Necessary Enhanced Abilities for Virtual Reality

[Tbone]

I posted this on the Oculus dev forums, but I thought I would post it here as well in case any of you had suggestions or input:

I want to share a few ideas I had about the best way to handle communication, locomotion, and interaction in VR. The concepts are simple, and most are obvious, but I thought it was worth sharing. Some of these are universal and should probably be adopted in every virtual reality experience. Others depend on the situation. I've come to these conclusions from lots of non-VR gaming as well as beta testing many VR experiences.

I think the impulse is to design virtual reality to simulate reality as closely as possible. While that may be a good start, there are many things about reality that are inconvenient and would prove cumbersome in virtual reality. There are also some things that are easy in reality but hard in virtual reality for the foreseeable future. The easiest way I like to think of this is "what enhanced superhero abilities will make my transition to virtual reality easier and more enjoyable?". Here are a few:

TELEKINESIS - controlling matter with your mind

Ok, so obviously you wouldn't literally be using your mind, but Telekinesis is probably THE most important enhanced ability that should be adopted by nearly EVERY VR experience. Sooner rather than later, will will have motion VR input (like the Hydra, but much better). Once we have it, though, we'll want to start picking things up and interacting with them! The Oculus Rift, however, is designed for a seated experience. If something is on the ground, and I reach to pick it up, I'll probably lose my hand tracking and possibly my head tracking too. Even if the tracking was perfect and I was standing, how many times would I crouch all the way down to the ground to examine or pick something up before I'd get sick of doing it and complain about my back? I have a shitty back, so probably not that long.

Telekinesis in virtual reality means the ability to point at an object that can be held, press a button or make a gesture, and fly that object straight into my hand. You could put a halo or glow over the object to indicate it is available for Telekinesis and put whatever distance limit you want. You shouldn't have to worry about making this work in the "lore" of your game. This should be a commonly accepted practice among nearly all virtual reality experiences.

TELEPATHY - communication via direct link

This one is for social VR experiences - things like VRChat, MinecRIFT, or whatever Metaverse-like thing comes down the tubes. 3D positional audio is awesome in VR, and it's a lot of fun to talk to someone in a virtual space and know who is talking and where they are. Text chat is horrible in VR. Even at a high enough resolution to read, feeling for the keyboard keys is a pain. You should assume that the VR of the near future will NOT involve a keyboard and mouse. That means most all communication will be voice. If you're going to have 3D positional audio in your experience, you should have Telepathy as well.

Telepathy means you can link to a person or a group in your experience and communicate regardless of where you are. It's basically like a phone call. Or Skype. Or Teamspeak. As a guild leader, I think this is essential for meeting up with friends and performing tasks as a team. Currently we play Rust. We use Teamspeak to stay in communication at all times, but everyone else we only talk to via positional audio when we are close to them. Your players shouldn't have to rely on an external source for this, however. Siri-like integration would be ideal eventually, but a simple UI with a list of friends/saved groups will do. You can give the voices an effect so it sounds like they are in a player's head or at least to differentiate between external audio and Telepathy audio. Call waiting, etc. can also be implemented.

FLIGHT

This one will be situational. Obviously many experiences are designed to be explored slowly and from a certain perspective only. If you are doing virtual tourism or any other large place to explore, however, you should consider allowing the ability to fly. It won't be for everyone, but Firebox handles this great. I enter a portal and explore a few rooms. I may go 4 or 5 rooms deep and decide I want to leave and go back. I really don't want to have to slowly walk back through all the rooms, though. Flight is one way to fix this.

Flight in virtual reality is a way of speeding up movement. In Firebox, enabling flight increases the movement speed quite a bit. It also allows you to design and build upward or downward instead of being forced to design in a traditional way only. If this is something that would make your experience more convenient, design for it early on! Flight can also be a solution to movement in general. It may be an easier VR experience for the player to believe they are hovering above the ground flying around than trying hard to mimic walking. With the right audio and animations (hey, how about a hover board!), this could become the most common means of locomotion in VR!

TELEPORTATION

Another great solution to exploration implemented by Firebox. We've all read Ready Player One and Snowcrash where people are expected to get on virtual ships and fly to virtual planets or ride on virtual motorcycles to get anywhere. Exciting to think about, but it's not at all practical or convenient, and it's not how our current Metaverse (the World Wide Web) works. So if you are designing a virtual hangout space or exploration space, consider allowing Teleportation.

Teleportation in virtual reality is the ability to pull up coordinates/addresses/bookmarks and instantly go where you want to. In Firebox, you can type in an address and a portal appears directly in front of you. Click that portal and can walk straight into your destination. It's very cool and super convenient! I'm not saying don't design a cool spaceship and planet and transportation system. I'm just saying give people options so that if they only have 10 minutes and want to spend it checking out your cool stuff, don't force them to go through 30 minutes of travel to reach it.

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That's all I've come up with so far, but feel free to add your own if you think of anything. I'm of the belief that VR is for immersion while your smartphone is for convenience. This means gaming and media will be on your VR headset while information and communication will be on your smartphone. One way to bridge this gap is to try to make VR as convenient as possible, so I think these "enhanced abilities" are a start. At least try Telekinesis. The others largely depend on if you are designing a social experience or not, but they are all worth considering. Virtual Reality allows us to break laws of nature. We don't have to limit our experiences based on reality. Let's design something smarter than that =P

[Virtual]

I have played all megaman games. (With lan and his net navi)

Now what does this mean?

Well I believe the web should be a stable never moving map, where if you walk through websites and areas today to get to this website, when you try tomorrow it should be the exact same thing.

So I could potentially walk from my house to my schools internet space, and back.
The same with walking from my school to my house.

Just my 2 cents.

~Virtual

[Zero]

I agree that pathways should remain as stable as possible, but I also think you should be able to super speed or fly to your destination, or "teleport". It's VR! We can live out our greatest fantasies! Who hasn't been late to work and wished they could put their car in flight super speed mode?

[Tbone]

I have played all megaman games. (With lan and his net navi)

Now what does this mean?

Well I believe the web should be a stable never moving map, where if you walk through websites and areas today to get to this website, when you try tomorrow it should be the exact same thing.

So I could potentially walk from my house to my schools internet space, and back.
The same with walking from my school to my house.

Just my 2 cents.

~Virtual

I'm a bit confused by this. So you think it should be necessary to travel from virtual space to virtual space in almost a 1:1 real life ratio? I'd have to base the FA site in the central US and if you wanted to visit it and you lived in the UK, you'd have to travel for a day to check the forums? If so, that's never going to happen.

In fiction, virtual reality often works that way - riding a motorcycle, buying a ticket to another world, etc. In reality, we already have a virtual reality called the World Wide Web that's just on a monitor and everything is instant. If we want anything past immersion and entertainment to exist in virtual reality, it will have to be just as convenient to access. If you're able to create a virtual space much like a website, I imagine that the system to access it will work similar to web addresses rather than a realistic transit system.