Virtual reality (VR) might get its popularity from applications in film, gaming, and entertainment, but it will become a power to change the way healthcare industry works. I know many healthcare areas are trying to use VR, such as surgery simulation, medical training, physical rehabilitation. I am particularly interested in VR and physical rehabilitation, as I've heard a lot of stories about people resisting the rehabilitation process as it is boring and stressful. To learn more about VR and how VR may be applied to physical rehabilitation from a designer's perspective, I had a conversation with Christian Ervin who has done many experience design work with VR.
What is VR?
In general, VR is the presentation of synthesized binocular vision of a virtual environment. In most small scale VR setup, two screens or two partitions of one screen are used to let users perceive stereoscopic vision. Christian suggested thinking of VR as a prerecorded 360-degree environment that the user can choose a view from a virtual camera. VR is primarily about vision, but it tries to synthesize all the human sensory experience. Two known example of VR devices are the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
VR's pros and cons
VR seamlessly and realistically creates other environments and experiences for people. VR applications can transport people into different worlds. Christian thinks that the VR technology has reached a point where the experiences could be convincing. However, he noted that a lot of VR projects are for individual use and they lack the social aspect. For example, experiences in VR cannot be easily shared with other people. Furthermore, some people cannot adapt to the VR environment and they can develop motion sickness symptoms like nausea and even vomiting.
Recent advancement of VR
Broadly speaking, the screen resolution in modern VR devices has been much higher than before. There is better motion tracking that match the user's head position with its virtual position in the VR scene. The availability of high-performance computing has significantly reduced lag, which may help mitigate the motion sickness for some users. Christian mentioned that with the HTC Vive, users can walk around in the VR and the system can sense where they are. With Oculus Rift, the users are locked in one position. The HTC Vive and Oculus Rift support new haptic controllers from. And of course there are devices like the Leap Motion that can detect the user's hand realistically.
How can a designer work with VR
Christian thinks for VR right now the barrier of entry is actually super low. He recommended Unity and its asset store. For example, I can use preexisting parts (i.e., rigged models) to create a human body in physical rehabilitation. I can also download pre-made VR scenes. By putting different pieces together, I can quickly move into the prototyping stage without doing a lot of 3D modeling. However, I still need some basic understanding of 3D coordinates system and how rotation works in 3D, etc. Christian strongly encourages just jumping into some Unity tutorials to see how far I can get.
How can VR be applied in healthcare
Christian mentioned “The Museum of Future in Dubai” project he worked on before. In the museum, a designer can build a diagnostic environment in which people go through a series of motion range tests to see how well they can align their body with the virtual targets. This may be useful in a physical rehabilitation exercise. For example, the virtual targets may be moving away from the patient and the patient is guided to stretch and reach the targets.
Christian mentioned another research project for mental health rehabilitation in Barcelona, Spain. With their setup, the patient sits in front of a virtual Freud (therapist) and responds to questions from him. The virtual camera moves to behind the virtual Freud and the patient sees himself. The patient can then ask himself questions from the perspective of the therapist. The patient can go back to his own viewpoint. So the patient has the opportunity to take both sides of the conversation and witness himself separated from his body. The third person view of the patient's own body and the alternating viewpoints may also be interesting for physical rehabilitation.
Challenges of designing VR for physical rehabilitation
Christian suspects it may be difficulty to get a sense of body positions and movements in VR. He suggested using systems like Microsoft Kinect to get gestural input from the patient, or combining HTC Vive and Leap Motion to get general body position and relatively hand position to infer limb positions. Overall, given the potential complexity of VR setup, I may need to lower my expectation and think about what the minimal requirements are.