This week, a lot of health-centric stories broke in the world of VR, including a story concerning VR childbirth. This is Stories You Might’ve Missed, and we’ll quickly summarize the two most strange, interesting VR stories that broke this week. Birthual Reality brings VR childbirth to the masses The aptly-named Birthual Reality is an application from Nordic insurance company Gjensidige Insurance. This VR experience is a 10-minute, 360-degree video showing off the events surrounding childbirth, including the actual childbirth. The purpose of this VR childbirth simulator is to help prepare parents for arguably the most important day of their lives, and if you’re interested in
Stories You Might’ve Missed: JPEG XS, VR180 and more
During the first half of April, JPEG introduced the JPEG XS format and a good few other stories broke. We weren’t able to cover these at the time, but we can now: this is Stories You Might’ve Missed. Google opens their proprietary VR180 format, JPEG introduces JPEG XS First up is Google, with their VR180 format. This is a photo/video format made for use with VR headsets, allowing easy capture of photo and video at 180 degrees. With hardware supporting VR180 launching soon, it’s important that developers and manufacturers are able to utilize the technology to its fullest extent. If you want more details on
BodyNav tackles movement in VR without motion sickness
Movement in VR is a hotly-contested subject. Those lucky enough to get their hands on the latest and greatest virtual reality hardware are split into multiple camps on this debate, but the biggest two of them are: Pro-analog — those who prefer traditional in-game movement methods (like analog sticks) to simulate walking, running, etc. Pro-teleport — those who prefer more VR-centric movement methods, like teleportation. If you’re interested in learning more about VR motion sickness, check out this video from Super Bunnyhop. The reason for the difference in opinions is motion sickness, which occurs when your perceived movements don’t match up with signals from your
VRChat, seizures and the long-term implications of VR in daily life
With the rising prominence of VR headsets, VRChat has become a very popular option for socializing among virtual reality users. It can also be used by non-VR users, which helps expand the audience of potential players (even if their experience is more limited). VRChat is a virtual reality application, akin to Second Life, where users can create their own avatars and interact with each other in VR Which makes the incident like those depicted above very interesting. If you don’t have time to sit through a 17-minute video, don’t worry: we’ll give you the short version. Basically, VRChat user DrunkenUnicyclist suddenly had a seizure. He
VR blindness simulator accurately represents vision loss
Let’s face it: chances are if you’re reading this that you aren’t blind. If you are blind, you may be reading this via a screen reader or another application. In 2015, 2.3% of American adults were reported to have a visual disability. While this ranges from outright blindness to other issues, this translates to a not-insignificant amount of the population suffering from visual impairment. If you have perfectly-good eyesight and have ever wanted to place yourself in their shoes, now you can. Davis Vision has put out a Vision Loss Simulator which can be operated on a desktop web browser, a mobile 360-degree experience or
Study shows VR Could Improve Eyesight in Children
China is spearheading the research on health, and one such study caught our attention as estimates show that over a million VR headsets are being shipped each month (in China alone). Beijing-based research organization recently released a study named “Experiment Report on the Impact of Long-Term Use of Virtual Reality (VR) Head-Mounted Displays on the Vision of Pre-teen Users” (PDF download). This document suggests that extended use of high-end VR headsets might improve or benefit the vision in preteen population, as explored by six researchers and contributors; Bao Yihua, Advanced Innovation Center for Future Visual Entertainment in Beijing Weng Dongdong, Yu Xingyao, Guo Jie from Beijing Institute of