{"id":54880,"date":"2022-10-09T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-09T10:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54880"},"modified":"2022-10-09T10:48:10","modified_gmt":"2022-10-09T14:48:10","slug":"sci-fi-fantasy-grabby-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54880","title":{"rendered":"Sci-Fi Fantasy: Grabby Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alright, finally. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Last week I posted about Angelic Layer, an anime from the early\u00a0 200o’s. I mentioned briefly that it\u2019s become less science fiction and more science fact with time (although we\u2019re not at all at battle dolls just yet). But mainly, I talked about how hopeful it was that the fictional company in the show was trying to make prosthetics, and only made the dolls to help pay for that endeavor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I ended that post by admitting that I was meant to be talking about the Oculus, but got distracted with 1000 words of anime babble, oops. <\/span><\/p>\n

I swear the two thoughts were connected somehow, and not just\u2026\u2019heehoo both have headsets\u2019 Although, they do, so 1 meaningless point to me for being on-topic.<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

See, the thing is, the Oculus is\u2026not in the fictional world of Angelic Layer, at all. Facebook runs it, and they have a product that could do a lot of good\u2026if they\u2019d only gear it in that direction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine for a moment that you\u2019re in a slightly altered version of the fictional world of Angelic Layer. <\/span>The Battle Dolls have gotten bigger, and more impressive. The days of Barbie dolls fighting are over, these dolls are now people-sized. Not androids, not robots, they have no AI. These are people-shaped tech that you can control and move around when you put on a headset. Sometimes they do work, moving around in environments people can\u2019t usually be in. Sometimes they\u2019re on TV, playing full sports, controlled by people in little booths; e-sports and physical sports mixing into one genre. \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Now, add to that fictional world that you have no goddamned legs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company never made prosthetics,\u00a0 no one ever thought or cared to, and now you’re surrounded by technology that would greatly improve your life, and it\u2019s being used for e-sports.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

No one was morally obligated to make this into prosthetics for you, the tech is theirs, but like, jeez, right?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I feel looking at the Oculus Rift.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a totally fair comparison, admittedly. The Oculus isn\u2019t the one thing between me and having working legs. It\u2019s not even the one thing between me and going outside.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I got an Oculus just after Dad died. I had been bedridden almost entirely for six months, people brought me my meals in bed and I had the mental health of a neglected guinea pig. I couldn\u2019t get outside without being in agony and risking badly hurting myself, which made the work-to-reward of doing so\u2026really not worth it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I got out of the house for overseeing the cleaning up of my old apartment, get paperwork filed, and go to my dad’s memorial. Not exactly spirit lifters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the Oculus. It has a sitting mode, and lets you do<\/em> things without leaving the house.\u00a0 Put on a headset and get new scenery, get to feel like you\u2019re doing something, going somewhere. With a push of a button, I could jump, something I hadn\u2019t been able to do in months, a year, even. I could open games and be out of that stupid bed, out of that stupid room.<\/span><\/p>\n

Except no I couldn\u2019t, <\/span>because \u2018sitting mode\u2019 isn\u2019t <\/span><\/i>wheelchair accessible. <\/i><\/b>I could screw around with one or two things in every game I picked up, but every single one required you to do something impossible from a wheelchair. Every normal motion has its handicapped player smacking the remotes into the wheels, armrests, and leg rests. You have to be able to turn and move in ways impossible from a bulky chair.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/i><\/i>In many games, this feels very fixable. You have to be able to lean down or reach out to grab things and interact with the environment, and there are no settings for alternative motion. You can\u2019t tell the system \u2018Hey, not only am I sitting, but I can\u2019t stop<\/strong> sitting. Please just give me the items I point at.\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From a coding and design perspective, of course, it\u2019s more complicated than that, but from a user perspective\u2026<\/span>It needs those grabby claws you can get at a dollar store.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

These things, literally these. They're like $2.99, which does not help in virtual reality but like come on.<\/div>
These things, literally these. They're like $2.99, which does not help in virtual reality but like come on.<\/div><\/p>\n

It\u2019s new tech in the grand scheme of things, but it\u2019s the same sensation as the above theoretical. No one is obligated to make disability-friendly VR, no one is evil or wrong for not making it. But, like, bro, you\u2019re telling me that the only thing between me and a near-normal VR experience is\u2026a dinosaur head on a stick? <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alright, finally. Last week I posted about Angelic Layer, an anime from the early\u00a0 200o’s. I mentioned briefly that it\u2019s become less science fiction and more science fact with time (although we\u2019re not at all at battle dolls just yet). But mainly, I talked about how hopeful it was that the fictional company in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618,628],"tags":[354],"class_list":["post-54880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epilogue","category-whining","tag-oculus-rift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54880"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54897,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54880\/revisions\/54897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}