OCTWOPUT

Here, the left user is raising their controller above their head, so the left tentacles are reaching up. The right user is keeping their controller low, so the tentacles stay low. Both users are looking up and to the right.

The resting state for the octopus. Users are keeping their controllers down and at their sides.

Two users controlling the octopus’ tentacles by moving their controllers around. The left and right tentacles consequently have independent motion.

Teaser (40 seconds)

Collaborator: Matthias Hoppe.

Developed for the UBISS PhD summer school in 2019.

Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, “Why am I not an octopus?”

This project provides a chance to remedy that. Developed in collaboration with Matthias Hoppe (LMU), in less than a week during a PhD summer school at the University of Oulu in Finland.

We map two users to an octopus avatar in a networked VR application. Each user controls four physics-enabled tentacle arms, which strive to reach for where their controller is. Each user also controls one of the octopus’ two eyes, which will look in the same direction as their HMD. The users have a choice of whether to be inside the octopus or view it from a third-person perspective.

This was a small proof-of-concept project, but I think it’s still super interesting. It very much shows the potential of joining users together to control avatars that differ significantly from a human body. By joining multiple users together in one octopus, we can more closely mimic the natural ability of the octopus to control its tentacles independently of one another by using their many independent brains. Beyond that, it was just a lot of fun to develop, and Matthias was a great partner in crime and VR.