Biofeedback and other health-related "games"

I originally found SL while looking for a 3D virtual world in which to develop multiplayer online games based on biofeedback and "wellness". I had been playing The Journey to Wild Divine, which is sort of like Myst but with biofeedback-based challenges rather than intellectual puzzles, and I wanted a way to allow the active online community on the Wild Divine website to be able to meet online, cooperatively build game activities similar to those in the original Wild Divine game, and generally hang out together sharing ideas. Second Life was the best environment I found for all of these purposes, and I've been able to entice several Wild Divine players here on the hope of being able to eventually make good on this idea.

We've had a few snags along the way, but we now do have one biometric device working (the one provided with Wild Divine), using XML-RPC input. Unfortunately the packet rate is terribly slow, about one packet of data every 2-4 seconds, so it's hard to develop highly interactive game elements -- we're working to try to optimize this, but Prop #203 or something like it would really help. Meanwhile, though our proposal wasn't accepted for the Game Developer's Competition, our InnerLife group is growing. We have a Group Forum area, we have acquired land on Tavarua island, and we are now working to develop the first version of the InnerLife game.

For more information, please see our website or our informational booth in the Luna Galleria. I'm also happy to help answer questions here or in-world, of course.

I'd be interested in knowing how many other groups in SL are working on similar projects. I don't know of anyone else working on biofeedback, but I know there are other groups developing health-related areas in-world. Do any of them have game-type activities incorporated into them?

Thanks,

neko

Let me precede my post by saying I've never played a biofeedback game, and have only read about a few of them. However, in RL, I spend 50% of my day job engineering pulse-oximeter systems to monitor First Responders, and the other 50% creating "Serious Games" for Emergency Response, so the concept intriques me.

How much of the game design is built on the sensitivty of the sensors? Are sharp spikes in your signals as important as them averaged over time?

If sharp spikes are not an integral part of the game experience, I have two thoughts?

1) Can you buffer 4 seconds worth of data and send it in each packet, and then have your biofeedback be on a 4 second delay? This will even catch spikes, but 4 seconds later.

2) Perhaps you can interpolate the data. Using the last 2 packets to project the 3rd packet and interpolate the data for every second until the 3rd packet arrives. Crude, but I don't think nueral networks or bayesian statistics are supported yet in LSL. Just using 2 packets to predict and interpolate would be a piece of LSL to admire.

I think SL could be a great platform for developing something like this, however if solution 1 doesn't provide a real-time enough signal to develop immersive interactive game elements perhaps you need to rethink the design. I can imagine an exertainment game, that rewards the player when they sustain thier target heart rate for 10 seconds. I realize, cardio games are not the same as yoga games, but basing game elements on the sustainability of physiology will be your key in SL.

Nice to hear from you Satchmo...good points.

This is essentially what most current biofeedback games do, especially in the context of teaching skill acquisition.

However, not having the ability to stream control data into SL introduces an element of hysteresis in an SL type "game" that makes design.....interesting, to say the least.

But not impossible, just needs some creative thinking and experimentation, which myself and others are currently doing.

Ability to modulate physiology beyond simple state jumping (such as deliberate spiking to fire a missile, for example) is key to more advanced uses, such as bio control of electronic music instruments.

A better SL protocol to support open control data would be Open Sound Control:
/13/1d/36159/1.html

Control Protocol

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I'd like to broaden this discussion out a bit and focus on an SL implementation of a flexible control/data protocol that could really enable all sorts of interesting interfaces to SL.

Open Sound Control is a good example of one.
http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/

"OpenSound Control ("OSC" is a protocol for communication among computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices that is optimized for modern networking technology"

It's basically a simple message format using either stream or packet based transport (TCP or UDP) that can be configured for whatever the device or application need.

Spec: http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSound...l/OSC-spec.html

Application areas: http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSound...tion-areas.html

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.


Best,
komuso