VRChat was released last year and has been picking up momentum all over the place. If you have not had the chance to see what it's like, it's worth at least checking out as an observer.
The worlds and experiences are reminiscent of Stephenson's Snow Crash or Cline's Ready Player One in so many ways. It's eery, fascinating, and altogether odd.
Add on top of this that spectators, sometimes in the thousands, watch these virtual experiences live on Twitch.tv, and you have a very "we're in the future" feeling.
You can check out plenty of live streams of people experiencing this on Twitch.tv now:
The founder of Linden Labs, Philip Rosedale, recently released his new VR only successor to second life, Sansar (https://atlas.sansar.com/). It seems pretty promising.
>The worlds and experiences are reminiscent of Stephenson's Snow Crash or Cline's Ready Player One in so many ways. It's eery, fascinating, and altogether odd.
It looks more like VR Idiocracy to me. Especially if you check out twitch and see donation stuff and stream overlays. It's just a platform for vomiting memes. https://imgur.com/ZkJq1cr
On the other hand, if it were super-serious-Deus-Ex-plotting-the-control-of-the-proletariat-VR-Chat, I don't think I could take that seriously either (and would be quickly overrun with Uganda knuckles anyway).
There's more to it than simply what you see at first glance. Snow Crash and Ready Player One described the experience at length. The freedom of expression, of identity of who or what you could be. The ways that people talk, interact, explore, and represent themselves in the virtual realities of those books is more than just "how it looks." Some concrete examples are pulling up virtual windows to access resources from "outside" the reality, or the multitude of sizes and shapes that people represent themselves with.
The descriptions of what earlier versions of the virtual realities in Snow Crash or Ready Player One were, line up with the basics that VRChat encompasses.
Those are some of the things I was addressing when I said it was reminiscent.
The person in that super color flashing psychedelic wendy's costume is a real asshole. That is probably what caused his episode. Then, when he's all seized up with the headset on, she's sitting in front of him and doing all kinds of crazy moves.
It is speculation, but it's not uncommon. I remember about, oh 10 years ago or so, someone attacked an epilepsy forum with a flashing image - the forum had images set to display inline and voila - headaches, and various other ailments beset the community. I don't think there were any seizures proper, per se, from that episode.
> They have no idea what is happening to the guy truly
Either they're intentionally wearing a seizure-inducing costume, or they're not. It's impossible to be certain, but that's no reason to drop the topic altogether.
> If you have proof, or more info
> Noone knows what set this person off
These are extremely odd questions to ask in this context, and imply significant insider knowledge about this community. Can you give us the context we're missing that helps us understand your background with flashing LED costumes?
> If that person was an asshole truly, they wouldn't have moved
Incorrect. Behaving politely and saying "oh, I'm so sorry" is the appropriate action to take, but offers no guidance whatsoever as to their intention.
Was their intention to trigger seizures in others, or were they oblivious to the problem when they designed the costume?
We don't have the evidence to say with certainty what the user's intentions were, and probably never will. But we still need to have a conversation about seizures and user intentions.
This is the human brain we're snow crashing, not just a program, and we owe it to ourselves to try harder to solve this problem. Intentions must be assumed sporadically malicious, as with all Internet-based things, and we should have — and have not — protected these folks from harm.
EDIT: Direct accusations about the individual aren't cool outside of their tight-knit community, because it's not our place to pass judgement or step in as moderators in their (VR-based) forum. It's still okay to discuss culpability of both parties in general and especially in VR and so forth. This is Hacker News. What can we hack together that can be used to filter seizures? Is there a photosensitive material that reacts to strobing by going dark until the strobing stops? Be the first to the finish line to make the danger-sensitive glasses from Hitchhiker's Guide!
I think it definitely could have, but it's very hard to determine the trigger for a seizure.
It could not be related to any triggers too (audio/visual).
It can only be identified by review of the person who it happened to... The rest of us are just speculating, and no point in that :)
Systems, including VR, should have an option to disable/slowdown fast paced color switching on a end-user level of they are known to be susceptible to seizures with visual triggers
> Rogue Shadow VR says he caught up with the player afterwards on Steam, and that he is doing better now.
Since one of the definitions of "succumb" is "die from the effect of a disease or injury," this title is more than a little clickbaity! Mods, can you potentially edit to "User has seizure..."?
