Virtual Environments for Health

Reporter Daniel Cressey takes a trip to the University of Birmingham for a walk through a virtual world. By recreating the positive effects of spending time in natural environments, Bob Stone and his team hope to help those who can't get out and about by bringing these environments to them.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• virtual environments
• bob sone
• university of birmingham
• environment
• science

[Ivonz]

I definitely agree that this approach has a lot of potential - sometimes just by looking at photos of nature one can start feeling relaxed. However I do think they still have a long way to go to make the graphics much much better - maybe the technology just isn't there yet, but if they could use actual videos of real nature, beaches and scenery and try to interface it within this program I think it would be much more realistic and the health benefits would increase as well. Neat concept though!

[eleanoreandthelost]

I'm Eleanore from 'Eleanore & the Lost' and I wrote the song for the WWF's 50 year nationwide U.K anniversary project this year called 'My True Nature'. Please visit our website wwweleanoreandthelostcom to hear the song 'My True Nature' or our channel: eleanoreandthelost to see some of our other videos.

[Films4You]

@roidroid Looks like some cloning has been going on :)

[roidroid]

I remember seeing a similar system (but with VR goggles) used for burn victims. They would be immersed in a virtual snow environment while the nurses re-dressed their wounds (a normally painful procedure). It seemed to work, taking their minds off of it.

There was another one that was treating people with fear of spiders with gradually increasing realism, another treating heights, and another treating PTSD.

Wow they must be able to treat so much stuff with VR by now.

[roidroid]

@Films4You ie: concepts used in this simulation could be used to treat social phobia perhaps:

watch?v=uUjPSqsvvnA

I've been thinking about this a lot hehe :)

[Films4You]

@roidroid Thanks for the correction, I agree 100% Chears :)

[roidroid]

@Films4You Agoraphobia isn't a fear of going outside, it's actually just what happens when a specific unrelated phobia (ie: fear of spiders, fear of social situations, fear of heights, etc) gets SO BAD that the user finds it hard to leave their safe home environment - as they may be confronted with what triggers their fear.

So to treat it with a video game, you'd have to carefully and slowly incorporate that SPECIFIC trigger into the game (spiders, heights, people, whatever it is).

[bobstone2]

(1) the frame rate arose by videoing the FPS footage using FRAPS (for later delivery to Nature), (2) this is still work-in-progress with more effects and models still to be added before it goes anywhere near patients (3) the original version is not designed to be high-fidelity or fully "immersive" (not that I've ever seen any demo anywhere that is "fully immersive") as it will be a background environment for patients coming out of serious surgery and (4) initial experiments show that it works!

[Films4You]

This may be helpful for those with Agoraphobia, it could allow the user to control just how much they are able to "go outside".

[10mintwo]

Sweet FPS on that sim! What is this, 1994? I don't think I've ever seen a virtual reality simulator that I've been massively underwhelmed by, but this is just beyond pathetic. C'mon people. How are patients supposed to "immerse" themselves in what barely rises to the level of being a cheesy low-resolution slideshow?