I Painted Whirling Virtual Fire & My Face Felt the Flames

Tilt Brush, which lets you paint in brushstrokes of glowing solid light, is by far the best non-game VR application I've tried out so far -- and thanks to fellow Linden alum Reuben Steiger, whose new company co-sponsored a huge virtual reality party/demo show last night, I got to leap into quite a few.

Rather, the effect was impressive. Developed by Google, the user interface for Tilt Brush is pretty counter-intuitive and kludgy. (Instead of selecting different brushes and paints which actually look like brushes or paints, the more intuitive choice, you have to page through a 3D menu which seems more suitable to 2D.) Once you more or less get it going, however, it is pretty magical: Using Vive's hand controls, you're able to draw in the space in front of you, and to a striking degree, actually feel what you're creating as solid, reactive entities. Specific example: There's a seriously cool fire font in Tilt Brush which paints rivulets of spinning flame wherever you wave -- and if you paint these strokes close to you, you can actually feel the warmth against your cheeks, more or less as you would whenever you blow out a candle.

I mean, if you're asking me if this is the killer app of VR, that's a totally different question:

Like any creative tech toy/toolkit, you're probrably only going to get just a minority that really dives into and masters it, and uses it over a long period of time. But more than that, the form factor is the barrier: The Vive headset in particular is notably heavy and bulky, and requires you to drag around a thick cable: Your de facto tether to the real world, reminding you that all is illusion -- and easy to trip on, if you get too excited. (My legs got tangled/bumped by the Vive cable in pretty much every demo I tried.)

But all that to one side: Can confirm magic does happen.

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Comments

[metacam oh]

How do you feel the flames?

[Wagner J Au]

I guess the visual simulation is so believable, your brain starts shooting out tactile signals based on past experience.

[Betty Tureaud]

I think to remember the same tool in SL fore long ago! Whase the name sky paint?

[g7l]

"you can actually feel the warmth against your cheeks"

> How do you feel the flames?

>> I guess the visual stimulation is so believable, your brain starts shooting out tactile signals

Perhaps it should be written as
"you can virtually feel the warm against your cheeks", and not "actually feel"

[cleste sertizat]

It's mind over matter stuff here. Or at least some brain cell level reflex