I’m very interested in gadgets like Emotiv Epoc or Neurosky Mindwave that allow to control games through thought.
My question is how compatible is UE4 with these devices? Can I create some sort of plug-in or driver to use them within my apps? Has anyone experience to share about this topic?
I have 2 Mindwaves but I’m still in the way of acquiring an Epoc and I’m a complete noob about developing.
You have c++ access, implementing those things shouldnt be too hard.
Anyway, BCIs are known for being almost useless and very difficult to use. The technology is not there yet, keep in mind the results wont be too good.
I’ve been reading Neurosky’s developers section and they have a C++ library and other tools.
I don’t know about the Epoc because I don’t have one yet, but the Mindwave works pretty well. The downside is that you only can perform 3 actions with it. Because it only has 1 sensor and detects blinking, “focusing” and “meditating” states. For simple stuff I think is OK.
An interesting idea is create a game where the player is more powerful the more you “focus” or “meditate”, and do the gameplay trying precisely to make him fall of those states. Could be something interesting
Yeah I was thinking about something like that, the games they have are mostly kid oriented with puzzles and simple stuff, 2D cartoony flash games. For adults they have journals and trackers but that is not appealing to me, at least not by now.
Something like this was the focus of my MFA thesis work, but instead I was trying to make the user be more in focus or in a mindful state in order to trigger scene changes and object animation (it is not a game but a meditative experience). I used Interaxon’s Muse EEG band. There are some issues such as the difficulty of placing the HMD (I used a DK2) over the EEG band without affecting the contact between the electrodes and the skin. Head movement also affects the EEG readings but those can be filtered out using the Muse’s accelerometer (or the HMD’s). The EEG data was easy to get into UE4 using OSC messages and the UE4-OSC plugin https://github.com/monsieurgustav/UE4-OSC. The Muse connects via Bluetooth but there’s a provided command line application that converts the data automatically into OSC messages. There’s also the issue of actually being able to determine the user’s mental state accurately without an individual calibration process, but that’s a general issue of any EEG based project.