I also associate succumb with die for some reason, although I'm not sure why. Maybe in the newspapers if they say 'x succumbed to their injuries' it would imply that?
If you succumb to cancer or another often fatal disease - "fail to resist" it -- that clearly has to mean death. If you succumb to a cold -- failing to resist it just means you are stuck in bed with a bad cold. So I think it's probably because you are used to hearing it used with more serious illnesses, and in your mind a seizure is closer to cancer than a cold.
1. To submit to an overpowering force or yield to an overwhelming desire;
give up or give in. See 'yield'.
2. To die, especially from a disease or injury.
Just because "succumb" is euphemistically used to refer to death doesn't mean it's the only meaning. Perhaps "Users suffers a seizure..." would have been a better phrasing though.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 75.0 ms ] threadThe worlds and experiences are reminiscent of Stephenson's Snow Crash or Cline's Ready Player One in so many ways. It's eery, fascinating, and altogether odd.
Add on top of this that spectators, sometimes in the thousands, watch these virtual experiences live on Twitch.tv, and you have a very "we're in the future" feeling.
You can check out plenty of live streams of people experiencing this on Twitch.tv now:
https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/VRChat
It looks more like VR Idiocracy to me. Especially if you check out twitch and see donation stuff and stream overlays. It's just a platform for vomiting memes. https://imgur.com/ZkJq1cr
On the other hand, if it were super-serious-Deus-Ex-plotting-the-control-of-the-proletariat-VR-Chat, I don't think I could take that seriously either (and would be quickly overrun with Uganda knuckles anyway).
The descriptions of what earlier versions of the virtual realities in Snow Crash or Ready Player One were, line up with the basics that VRChat encompasses.
Those are some of the things I was addressing when I said it was reminiscent.
Photosensitive epilepsy is a real thing, but this is just speculation.
They have no idea what is happening to the guy truly, and we don't know what set it off.
If you have proof, or more info please cite.
Noone knows what set this person off, it could be not related to visuals.
Yes, that person is dancing in front, but as soon as someone says to move away any flashing LED costumes, that person moved.
If that person was an asshole truly, they wouldn't have moved when asked to do so
Either they're intentionally wearing a seizure-inducing costume, or they're not. It's impossible to be certain, but that's no reason to drop the topic altogether.
> If you have proof, or more info > Noone knows what set this person off
These are extremely odd questions to ask in this context, and imply significant insider knowledge about this community. Can you give us the context we're missing that helps us understand your background with flashing LED costumes?
> If that person was an asshole truly, they wouldn't have moved
Incorrect. Behaving politely and saying "oh, I'm so sorry" is the appropriate action to take, but offers no guidance whatsoever as to their intention.
Was their intention to trigger seizures in others, or were they oblivious to the problem when they designed the costume?
We don't have the evidence to say with certainty what the user's intentions were, and probably never will. But we still need to have a conversation about seizures and user intentions.
This is the human brain we're snow crashing, not just a program, and we owe it to ourselves to try harder to solve this problem. Intentions must be assumed sporadically malicious, as with all Internet-based things, and we should have — and have not — protected these folks from harm.
EDIT: Direct accusations about the individual aren't cool outside of their tight-knit community, because it's not our place to pass judgement or step in as moderators in their (VR-based) forum. It's still okay to discuss culpability of both parties in general and especially in VR and so forth. This is Hacker News. What can we hack together that can be used to filter seizures? Is there a photosensitive material that reacts to strobing by going dark until the strobing stops? Be the first to the finish line to make the danger-sensitive glasses from Hitchhiker's Guide!
I think a video filter could do this. See this video on Eulerian Video Amplification from SIGGRAPH 2012: https://youtu.be/ONZcjs1Pjmk
A similar technique to reduce the amplitude of strobing seems plausible.
That's one aspect I would have expected in the article.
It could not be related to any triggers too (audio/visual).
It can only be identified by review of the person who it happened to... The rest of us are just speculating, and no point in that :)
Systems, including VR, should have an option to disable/slowdown fast paced color switching on a end-user level of they are known to be susceptible to seizures with visual triggers
Since one of the definitions of "succumb" is "die from the effect of a disease or injury," this title is more than a little clickbaity! Mods, can you potentially edit to "User has seizure..."?
succumbed to fear <> die
succumbed to love <> die
etc