Biofeedback game - would you play?

In the interest of full disclosure, Wild Divine says they are not presently selling the biofeedback device (the "Light Stone" and sensors) separately from their first game (The Passage), since the second game (The Wisdom Quest), due out this spring, will be an extension of The Passage and will require The Passage to play (lists for $159, usually goes for about $10 less than that, or eBay has them for about $130). However, they said they would consider it if there is "enough demand," for about $99 each.

That's somewhat more than I was hoping, but not, hopefully, completely out of reach for people. I don't know what "enough demand" means. I've asked for clarification.

They have an affiliate program, so if folks buy through our project, we'd be able to offer a month of free access to our area or something. I can't make promises about that until I finish the business model, but that's the kind of idea I'm thinking of.

Neko

Very interested.

There is another fellow who's group belong to who is working on something similar. I am me and I will hook you up.

The bio-feedback stuff looks cool. Does it work well?

I'd like to try adding other stuff, like the dance carpet / gamercize stuff..

http://store.biofeedbackzone.com/gsbiun.html

Here's another one of some sort.

I'd be interested in knowing about another group doing something similar... similar in what way?

The biofeedback controls in the Wild Divine game work very well. I was surprised, because heartrate controls on gym equipment, for example, often have trouble getting any reading on me, but the WD sensors work fine.

Dance mat input would be quite interesting. I don't do that kind of hardware-level programming-- someone who does would need to make a transmitter to send the data across a port to a reflection server, similar to what we're doing with the bio data.

Unless Linden Labs wants to enable additional input devices, that is. Which I think would be a capital idea, but given everything else people are asking for, I'm not holding my breath on it.

Neko

Interested.

The biofeedback device is going to be a huge barrier to entry. $100ish for a device that costs maybe as much as a quarter of that to make (seriously, the circuitry in these things is pretty braindead, all they do is measure skin resistance) doesn't seem like a good deal. Recommend you look into the possibility of using some cheaper device, if one is available. I bought a biofeedback device at Radio Shack in the early '90s and it cost all of $15. Granted, it didn't have a USB connector, but USB driver ICs are seriously cheap, on the order of a few dollars or less.

XML-RPC is one-way only for the time being. SL can call out to XML-RPC servers, but outside machines cannot initiate an incoming connection over XML-RPC. Linden Lab hopes to have XML-RPC fully bidirectional sometime this year. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, I think. Any necessary two-way comm can be done through e-mail. Expect a latency of a few seconds each way, plus however many 100s of milliseconds it takes for the script to figure out what to do with the input. This latency could potentially prove annoying, although I don't know - biometrics might not change quick enough to require a faster channel.

Then there is the question of how to actually talk to the biometrics device. You are going to need talent who can program for Windows, and preferably Mac and Linux down the line, & who can A) init the device, B) decode its telemetry, and C) set up some kind of comm gateway into SL. That could necessitate getting the protocol spec from the manufacturer, assuming it isn't so simple that it can be reverse-engineered in a few minutes (which might be the case, given it's probably only sending one or two floating point numbers down the wire at intervals.)

It might be useful to have a central data store that tracks what players are online (and interested in joining a coop game), info about how to talk to their biometrics devices, games currently available or in session, player stats within a game, etc. This is something I can help you out with directly, but that would be a few months down the road after you actually get a working comm channel out to a biometrics device.

Input devices support in SL might be a little more evolved by this time next year. Would be nice for programs to be able to directly talk to newview.exe on the client side, establish a pipeline for input data that could be sent to a script server-side. This would probably be a bit more efficient than XML-RPC. Dunno if it'll happen any time soon.

Okay, this is really neat.

$160 for the hardware and 'The Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage' is a little steep, but if it could be made to work with SL the content could be endless. and they have Deepak Chopa on board.

I would love to help with this project. My own build, Eucalyptus Grove in Gallinas, is meant to be a calming, relaxing experience already... it would be really fun to intigrate biofeedback.

I do not own the hardware yet but when the device is shown to be working with SL, even on a very rudimentary level, it will be my next purchase (and I might buy it in short order regardless.... it's looks really neat.)

-Ghoti

I confess, I was hoping for a cost around $40-50. I'm not prepared to go into the hardware business, but if you are, and you can provide the USB driver and port transmitter, let's talk. But keep in mind that the one that comes with the game really works well, and it does two things: skin conductivity and heartrate. Heartrate is used in a couple of different ways, including something called "heart coherence" which is the part that seems to have helped my arrhythmia the most. I think this feature would drive the cost up from the Radio Shack version.

A big chunk of the cost seems to be packaging & stuff. WD told me they'd need a run of something like 5000 to make it worth selling the things standalone. Some of the other cost is in tech support. WD has really excellent tech support and a no-questions money-back policy on the game.

I'm not an employee of Wild Divine, and I don't stand to gain if we go with their hardware. I'm just trying to balance cost against hassle. The WD hardware has been pretty hassle-free. That's worth a lot to some people.

I think the bio data won't change fast enough to produce latency problems. The existing port transmitter (see below) doesn't seem to show any serious latency.



Actually, this part is done already. The Wild Divine project provides an SDK for both Mac and PC, but even before this was available, a clever fellow with Mac and Windows programming skills figured out how to make a monitor app (a bit more complex than your first guess, because there are actually two types of data, plus a timestamp), and has since extended this to be able to transmit the data across the net on a port. He's written the Windows version already, and has agreed to port to Mac once I send him a spare laptop with OSX to work on, that being the main holdup. So we're in good shape on that side. (Another reason to stay with the WD hardware.)



