REAL-WORLD MIND GAMES

Intrinsic Visceral Knowledge

From 1992 through 1994 at many conventions and trade shows, LEEP Systems demonstrated a telepresence system using the CYBERFACE2™ Stereo Head-Mounted Display using video signals provided by a stereo pair of remote cameras mounted on a the hand-holdable Telehead™. When the wearer of the display and the holder of the "eyes" were slightly competitive friends, the screams and laughter would resound through hotel corridors and over the din of trade shows. The friend holding the eyes would have the victim crash into walls, spin and fly upside down, receive a punch or a finger in the eye and suffer endlessly creative other indignities.

It was the most exciting Virtual Reality demonstration in existence, and it may still be. Of special interest is a demonstration routine that included flying the victim, sometimes upside down, out an open second or third story window of our headquarters building. The special interest lies in the fact that invariably - invariably - the victim would reach out to grab the window frame to arrest his or her flight in spite of the fact that he or she was nowhere near the window, but ten or twenty feet safely away in the room.

Now the display used was blurry - the wearer was in effect legally blind. The field of view was about 140 degrees. All of the victims knew intellectually that they were in no danger, so why the panicky grab for the phantom window frame? Clearly the higher mental functions were out of the loop. There is something about a wide view that engages a visceral, reflexive response. Real research is called for, but the basic truth of the response is inescapable for both victims and the observers. We believe a fuller field will engage deep emotion, and who knows what sorts of memory, when provided as the setting for virtual experiences. We are convinced that Videowrap™ will enhance many virtual experiences beyond description.

Eric Howlett Masks His Vision Circa 1990

In the late 1980s, Eric Howlett began mulling over the observation that people had no trouble ignoring their eyeglass frames and that loss of peripheral field was discovered in persons who did not complain of it. He supposed that, perhaps, ignoring the frames is quite a different matter from ignoring the field outside the frames, and that adjusting to the slow loss of peripheral field is quite a different matter from the sudden onset of the handicap.

A simple experiment would illuminate both suppositions: Mr. Howlett decided to occlude his own field outside his glasses frame with masking tape and see what happened. He got quite a fright. The following is the sequence of events, as originally told by Eric Howlett in a letter to a NASA official from 1990 and then later published in his paper, "Wide Angle Orthostereo":

The first supposition was confirmed instantly: Occlusion of the extra-frame field is vastly more difficult to ignore than the frames themselves. I did it readily when discussing lenses on a table, and instructing someone in assembly techniques, but as soon as I had to move myself around it was another story. My frames are not small, being 56mm clear glass in the largest dimension and 44.7mm by 50mm at the vertical and horizontal through the center of vision - providing almost the field of the LEEP viewer. Yet I had the sense of bumbling about, always wary of tripping or running into a post or a bookcase, and needing constantly to swing my head from side to side to avoid doing so. Descending stairs was a decidedly conscious process, with a constant bobbing of the head required to stay in adequate "touch" with my surrounds. Clearly, as to the second supposition, adaptation, while no doubt possible, was not a trivial process and could palliate, but not eliminate, the handicap. That it was indeed a handicap was dramatized during a short drive.

Backing out of a parking space with occluded extra-frame field was unpleasant (and required a limber neck) and the head-swinging when I entered an intersection seemed absurd. I decided it was really risky and just to go around the block and back to the parking lot. It happened at the second left turn.

It seemed to be in the back of the car - a motorcycle gunned to about 12,000 rpm - it could have been on the roof, the way it sounded! But by the time I could scan the scene, it was gone! I never saw that motorcycle!! A chill ran from my medulla to my solar plexus. I crept back to the lot and tore off the tape.

And the good whole world came back; it was just as if two lost screens in a three screen theatre were restored, I hadn't missed then anywhere so much as I appreciated them now!

I can hardly recommend this experiment, but even in gedanken form, or anecdote, it may serve to confirm the importance of the peripheral field - at least when the subject is acting bodily in the remote or artificial situation. The LEEP system is not yet wide enough. Resolution (in the periphery) is not the problem — all you need to be able to do is perceive motion, or a presence, to feel safe and THERE. A 180 degree field would be damn nice!

DANGER! DO NOT MASK OFF YOUR PERIPHERAL FIELD IN REAL LIFE!!