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A Study of Virtual Reality Headsets and Physiological Extension Possibilities

Conference Paper · July 2016

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-42108-7_38

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Thitirat Siriborvornratanakul
National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA)
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 A Study of Virtual Reality Headsets and
Physiological Extension Possibilities

Thitirat Siriborvornratanakul

Graduate School of Applied Statistics

National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA)
118 SeriThai Rd., Bangkapi, Bangkok 10240, Thailand
thitirat@as.nida.ac.th

Abstract. Since the worldly notable companies put serious investment

in VR headsets in 2014, everything about VR has reemerged from the
deep of fiction-like prototypes to the surface of actual consumer prod-
ucts. This reemergence is much stronger than the past with very active
supports from commercial VR content creation devices like 360-degree
cameras. In this paper, we study important triggers and trends related
to VR headsets from 2014 to now. In details, we discuss about the time-
line of important events, high potential related products together with
example usage scenarios, major user experience concerns with possible
solutions, and future possibilities led by VR headsets. We also propose
novel usage scenarios where recently popular heart rate monitoring wear-
able devices are used in combination with VR headsets in order to open
up a new communication channel between the headset and the wearer.

Keywords: Virtual reality headset, 360-degree camera, physiology

1 Virtual Reality Headsets

In research communities, studies of Virtual Realities (VR) for immersive expe-
riences have been investigated since decades ago as some referencing numbers
shown in Figure 1. The first head-mounted device (HMD) is believed to be [24]
proposed back in 1968. Despite of the long history, VR trends were obviously
missed out on mainstream consumer’s attention and, in our opinion, it is not
until the year 2014 that the trends of VR have truly been resurrected.
In 2014, there were significant moves from the world’s technology giants
towards VR headsets. In March, Facebook paid $2 billion to acquire Oculus
VR—the ‘Oculus Rift’ VR headset tech startup that hugely succeeded in their
2012 Kickstarter campaign. In the same month during Game Developers Confer-
ence (GDC2014), Sony presented the prototype of VR headset for PlayStation
4 named ‘Project Morpheus’ (renamed to PlayStation VR afterwards). Three
months later in June at the Google I/O developer conference for Android de-
vices, Google introduced Google Cardboard, the cheap DIY VR headset using an
Android smartphone as processor and display. Then in September at IFA tech-
nology conference, Samsung unfolded the Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition
 2 T. Siriborvornratanakul

Fig. 1. The number of search results (vertical axis) using the ‘virtual reality’ keyword
as retrieved from ACM digital library and IEEE Xplore digital library during years of
2000 to 2015 (horizontal axis). (Information retrieved on 22 January, 2016).

Fig. 2. Images from left to right are Oculus Rift, Morpheus (PlayStation VR), Google
Cardboard, and Samsung Gear VR as presented in 2014.

headset running with the Galaxy Note 4 smartphone. These four VR headsets
as shown in Figure 2 share the core concept of using traditional stereoscopic
vision where the third dimension (i.e. depth) is artificially generated by care-
fully aligning two offset 2D images. Moreover, in October 2014, there was news
that Google invested $542 million in Magic Leap, the mysterious tech startup
company working on the so-called head-mounted virtual retinal display. Their
Cinematic Reality, utilizing projection of a digital light field into user’s eyes, was
claimed to provide better, more realistic and more user friendly 3D vision than
the old and bulky stereoscopic display does. This secretive technology is designed
for Augmented Reality (AR) glasses which are right in the neighborhood of VR
headsets.
The triggers in 2014 have effectively turned the whole world back to VR tech-
nologies. The year 2015 was an exciting year where progresses in research and
development of the four leading VR headsets were continuously presented along
with new VR headsets being invested by many world leading technology compa-
nies such as LG, Panasonic, HTC and Huawei. In March 2015, Apple Inc. also
showed their step towards VR/AR by investing $32 million to acquire Metaio—
the German-based AR startup company behind Ferrari AR showroom app and
Ikea AR catalogue app. Then in June 2015, Microsoft officially unfolded their
AR/VR headset named HoloLens in Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3 2015).
Besides, there was news in October that the mysterious Magic Leap was suc-

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