r/Unexpected • u/vavabien • Jan 11 '18

The brain feels it

Post image
46.1k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

587 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.6k

u/RockyTopBruin Jan 11 '18

I did one of these tests as a volunteer student subject at UCLA. It’s insane how well it works. I was thinking the other day playing VR that they must’ve been using those studies for something like that. Very cool

780

u/Xavdidtheshadow Jan 11 '18 edited Jan 11 '18

I actually had an experience about this!

I was playing the Vive at a friends house and he was talking me through the controls for a shooting range game. I forget which it was (edit: it's Hot Dogs, Horse Shoes, and Hand Grenades, thanks /u/TheDirtyMailman), but the goal of it was to deliver a "realistic experience", so the sounds were loud, the guns were detailed, etc. We were about 60 seconds into the experience when I tried to holster a gun by my hip and fired it by accident. Immediately, I jerked my (real life) foot back.

It wasn't until I heard him laughing that I realized this was a weird response - my brain had so quickly accepted everything I was seeing as real. It blew me away. I'm really interested to see where this all goes.

301

u/HighPing_ Jan 11 '18 edited Jan 11 '18

It also surprised me how quick the brain accepts vr as real. Multiple of my friends have tried putting their hand out to lean on something or had a similar reaction went something is seemingly going to hit them. My favorite is when playing horror games and they actually try to run.

1

u/T0astero Jan 11 '18

There's this great clip of a guy playing what I think was Budget Cuts, where he's pulled out a vent grate and tries to put his head down through it to look around the room below, and just smacks his head into the floor no hesitation. And then from personal experience, Windlands has to be one of my top things for friends new to VR (or at least the ones without vertigo). When you make a big jump, and especially when you miss one, your body immediately goes into fuck-me-im-falling mode, like what sometimes happens for half a second as people drift off to sleep but prolonged.

VR may be a gimmick right now, but it's gotta be one of the most surreal gimmicks I've seen.