That's amazing. Thank you for doing this work!

Inspiration after a friend of mine had a brain stroke. Combined with being a indie developer/hobbyist for mange years using Unreal Engine.

I don't know what the best way into the games industry these days is- it can be very hard. But starting off small, doing your own projects and getting noticed, building a portfolio with VR things is always a good way to go about it I believe.

I was inspired after a friend of mine suffered a brain stroke in his 40s. He was rather severely afflicted and sits in a wheelchair now - but he never gave up. Always thought. He even bought a belted wheelchair and mounted his gun on it - still goes moose hunting.

I spent a lot of time with him talking about rehab and he told me how extremely boring some of the stuff was, and how Wii games were cool but some were very hard for him. And that kinda started it all.

We spent about 2000 volunteer hours on the project. But making the life of just one patient better was worth it. And we know we did. It's a great blessing to be able to help someone in this way.

Aye, one of the reasons we were accepted by Sunnaas Specialist hospital is that we had the accessibility first mindset.

We designed all of our games to be playable seated or standing - and with only one arm (minus one game). We've got a few variations of the controller scheme - some include hold-to-grab, auto-grab and click to release, or click to grab and click to release.
We also allow for the use of rebinding actions to Microsoft Adaptive Controller if needed.

We spent a lot of time designing the world: We wanted relatively high fidelity (https://youtu.be/RG2JmztWGhY This was a very early concept but gets the point across). We also took care to choose colours that aren't distracting.

The importance of not cluttering the world with too many items, while still making it believable was a difficult but important balancing point too.

Sound and audio adjustments, avoiding distracting or uncomfortable sounds. Voice over on every button and menu, including descriptions for the games.

We also have a menu to adjust more weird settings like hue, contrast. But we do not recommend anyone to use these unless there are specific reasons for it.

This is really cool, thanks for sharing!

How did you end up working on this project? Where did the idea and motivation come from? Is there anyone with a history of brain trauma on the development team?

How did you get into the virtual reality industry? I'm currently a college student and I want to work with VR in the future, but there's not a lot of programs to get started with it.

Can you tell me more about the accessibility aspects of your VR project?

I’m an assistive technologist who dabbles with accessible gaming but more in the aspect of playability with accessible controllers, switches, etc. I’m new to understanding VR and what accessibility features or supplemental devices are available/needed. I understand that this is a developing field and would love to hear what your project learned. It’s great to see accessibility as a focal point.

Hah,

I heard they sold out 80,000 tickets in one hour - so I guess someone is excited for them at least.

Last concert I went to was Black Sabbath back God-knows-When :)

Are you excited that Kaizers Orchestra is coming back?

They've been amazing partners in the project, same with LHL Hjerneslag and the Dam Foundation :)

I have around 6000 hours in VR - and still I can make silly mistakes like this from time to time. :D

Ah, yes, you said earlier. Good stuff!

I’ve experienced this in VR. I was playing a very obviously unrealistic game but somehow my brain thought I could set my VR controllers on the table in the game.

We worked with Sunnaas Specialist Hospital during the project :)

What hospital are you working with?

Gamification and serious gaming in a medical healing setting, very interesting!

Thank you for being here! :)

Excellent, thank you. Wishing you and the team the best.

Re-adjustment to "real life" is rather quick - some patients may be disoriented for a few seconds (adjusting to light, space) but nothing serious. Out of our 25 patients we had no one suffer dizziness or falling during or after gameplay.

Most patients are helped with donning the VR kit, and also helped with taking it off. There is always a therapist within arm's reach in case of any issues. Many patients also play seated, while other prefer standing.

How do you deal with taking them out of that vr-environment? I assume there's a method to it but I can't imagine how you'd execute that. How do you go about that and why?

Not part of my question, but I study learning and development and digital solutions are very interesting to me, so this is very inspiring. I appreciate you for the work you do and I hope that I can at one point be part of something similar.

When they get better - they can opt in for harder difficulties, or increase the speed of the games :) Leader boards with dates and times help encourage the progression.

Absolutely!

We've got a few different games in our "Tropical Island hub" where you can walk around freely in VR:

Bowling (with a twist) that helps users develop underhand movement and coordination.

Bow Game that helps users with sequential movement, aimed to increase general mobility and arm/eye coordination while aiming at targets. There is also a component of reaction speed as targets go up and down. Speed can be adjusted.

We've got a volleyball style game which promotes overhead movement/boxing. Occupational therapist seems to love this one in particular because of the moment it promotes.

Other games include free hand tower building and something that is similar to beat sabre, but with colour switching on the sword. The latter one in particular is very well received by those with a bit more function - but can be played by everyone.

Can you describe the nature of the games and their benefits?

And because they are having fun, they keep going at it, the training becomes more intense and the training is more successful?

That is the goal. Increased mobility and perhaps regaining some lost function in hand/arms/legs. :)