From: Robin Hollands Subject: Re: HUMAN-FACTORS: Children, VR, and home entertainment Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 17:44:58 +0000 Message-ID: <32A4671A.2C64@shef.ac.uk> Organization: Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield Marc Bernatchez wrote: > I'm still waiting to see reference of articles you may have published that > addresses the very point this whole thread was about at first... The > influence an HMD could have on kids in their 8 to 15 years old. I'm just > applying your own technique Robin, that is that you need publications and > such to support your sayings and expertise in a given subject. Anyway, I > never called myself an expert. Granted, but I was critisising your approach, not your findings - I think John (definitely a published expert!) did that succinctly enough. You may also want to check out Arthur Zwern's paper from ECDVRAT '96 which had similiar positive conclusions. > >Regular newsgroup readers > >will remember that I mathematically proved Marc's 'quality of HMD' > >measure to be fundamentally faulted a few months back (the best HMD > >had a 0 degree field of view!). > > Still totally wrong. I appreciated Robin's feedback and removed any sever > flaws from the algorithms based on his concerns. Where did you saw the 0 > degree thing anyway Robin? |:-) Simple mathematical extrapolation! > Robin robin, I didn't want people to agree or disagree. I just said let's be > careful... after that, do what you want with the warning sign. I don't see > why you and Mr. Wann felt so attacked by these light remarks I and other made. The reason why I (and probably John) reacted the way we do is because we've already made it (just) through a media hate campaign triggered off by such light remarks. A couple of years ago a law firm in London misquoted old research in a similar way to your interpretations and issued a press release. This was immediately followed by high profile stories in the national media. As the misquoted source, John spent much time fielding criticism, and as the chairman of the UK's primary society of VR researchers, I also spent much of my time trying to correct and calm people. The media will always pick up on a good story, and unfortunately 'VR ruins your children's eyes' is a more juicy headline than 'VR really isn't that bad for you after all'. > >interesting to see if the prominent researchers back up Marc's subjective > >arguments, but since I know much of the content already, I would not put > >any money on it! > > Robin, I'll be as happy than you if I hear that there is no such problems to > be worried of. Like I said, I'm not trying to win any battle here. Are you? Anyone with facts to back up concerns about HMD safety, and concerned to 'protect the public' should simply present their findings to their government's safety and/or standards organisations. HMDs in Europe will soon have to pass a barrage of ISO tests before they can be sold within the EU, and I would be surprised if the rest of the world didn't follow suit. It is always easy to criticise and play on people's fears, but it does beg the question, "How do you prove an HMD is safe?". It is relatively easy to prove an HMD (or anything else) is unsafe, simply by highlighting the fault. Current HMDS could be considered dangerous for much more obvious reasons than subtle arguments about optics; what about getting the cables wrapped around your throat?, what about whiplash if you move to the umbilical limit a little too fast?, what about falling over obstacles whilst blinded? etc. Perhaps the question really should be "Are HMDs safer?". Arthur Zwern ran some control groups in his recent trials using monitors instead of HMDs. *If* HMDs do prove to cause eye defects, how do these compare with use of monitors (already known to cause problems and subject to health and safety regulations), or even reading from an early age? I don't claim to have the answers, except that John Wann's publications and Arthur Zwern's presentation both suggested their wasn't a significent problem. The last Virtual Reality World conference in Boston had a special session dedicated to health and safety in VR without a single paper presenting any negative findings. I am aware of some of the early work (including John's), including such classic studies as staring at a stationary virtual object for a couple of hours, which produced negative findings. However, on the whole, approaches were acknoledged to be poor, or based upon first generation HMDS (which definitely did have problems). Incidentally the 'Health and Safety in Virtual Reality' conference I was supposed to be chairing, and organised by one of the major research labs in the UK, failed to attract any more than 10 delegates! Given that level of interest, perhaps health and safety of VR is no longer ackowledged by the general community as being of interest! Cheers, Robin (UK VR-SIG Chairman) Email: r.hollands@sheffield.ac.uk WWW: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/staff/rjh/rjh.html BOOK: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/vrhmhb/vrhmhb.html