Samsung’s New Headphones Trick Your Inner Ear to Move You in VR
Samsung’s to bring a new set of experimental headphones to SXSW that uses electrical impulses to fool your inner ear into thinking your body is physically moving. What’s more, they seem to be pitching the new headgear for virtual reality use alongside the company’s Gear VR headset.
The process in question is known as Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS) and it’s long been a technique talked about in the virtual reality community as a way to bridge the gap left by visually and aurally induced psychological immersion, or presence. That is, you can only do so much with sight and sound, no matter how good your picture and audio is, you won’t physically feel movement with those methods alone.
GVS uses tiny electrical impulses to stimulate your vestibular system, the sensory system of your inner ear that controls your sense of balance and inertia, into thinking you’re moving when you’re not. The practical upshot is, if you’re able to take output from a game you can in theory simulate the physical sensation of travelling at speed around a race track or riding a roller coaster for example.
The Entrim 4D is describes as a “motion headset that lets you feel (and not just see) VR”.
Counter-intuitive as it may sound, this kind of trickery of the inner ear may help reduce the chances of nausea...bringing your physical sensations in line with those in the virtual world...
Entrim 4D has been declared as “safe”, having been tested on some 1500 human guinea pigs, resulting in the development of 30 ‘movement patterns’...
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