New video game hacks our sixth sense.
Apparently, at least according to this Wired review, people who play Mirror's Edge, a parkour-based game, frequently report nausea, because it somehow taps into the player's sense of proprioception - where the body is located and how it moves.
Most first-person shooters do not create any sense of proprioception. You may be looking out the eyes of your character, but you don't have a good sense of the dimensions of the rest of your virtual body — the size and stride of your legs, the radius of your arms. At most, you can see your arms carrying your rifle out in front of you. But otherwise, the designers treat your body as if it were just a big, refrigerator-size box.
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Mirror's Edge, in contrast, does something very subtle, but very radical. It lets you see other parts of your body in motion.
When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you. When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot — precisely as they do when you're vaulting over a hurdle in real life. And when you tuck down into a somersault, you're looking at your thighs as the world spins around you.
What's more, the Mirror's Edge world feels tactile and graspable. Because the game is designed around the concept of parkour, or moving through obstacles, most times when you see something that looks like you could jump on it, you can. The gameplay requires it.
I wasn't sure if this would be better off in the Games forum, but as a technological feat, it seems pretty darn cool. |
