During an interview with the press, Valve president and cofounder Gabe Newell revealed that the company is exploring the idea of incorporating brain-computer interfaces in gaming. That indicates a new era for gaming, as Heart Bingo promotions continue promoting games for bingo lovers with incredible bonuses.
While Newell admits that the idea of BCIs looks like a line from a sci-fi movie, it would be a huge mistake for developers to ignore the area. Valve is currently developing an open-source BCI project that will help developers interpret the signals to read from people’s minds. That will require the use of cutting-edge hardware like virtual reality helmets. According to Newell, this open-source project will give everybody brain-read technologies assembled into headsets in different modalities.
Valve has been using headsets from OpenBCI, a company that unveiled a new headset design known as Galea last November. Galea was designed specifically for virtual reality headsets like Valve’s Index. According to Newell, any software developer who won’t use one of these in their labs by 2022 will be making a costly mistake.
These modified VR headset straps will be essential to developers for interactive experiences because there is a lot of useful data that can be gathered. The data will consist of readings from the player’s brain and body, which can help to determine if the player is surprised, excited, bored, sad, afraid, or amused, among other emotions.
The readings will be essential for developers to know, personalize the games and improve immersion. That might include turning up the difficulty level when the system notices that the player is getting bored. Besides reading brain signals, Newell discussed the near-future technology that will allow developers to write signals into people’s minds to change how they feel or deliver more than realistic visuals in games.
Newell believes BCIs will lead to better gaming experiences than a player can enjoy through meat peripherals like ears and eyes. Besides their use in gaming, Newell believes could prove useful in other areas of our daily lives like sleep. With this technology, sleep will essentially become an app that you can turn on whenever you want.
Despite all the possibilities, Newell is aware of the risks that come with brain-computer interfaces. Newell also said the idea of using BCIs to inflict pain on someone is a complex topic and further added that these interfaces are susceptible to viruses, so they’ll need similar security protocols like other technologies.
At the moment, it doesn’t sound like Valve has any plans to make the technology available commercially. However, the developers are making rapid progress that risks a device being outdated after going through the slow commercialization process. Nonetheless, the idea of BCIs has attracted several big companies, including Facebook and Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
Facebook was already looking into a way to allow users to type with their brains, while Neuralink attempted to create a less-invasive way of pairing a computer with the brain.
