Gray Newell (Gabens son) appeared as a guest on a podcast with Tyler McVicker (VNN) today and discussed the state of BCI technology at length. He stated with a high degree of certainty that Valves forthcoming 'Valve Index' (terrible name) VR HMD will have EEG brain-scanning capability. He disclaimed it as speculation based on what he knows of Valves general progress with and investment in the technology, but was quite certain it would either be built in or coming as an optional add-on very soon after launch.
He talked a lot about his own experiences with electromagnetic therapy and his belief that it would be widely available as a simple treatment for a great many psychological and neurological disorders (cited: depression, autism, PTSD, dissociative disorders, but repeatedly called out as very widely applicable) within two years, and in use for commercial two-way BCI applications not long after that.
He briefly mentioned Musks Neuralink as an example of a company very seriously pursuing transcranial implants for BCI, based on personal insider knowledge he was not at liberty to discuss.
youtube.com/watch?v=35QvyaRn6OY was the video, but it has been first unlisted and is now private. I'm not sure if he skirted too closely to controlled information, or possibly felt he had over-shared about his personal situation.
This was one of Valves talks last month at GDC. A whole lot of very vague speculative nothing, but there is one moment where they make a pretty pointed tease of pursuing BCI built into VR HMDs as the natural solution to the problem of 'needing to convince people to wear a helmet'.
it's funny, the other thing Gray was really preoccupied with was how severe the problem of this technology not being discussed was going to be.
Wyatt King
Nice post. I really love hearing about this shit.
EEG is pretty useless though in my experience. But maybe that's because I've only seen gimmicky applications with cheap EEG sensors.
Are there any research papers you know about that are relevant?
Colton Miller
a full 128 node EEG applied directly to the skin with conductive gel and given time for the user to correctly train works amazingly well. a 8 node over the hair consumer model is garbage. nobody is going to shave their head and apply conductive gel every time they want to play CoD.
>nobody is going to shave their head and apply conductive gel every time they want to play CoD They might for VR fuck sims tho.
Anthony Richardson
Why would you name your son Gay
Elijah Rogers
Because he's a fag.
Aaron Harris
Checked up on a former friend, he seems like one of those generous altruistic folks.
Currently working on stimulating brain cells with light to among other things, control brain waves and write his name using selectively activated neurons.
Liam Garcia
Mechwarrior chic.
Kevin Ortiz
>In the future you'll connect your thought process to the botnet And it's beautiful
Lucas Smith
>no one downloaded the video
Caleb Russell
What happens when it's a niche podcast stream that's removed within an hour of finishing.
Ayden Brooks
it first got unlisted, so that should have been enough reason to download it just in case.
foveated rendering is the only real headset breakthrough we need. allowing for native-resolution 8K headsets on existing GPUs is the real deal
Benjamin Flores
this is because the video has a bit on the start where no one is talking, so it's not very easy to compare them.
Cameron Hill
Seems like it's going to be LCD [email protected] over 135 FOV, with unique optics as one of its top selling points. We don't know what exactly the new optics do, as Valve has several different related patents. It's also quite possibly go eye-tracking (another thing Valve has their own unique patented solution for), and VNN is insistent it has some kind of haptic feedback through the headphones, which may also be supported by patent (not on that tech itself but for their Chaperone system which got a new patent in March mentioning haptic feedback on the HMD itself).
What is the application here? If it's for home users to test themselves for psychiatric disorders then there are a ton of legal hurdles. It would be considered a "medical device" and would be subject to a bunch of regulatory shit. Doubly so if it's a device that's supposed to treat an existing condition.
Aiden Gutierrez
Valves patented eye-tracking solution works from behind the lenses, with the ability to hide (and seal) away most of the components presumably one of its specific advantages.
Mostly for the sake of feeding broader samples into their ongoing research in actually mapping/decoding the brain scans to useful knowledge.
Ryan Martin
I was stoked for years until I could get ahold of an emotiv epoc, then after about 100 hours just gave up on it and sold it not being able to control shit. Eegs are useless for input outside of registering general mood
Austin Powell
>52:00 >"which is more accurate, Deus Ex or Sword Art Online" >Gray: "Sword Art online"
Serious question: what is the point of all these extra inputs? Like what will they add to the VR experience?
