

PrioVR: Get your ideas moving - supermatt
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yeitechnology/priovr-get-your-ideas-moving

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supermatt
Hmm, the original title was "Kickstarter for Full Body VR Suit". Surely this
one, "PrioVR : Get your ideas moving" is a lot less descriptive?

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thenomad
FWIW (I see this has dropped off the front page now), I agree with you. The
former title actually explained what the link linked to.

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thenomad
Has anyone tested the tech this is based on recently?

I tested it last year and it didn't work too well, but would be very
interested to hear if they've ironed out the bugs since then.

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supermatt
I've sent YEI a message to inform them about this thread, so hopefully we will
have some official response.

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SteveAtYEI
Hello, my name is Steve and I am a developer at YEI.

We've worked a lot with the inertial sensing technology behind the suit, and
have found it to be stable and well-suited to the task of motion capture. The
biggest thing that can go wrong with this kind of technology is the presence
of large magnets or ferrous objects nearby, but even in the roughest
environments we've taken the current version of the suit to(mostly conference
halls with giant steel beams running through them), we've always been able to
calibrate it to work in the environment. There are also ways to automatically
account for temporary magnetic distortions by relying on the gyroscope.

Outside of these sorts of distortions, inertial sensing has always seemed like
a solid option for mocap to us, and one with a lot less potential for error
than an optical or IK based system. I'd be glad to hear about any bugs anyone
has experienced with inertial sensors in the past, and I can let you know what
our system does to alleviate or sidestep those issues.

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swalsh
VR seems like its getting incrementally closer to becoming a real thing. I
wonder though, would that have been true without kickstarter?

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supermatt
I really hope this gets funded.

As popular as the Sixense Stem kickstarter is (exceeded its target within
hours), its severely limited by the max number of sensors (5) in its working
radius for full body immersion (joint positioning in particular) or multiple
player usage.

We really need something like this in order to push the boundaries. The
alternatives cost a small fortune.

(p.s. Not affiliated, just really want this to happen.)

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svantana
Well one alternative could be something like kinect, if you're willing to stay
in one room. Although that might be harder to make really low latency?

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supermatt
Overlooking the optical limitations of the kinect, think of the potential uses
for equipment like this.

Accurate motion capture anywhere (think of what we already achieve with GPS
and limited device gyroscopic data alone), full body augmented reality (your
body is the controller, lol) while walking down the street, the obvious VR and
gaming implications, etc.

This is so much bigger than the ability to hit a ball around or wiggle your
booty on a TV screen IMHO.

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shocks
Great, until you walk into a wall!

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supermatt
You could walk around the perimeter of the wall to 'calibrate' your safe
environment, although thats dependent on the sensor drift (they say its very
accurate).

I'm assuming with the combination of all the (multiple) inertial sensor data
they could probably account for that to a pretty accurate degree.

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kayoone
Thats cool but still, what do you when you hit a wall in real life but could
still go on in the direction in the virtual world ? That would need some
confusing repositioning i would guess

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supermatt
I would expect the game itself to modify its virtual world to account for my
physical boundaries.

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minutetominute
How is this an improvement over using a kinect to sense full body motion?

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supermatt
Kinect: is basically an optical sensor so it requires line of sight. It
utilizes computer vision and a 3d depth map (generated by using an IR
projector and receiver) to make an educated guess as to your bodies
orientation. Line of sight (needs to see you), Field of View (need to be
within range), Body orientation (need to look humanoid, i.e. upright with 2
arms and legs), movement speed (not faster than the optical sensor or IR
projector), clothing (not too baggy), lighting (low IR), etc, can all effect
the (limited) accuracy of the kinect.

PrioVR: A system like this provides accurate positioning of all necessary
joints in your body to form a true 3d representation of your skeletal
orientation without any of the optical limitations or guesswork of the kinect.
You could also use it outside, walking down the street, with a laptop in a
backpack. i.e. it could be used for augmented reality in any situation.

