Input requested from video / sound / VR people for a neuroscience / philosophy experiment

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#1

Hello lovely people, it’s been a while but I used to be a trustee here and thought this might be a good place to ask a question:

I’m wondering if anyone can help advise me on an unusual project I want to try out. I’m looking for recommendations for a good camera and maybe VR headset for an experiment I want to try. I basically want to attach a camera to my stomach and have the input from that camera going into my eyes in the most realistic way possible in real time. I also want to do the same thing with sound to get a more comprehensive experience of what it would feel like if I saw out of my stomach instead of my eye sockets (the reasons for this will be explained below if you’re interested).

I don’t have much experience with video cameras or VR headsets. I assume the best way to try this would be a WiFi enabled video camera and some kind of VR headset plus a WiFi-enabled mic and noise cancellation earphones? Does anyone have any input on that idea? I would want both devices to be fairly small so as to not get in the way of living life. I don’t have unlimited funds so am curious as to what could be achieved on a budget with this idea.

The purpose of this experiment is to find out if it’s possible to adapt to a different visual perspective. It is inspired by an experiment of how we can adapt to wearing inversion glasses (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/nov/12/improbable-research-seeing-upside-down) but also by the thought that many people end up accidentally or deliberately reducing themselves to their brains only, rather than taking an embodied approach to consciousness. I am curious how the fact that our eyes are so close to our brains might affect this as conscious experience of vision is that we appear to be looking outside of our eyes from within our brains. Same with hearing. So what would it be like if we appeared to see out of a different part of our body?

Hoping to get some pointers on where to begin with the relevant tech :slight_smile:

Hope it’s all going swimmingly up at SLMS

Sarah (now in Brighton)

#2

Sounds intriguing!

Have you looked at the fpv video camera setups they use for drone flying? Importing something like that from China might be the cheapest way to go.

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#3

Something like this:

and the “often bought together” camera and transmitter listed on that page. £280 all in.

Which has head tracking so you can look around the wide-angle video coming from the camera.

Worth bearing in mind that it’s monoscopic, so no stereo depth perception.

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#4

If you need only to view the point of view of your stomach you don’t need radio or any other complex equipment, complexity adds delay, the best way you can do this is with a camera that output HDMI and a head mounted display (which is different from VR) that accept HDMI input .

you can have a cheaper version using the bad old composite analog video, could be way cheaper but less realistic.

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#5

Thanks Rich - that could definitely be a good lead :slight_smile:

#6

cheers Tom, not too bad a price but depth perception sounds like it would be better. Do you know if that’s something FPV drones people tend to have? I might try and hang out with a group and try different headsets as I have limited experience of this

#7

Interesting idea, thanks Andrea. Does anyone know - If the camera was good enough quality could any type of HMD be used as long as it took HDMI input? Is it the HMD that would control whether there was stereo depth perception? I’ve read that it is hard to achieve good stereo depth perception in VR but is that because it’s virtual reality and is it in actuality already achieveable when just passing info from a camera to a heasdset? Or is it a hardware issue that people are still working on? Sorry for all the questions!

#8

They do have stereo cameras/goggles, but you lose the head tracking.

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#9

Thanks, I’ll have to think about whether or not that would matter in my case as I am trying to get away from the importance of the head!

#10

I’ll just move my belly if i need to see something :laughing:

#11

:smiley:

You might get some unpleasant motion sickness if view and head movement are decoupled. Experimentation required!

#12

Yeah…I can hack the headset to have a flight sick bag hanging off the front of it

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#13

Upside down periscope? Fraction of the price.

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#14

https://www.boredpanda.com/eyeteleporter-a-mask-that-displaces-your-eyesight/ OMG look at the fluffy one!

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#15

we should get a red makerspace one…

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#16

Was totally joking. Can’t believe that’s an actual thing?!

1 Like