Tyler Bailey
>I absolutely hate to say it, but... His explanation is very on-point. Deus Ex is very much all about imagining what happens if VR somehow doesn't exist.
Cameron Walker
>1440x1600
God, im going to be so disapointed if its not around 2000x2000.
Jack Carter
>will have EEG brain-scanning capability That shit is noisy as all hell outside clinical applications. Wonder how they'll use it?
Ryder Bell
The change to LCD will make a big observed improvement. The optics could be doing any number of different things, eg. Valve has a patent explicitly for SDE mitigation.
I've been thinking about this a lot since the speculation over Indexes optics started, and I really think now that we're potentially much closer to diminishing returns on raw panel resolution (and effective retinal resolutions) than people realize - if the optics can be significantly advanced instead. Which may end up even cheaper and more readily achievable. Valves claimed optical SDE mitigation technique is pretty crazy and I still somewhat doubt it's real and not just weird patent trolling shit, but aside from that I don't see any reason optical foveation wouldn't be possible. We could get the Varjo effect without the expense.
>nobody is going to shave their head and apply conductive gel every time they want to play CoD. if it gives me an edge over the normal faggots, I'll gladly shave my head and apply gel to get my little dick hard butt blasting the competition
Evan Watson
You can control a VR game with no physical input whatsoever. You remove all downsides of the current vr interface of trying to track body movement, difficulty of setup and lack of free space because you simply move your character with your mind just like your real body.
>best case scenario
Nathan Evans
>if the optics can be significantly advanced instead. I keep thinking to that company using pinhole optics for AR and wondering why something so cost effective isn't being looked into further for VR as well. Apparently these are super clear and easy to expand FOV. youtube.com/watch?v=_F442yauXcg
Luke Anderson
that'd be an incredible surprise, i hope you're right.
Noah Butler
Hope you guys don't seriously expect anything crazy here. Please have some healthy skepticism for things you don't really know the inner workings of. Just looking at patents can be very misleading.
Connor Phillips
Check out openbci.com, I'm thinking of getting a Cyton
James Murphy
Proprioception is a sense the body has, similar to touch and hearing, but specifically relegated to the motor sensations and it basically tells you where your limbs are in relation to your body without you seeing them.
Imagine a headset that you put on, and it could tap into your proprioception. You would need no controller, your movements would be extremely precise, and it would be able to sense where all of your limbs are as good ot better than you can, and record that position and motion in real time to control your avatar.
it would read your mind and every action you make would be translated into the game. Every. Action. You dick is hard and you're swinging it around? Yeah, it can record and simulate that. Finger up your nose? it might even be able to sense the deflection of your nasal canal that your finger makes.
Alternately, you could think of moving hard enough and program a headset to take that intent to move and translate it into real game movement. No space for VR? no problem, you have full autonomic control and you could be lying in bed for all the machine cares.
Carter Sanchez
The ONLY thing VR/AR is good for in the end will be porn. If I had money I would short every single VR company that exists. An absolute joke. Normies do NOT want to play VRchat with anime pedos.
Carter Diaz
Fuck the ugly shits. Lets get down to the real meat. Neuralink is going places.
Leo Fisher
As with all optical systems, there are probably trade-offs somewhere that perhaps aren't obvious. This is a single startup who is still perfecting the technique, and it's probably not perfect like that streamer makes it seem. It does look like a promising solution from the little information available about it. But as they aren't selling a product yet, and no one has gotten time with such a product for longer than a demo on a show floor, it's only just a potentially promising solution for now.
prolly has a massive schlong he uses to pick up chicks, and loads money
Jacob Jackson
It's funny how much better he'd look if he weren't fat.
Isaac Ramirez
How did we go from this...
Nolan Miller
This shit again. The more I read about current technology trends the more I want to just switch off my pc and go live somewhere in the deep forest away from everyone, maybe take plenty of books with me
Daniel Butler
He doesnt care, he has a fat wallet.
Landon Hernandez
Nice theory but why don't you have a look at the multiple VR patents Valve filed?
Xavier Gray
I don't care. You can pray my comfy vr lounge out of my cold dead hands.
