We love hearing about a good experiment, and here’s a pretty neat one: researchers used a VR headset, an off-the-shelf VR360 camera, and some custom software to glue them together. The result? Owl-Vision squashes a full 360° of un-distorted horizontal visual perception into 90° of neck travel to either side. One can see all around oneself, without needing to physically turn one’s head any further than is natural.
It’s still a work in progress, and accessing the paper currently doesn’t have a free option, but the demonstration video at that link (also embedded below) gives a solid overview of what’s going on.
The user wears a VR headset with a 360° camera perched on their head. This camera has a fisheye lens on the front and back, and stitches the inputs together to make a 360° panorama. The headset shows the user a segment of this panorama as a normal camera view, but the twist is that the effect from turning one’s head is amplified.
Turning one’s head 45 degrees to the left displays as though one’s head turned 90 degrees, and turning 90 degrees (i.e. looking straight left) displays the view directly behind. One therefore compresses an entire 360 degrees of horizontal visual awareness into the normal 180 degree range of neck motion for a person, without having to resort to visual distortions like squashing the video.
In a way this calls to mind the experiments of American psychologist George Stratton, whose fascinating work in visual perception involved wearing special eyeglasses that inverted or mirrored his sight. After a few days, he was able to function normally. Owl-Vision seems very much along those lines, albeit much less intensive. It’s apparently quite intuitive to use, with wearers needing very little time to become accustomed. Messing with perception via VR has gone the other way, too. Adding lag to real life is remarkably debilitating for interactive tasks.
The short video demo for Owl-Vision also includes a driving simulator demo in which the driver shows off the ability to look directly behind themselves with ease.
[Video: Owl-Vision: Augmentation of Visual Field by Virtual Amplification of Head Rotation, Augmented Humans International Conference 2024]