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The participants involved in the design of With Feel VR are varied in body and mind. Each contributor has unique skills, tastes and desires. Together we believe we have developed software that allows us all to cooperate musically and inhabit musical roles freely. Anyone of us, disabled or not, can be the composer, the conductor or the performer.
However, one major problem that arises from the design of such software is found in variation of our bodies and emotional sensitivities. VR equipment has very defined physical features. A large cumbersome Head Mounted Display (HMD) and sometimes unwieldy controllers. These two factors can make it very uncomfortable to use VR for some and in some circumstances, even frightening.
For this reason we have designed the software to work in a non-VR context also. But then you lose all those lovely immersive experiences. Not necessarily. Eye gaze hardware can help here. Check out the following videos to see how we have incorporated multiple ways to use the composition and VR software and attempted to preserve the immersive qualities of WithFeel VR through the use of eye gaze hardware.
In this video, apart from the very beginning all interactions are done using Tobii eye tracking. Tobii also allows us to track head movements. We use this to allow the user to look around the room. the ‘ghost’ image is there for demonstration purposes and does not appear in the application. bHaptics wearables can be worn to experience haptic feedback to enhance the immersive experience.
If the user wants to use VR but finds the controllers too unwieldy we can simply turn off the controllers and use head gaze for all interactions. In fact with bHaptics attached to the wrists or arms we even send haptic feedback to ensure the experience is still as immersive and that the embodied experience of rough and smooth sounds is still felt.
The mouse controls are basically the same as the eye gaze controls but don’t need any smoothing added. Again you could wear bHaptics on your arms to maintain the immersive experience.
The mouse controls are basically the same as the eye gaze controls but don’t need any smoothing added. Again you could wear bHaptics on your arms to maintain the immersive experience.