In the future, I would expect a HMD (some kind of visor - an oculus with a
camera in the short-term maybe), a full body suit (like this), and some gloves
(the next project these guys will be working on) to be how we augment reality.
I don't think we can let this opportunity slide, which is why i'm being so
vocal about it!

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minutetominute
The new Kinect for the XboxOne seems to have vastly improved on the
limitations of the Xbox360 Kinect. The PrioVR seems to be too ahead of its
time. We don't have the battery tech to power all the tech you would be
carrying on your body to play any immersive games for an extended period of
time. Therefore, you would more than likely be tethered to a power source. If
you need to stay in one location, might as well use a Kinect where you can be
entirely free of wires. Powering just a visor would seem more feasible than a
whole gaming rig. In addition, the current get-up seems cumbersome. I don't
imagine that most consumers want to spend time strapping a multitude of
sensors to their body just to play a quick game. The sensors themselves are
great, but until we can shrink them down enough to embed them in actual
clothing, I don't think we'll see them in commonplace usage.

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supermatt
I agree that the kinect is more convenient for casual gaming.

That said, I have yet to see a convincing demo of the new Kinect, so far only
having seen increased resolution on the depth visualisation. By the very
nature of the technology it will still have the same limitations as its
predecessor.

The technology in the PrioVR may be a more cumbersome than ideal, but the
proposed sensors are already smaller than those shown in the visualisation
([http://i.imgur.com/oSBEloE.png](http://i.imgur.com/oSBEloE.png) \- the
middle ones are the new sensors). As for further miniaturisation, well it has
to start somewhere (hence kickstarter, i guess).

As for power usage, this kind of device (low powered sensors with a single
wireless hub) combined with a mobile phone and some kind of communication
bridge would likely give you hours of full-system use (the PrioVR, this:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2041280918/vrase-the-
sma...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2041280918/vrase-the-smartphone-
virtual-reality-case) for display and some bridge to access the mocap data on
the phone) off a simple 5Ah battery. Or you could go the oculus route, and
just have a laptop in a backpack, powering everything through USB.

This isn't just about gaming. This is capturing full body movement for usage
in a huge variety of applications. I'm worried that given the current traction
this project has, it will fail to fund, and we're going to end up setting back
immersive AR/VR for another decade.

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minutetominute
I agree that you have to start somewhere for miniaturisation, but if this
technology is introduced prematurely and consumers don't take to it, you may
be doing more damage than if you just let the tech mature in labs and
commercial applications. Just look at the Virtual Boy. VR tech died at the
consumer level when that failed.

I doubt that you could get hours of gameplay. Maybe if you were playing
something very simple, you could do hours, but a fully immersive world would
destroy battery life.

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supermatt
I thought a quarter was pretty small (in UK here, so not sure of the
comparison). In my opinion, this company is bringing what is currently a
multi-thousand dollar setup down to consumer price levels. If they don't get
the response they expect from this campaign, who is going to invest the
millions to make it smaller? Surely that WILL be the death of these type of
systems?

As for power usage, graphically intense 3d games on the iPhone 5 have about
2-3 hours battery life on a 1.5Ah battery (thats screen, CPU, GPU, etc), so
I'd say its still perfectly realistic to expect hours. I don't know the power
usage of this kit though, but i would expect it to be low solely based on its
function.

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biot
How much more would it cost to get the wireless version that they show in the
video and most of the pictures? This Kickstarter is only for the wired version
which seems archaic in comparison.

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supermatt
Its important to note that only the sensors are wired. They connect into a hub
on the chest (which transmits wirelessly), so you aren't tethered to anything.

The wireless sensor version (which they sell as a professional mocap device)
costs about $4000 (which is still inexpensive for a current mocap suit)
[http://www.yeitechnology.com/productdisplay/3-space-mocap-
st...](http://www.yeitechnology.com/productdisplay/3-space-mocap-starter-
bundle) (plus straps).

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ollysb
Multiplayer fights are going to be bloody...

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ydeft
This is pretty awesome. I can't wait to play online multiplayer FPS games with
this.

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supermatt
I'm so excited with all these recent advancements in consumer VR!