I've got some of this in the proposal already. I'm not sure about player stats, since I don't think of this in terms of a competitive activity, but if customers wanted that kind of functionality, fine by me. Your help would be greatly appreciated. As I said above, we've got the data broadcast working now, so the server just needs to be able to receive the port communications and hold them under the SL account name for XML-RPC retrieval from SL.



Yeah, that would be nice. But until then, I think the server can just hold the data under the SL account name until SL asks for it via XML-RPC.

Have you done any XML-RPC work out of SL yet? How's the latency there?

Thanks for the suggestions and comments,

Neko

I haven't done much XML-RPC work yet, aside from building XML support into my server software. The application framework I designed for my external systems has to be able to talk to SL devices without waiting for them to poll it, so I used email instead of XML-RPC. There is a latency of a couple seconds each way in good conditions. It can take longer sometimes.

Sure I'd play.





_/_/_/

This is a pretty good level of interest, somewhat better than I was expecting, actually. (Don't know why.) Anyone want to give me a guess as to what this could translate to inworld?

Neko

Lots of heart pounding fun??


Nekok not sure what your asking?

Sorry, I meant, given how many people have responded in the affirmative in this forum topic, and indicated interest in the poll, how many people are likely to actually show up inworld? I know only a fraction of the residents get involved with the forums.

It's not an answerable question, but I'll take anyone's guesses.

Neko

Fascinating project, Neko!

I'd be interested in using such a biofeedback device with people who are physically disabled. People who, for whatever reason, cannot type or use a mouse. I think it could be very therapeutic for them, in terms of relaxation as well as give them a new interface to SL to experiment with.

I'm going to bring this up with the Live2Give group. I think they'd be interested. I'll make a post on the Live2Give blog about this, so please feel free to comment on my post if you'd like to share your thoughts on how it might help them. I'll also IM you inworld so we can stay in touch.

As for spreading the word, why don't you have some events on your land? Hosting events is always a good way to get people inworld involved in projects. And I'd recommend you put the URL for your project in your avatar's profile. That way people can quickly get background information about what you're trying to do, and you can make updates to the website to keep interested people informed of your progress.

I'd play it, but I don't think I'd pay the 160$ for the equipment.

i just looooove technological break throughs! the thought of where this might grow to is very exciting. i would SO be in favor of it! and i wouldnt mind pitching in to help. feel free to contact me inworld for any reason!

the future? bring it on!

Yeah, I think we could hunt down the original OEM. I don't think it's the same company writing the software. Pretty sure they have just bought in bulk from someone else.

In fact, if someone has bought it, can you look around the device to see any manufacturer brands or patent numbers we can look up?

Acutally, no, they designed and developed the hardware, and they have it built and packaged custom in Hong Kong. I've met people on the team, and visited their main facility in Eldorado Springs, CO. I've got a pretty good idea of what's gone into both the game and the HW.

There may be comparable hardware out there cheaper, but I think if there were, the Wild Divine folks would have gone with it to save money.

Neko

Thanks for the suggestions. It didn't even occur to me to have an event when I don't have a working prototype yet. It's a good idea.

I had put the URL in my profile, but it was sort of buried on the second tab. I've copied it to my main description. I should put it in the description of the land, too, and make some updates to the project page, including a draft of the proposal. Hopefully I'll get a chance to work on that this afternoon.

Neko

Ok, well - we can do that too.

I bought Wild Divine a couple of years ago, and it's really a cool thing. Don't do it much now since I'm always in SL. I am attracted to the idea of having similar capabilities in SL, but I wonder if it's something I'd want to do a few times as a curiosity before going back to whatever I'm working on at the time. Not sure.

(Regarding the development of custom biofeedback hardware)
Ok by me. With the reflection server routing the data into SL, if someone sets up alternative hardware, we can probably configure the server to accept that data, too. Actually, I'd like to keep the architecture as open as possible. It would be useful to be able to use this routing server for a variety of inputs, if we can publish the interface spec. (Someday I'm hoping there will be an affordable brain wave monitor, e.g.)

Meanwhile, I think we'll start with the WD hardware, because it's available and supported. Blaze, if you decide to get another hw device plus USB and port transmitter working, let us know. Sounds like quite a few people would be interested. If you want to make sure it has about the same capabilities as the original, you'd probably find it helpful to download this utility (for PC) or this one for the Mac. The first URL also has some information about the kind of data to expect, or you can look at the source code at SourceForge.

Neko

Not sure what you're talking about, but I think a device which records biofeedback data and sends it to a USB port would be cool.

Er... that's the device which comes with the Wild Divine game, which we would use to collect the data for the online biofeedback game we've been talking about in this thread... which I thought you suggested might be being made by a third party, but isn't... so you thought you could make one cheaper? Did I misunderstand?

I'm just saying, if you want to make a comparable device cheaper, it would be a good idea to make sure it *is* comparable, so I provided links for a couple of test programs. And even if it doesn't produce exactly the same output, as long as it can provide the basic biometric data (skin conductivity level, heartrate/bp data), it could probably be adapted for use, as we'll need to send all the data through a server for processing and insertion via XML-RPC anyway.

Did that help, or are we both now confused?

Neko

I'm going to try to push ahead with getting a very basic demo working, then host an event to give everyone who's interested a chance to see it and think about how they might like to get involved. I'll also be putting up a more detailed project page within the next couple of days.

If anyone has a sample perl-based XML-RPC program, I'd love to see it. (I'll also post this request under scripting.)

Neko