive training and analysis solutions in virtual environments. The event criterion was intentionally unbounded to allow for creative solutions and allow for the exploration of possibilities for the use of all types of virtual environments and spaces."

Andrew Hughes also followed up and reported: "We just had to shut down our servers for USAF, USAFA, Army, and DOT this week. #ouchtovirtualworlds"

[Hamlet Au]

As I said, military spending is not a good indicator of anything except that there's a lot of military spending on a lot of projects, many of which aren't going anywhere.

[melponeme_k]

@Hamlet

We are all currently commenting on a military project that, I guess, went nowhere. LOL

[Iggy]

@James, I'm not sure it's sad news.

http://fvwc.army.mil/ is down now, as if it never existed.

I'd rather have my tax dollars go to preventing cyber-terrorism, protecting US infrastructure from attacks like the one on the San Jose substation, and making the F-35 Lightning work properly, given the likelihood of resource-wars when the US fracking "boom" goes bust.

[irihapeti]

about who is going to absolutely love HiFi tech

children/tweens/teens who play video games. But only if it is in the games they want to play. They not going to be much interested in using for schoolwork. bc schoolwork. They not going to be much interested in using with Mum or Dad or Nana. bc Mum and Dad and Nana

[meep]

I think it probably means the military research on virtual worlds is going behind the scenes.

As to PHil Rosedale's project, it looks like it is heading toward virtual sex rather than virtual war.