# Suggestion:
You really should release parts as parametric or at least the source files. I see everything is an STL and STLs are just a pain to work with. Suppose we want to try with mice? Or what about my cat? I do not expect just scaling in my slicer is going to end up with a good result, I'll need to redo everything from scratch. But parametric parts? That gives us a lot faster iteration. That gives you a lot faster iteration too! I highly recommend taking that approach when designing and I find it is worth it more often than not.
Could you add cost estimates to the BOM? These never need to be accurate but I always find it helpful when estimating a project. You're just saving people from the time it takes to click every single link and throw them into a calculator. And informs people very quickly what to innovate on to drive costs down. (Sorry, BOMs without cost estimates are a big pet peeve of mine)
# Questions:
- Do the rats enjoy playing Doom?
- Are there specific games the rats like to play?
I've never thought about what types of videogames other animals would enjoy, but damn if you didn't just open Pandora's Box here. I actually think we could learn a lot about them (and even their specific personalities) from this question. It gives a whole other level of refinement than just knowing what my cat's favorite toys and games are...
And also, thanks for open sourcing this! I'm excited to see what comes of it!
On this setup my rats were only habituated, they did not end up playing Doom. Even habituation seamed super slow, they were a year old when I started it. On the previous setup though, when they learnt to run on the ball and how that influences their reward, they got hooked. I believe they enjoy not just the reward, they get a sense of how their actions influence the game and they like that. They would run on the ball so much at some point they wouldn't even bother drinking all the juice and it was just dripping on the setup.
No idea what they would best like to play. It needs to be a first person game though, that's what they are able to understand how to handle, it's more natural to them.
Thank you for taking the time to give feedback! I also hope pet VRs become a thing and people can connect with their pets virtually too!
Consider making the screen panoramic around a larger radius rather than just around the head, perhaps on the order of ball diameter. This reduces the visual stereodisparity mismatch and lowers the cognitive load for habituation.
Consider also making the trigger chin- or bite-activated to allow simultaneous shooting and moving.
But on the rat part, that is super interesting! I was suspecting they might not like Doom because shooting a gun might be such a foreign concept to them that it breaks immersion. But it seems like you say they like running around in the simulated environment? (Time for Cheeze-Doom? lol)
Again, super cool and thank for releasing things! This is that crazy stuff I just love to see people exploring.
And here's a thing I knew had to exist: a doom mod/level set on a moon made of cheese... https://youtu.be/XxdeUbE9kvw?si=_cpJQKuDy87BN7EP&t=10m20s
But yeah, I'd wager too subtle. I'm also questioning now how much rats use smell for navigating their environments. I notice that my cat is a lot more smell oriented than I initially thought and I think it makes a big difference. Hard to tell though.
(Good book on the general topic of measuring animal intelligence: "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" by Frans de Waal)
The hiss of the bombs gets him a bit angry though. Parrots hiss and it kind of sounds like that.
This would completely kill any potential reward (and replace it with the opposite, frustration) you're trying to train me with, please fix immediately.
I saw a gambler win the jackpot. He was really excited and started gathering up all the chips he'd won. Why he was so excited to win a bunch of plastic chips, I'll never know. What's so great about plastic chips? Why was his brain so excited when all he was doing was gathering plastic chips? ...
A half-second delay doesn't mean your brain can't learn to make the precursor feel good.
Similar to the rat knowing the sugar comes very shortly after the task.
Think of the senses: sound becomes talking, music, etc. food become cuisine, obesity, and anorexia. eyes becomes art, movies, etc. desire becomes porn, s@m, etc.
meaning is constructed, socially constructed, or what skinner call "learning." His masterwork, long forgotten, is the "generic nature of stimulus and response." Generic as it open to near total manipulation
skinner was the man
It also is unfair to the experimenters and alienates them, when they could become allies and improve their methods. It alienates others; it makes you seem defensive and someone who lashes out unfairly - who wants to be involved with that? Even if the researchers agreed, would they want to have this judgmental, attacking person around?
For example, someone could ask: 'Hi - This is quite innovative. How are the animals introduced to the setup, trained, and experimented with? Are they basically required to play? What if they stop? Do they want to stop at the end of the session? Do they seek it out? Are there signs of stress or enjoyment? There is a bunch of innovation in animal research on giving them choices, and as we learn more about animal emotions and intelligence it makes much more sense to consider these things. This experiment seems like a perfect setup to explore some of those things; I'd love to engage with you on it, and/or here are some links to learn about it ...'. The researchers might love to help.
Maybe you know all that. I just hate to see good causes turned into alienation.
1. You calling the person above judgmental and attacking is not as tolerant either.
2. What about things that are morally wrong? Slave owners wouldn’t want to have a judgmental attacking person around either. Does that mean we have to have curious-discussions about slavery?
> What about things that are morally wrong?
That takes possibly the most certain path toward evil: I think what they do is morally wrong so I can act without morality toward them. It's the rationalization of many awful acts and people and ideologies. Just look at the worst of what religions do.
We should not think we are somehow above or exempt from that error, or so above sin generally that we can preach.
I never said that this is how we should treat immorality. That’s somehow your interpretation of what I wrote.
> We should not think we are somehow above or exempt from that error, or so above sin generally that we can preach.
Preach.
As in they could get a reward for starting the study...
Also, isn't this sort of "voluntary" testing a little unethical in itself? For example, testing an addictive drug on a rat, they don't know the downstream consequences since there is limited communication, but the immediate effects might be incredibly gratifying. It would lead to high "volunteer" rates but still expose them to massive harm.
"when they learnt to run on the ball and how that influences their reward, they got hooked. I believe they enjoy not just the reward, they get a sense of how their actions influence the game and they like that. They would run on the ball so much at some point they wouldn't even bother drinking all the juice and it was just dripping on the setup."
Topped off with a plug to get your email address for their new startup.
Human self-centredness is often insufferable.
Why?
We reached the point of rat habituation but didn’t start training. Our rats (Todd, Kojima, Gabe) aged out before full testing. The setup works, but behavioral validation is pending.Ah man, what a pity. That VR rig is awesome, but it doesn't really seem to me they are planning to continue these experiments, or do they?
Even if you're sort of like an alien abducting them for experiments.... if you offered me a sugar drip to play doom in VR, I'd be there
I know rats aren't long-lived, but I would be interested to know how they determined the rats 'aged out'.
Could also be a complete failure they spent considerable effort in with zero results, and are hand waving and constructing a way to quit while claiming success.
I could see the rats not really connecting things and just puttering around. It's a pretty involved setup and I poor uptake on the part of the rats would be a steep disappointment.
"Bring me the rats."
Human eyes are side-by-side and forward, with a big binocular overlap and a clear vanishing point. A forward-facing curved screen fits that geometry well.
Rats' eyes, by contrast, are lateral. They have a much wider field of view, a tiny binocular zone, and use motion and contrast more than neat perspective lines. A single human-style "cinema screen" isn't laid out for a rat's optics or brain.
Perhaps if the scenes were rendered with a much wider, 250° FOV, it would help the rat understand what it was seeing better.
Or even rendered with two virtual cameras offset and angled apart, then stitch their outputs into one extra-wide view wrapped onto the curved display. That would approximate the rat’s much wider horizontal field of view and reduce the mismatch between where its eyes are actually looking and where the important visual information appears.
There are other differences in perception of color and motion, but fixing the FOV would be an immediate and relatively easy software fix.