Hi, I can think of a few ways movement could be achieved.

The only issue is, in the real world, doors, plants, open manholes, yeah I just threw that one in there as an example.

Let's say you're walking along, and in your way there is a telegraph poll, now, how would you know there is a telegraph poll there?

Those objects don't make sounds in the real world.

You could use some sort of radar method, but I like the idea of what I will simply call earcons.

Each object, when near enough, would make a certain sound.

I wish swamp did this instead of the radar and heartbeat sounds.

The heartbeat sounds were for buildings.

Another method is with echo location, when walking, and there is a wall in front of you, depending on your environment, the sound of the wind would raise in pitch as you get closer to the wall.

If you have sounds playing for each and every object, that's going to be a lot of information to take in at once.

Are we able to take in all that information through audio alone? or would it be censory overload.

Could we even do echo location in a virtual world?

These are just some of my thoughts.

wow guys! only two posts thus far aside from mine, and already I'm loving what I'm hearing. Wonderful meat to chew on from all of you thus far, and that's exactly what this thread is meant for. To figure out ways and means to build this world and make it the very best that it can be for both of us. Meaning we the blindness community as well as our fully sighted counterparts. Of course I'm going to have very lush audio in the whole world. One question I've been meaning to ask you all is how would you all like to be represented? the reason I ask is because in our world, being a futuristic setting, the white cane will be obsolete, and I was thinking of having some sort of white navigational device that your avitar would wear, something like a navigational belt that you could put on or something but that's just my idea. It could be an implanted device but I do have the idea of having some sort of futuristic version of a smart device that your avitar could carry around with you and it would be on you at all times. Think of it like a futuristic smart phone of sorts like star citizen's mobiglass if you will. This'll be an all purpose device that you'll be able to use not only to make in world calls to other people where ever they might be, but you['ll also be able to use it to accept missions as well as make repairs on machines and equipment planet side. Ship repairs will be made by repair facilities when you request them as you're docking. Speaking of ships now, I'm going to have autopilot inside of the starships, but it'll be additional equipment that'll be put in after you've purchased your new ship. Incidentally, you'll be able to manually explore should you so wish, and if you want to plot a course for somewhere, you'd use your keyboard to punch in the name of that planet or other destination. You can even punch in the coords of a new planet that you've discovered. Back to the purchase of ships though. When this additional equipment is installed, I'm thinking of either having the ship store know who you are and that you're a blind resident and either having them install it automatically before they hand you the keychip if you will, or you could have the option of having them install it for you. This would not only include the autopilot feature that I spoke of earlier, but your ship's computers would speak to you and give you information of the status of your ship that you could adjust the verbosity of as you grew more and more proficient. If I'm able to put together a team, it'll be a requirement that they all, each and every one create an account on here and post to this thread so that they could all speak with you and get input from you. This is fun and I'm getting excited now and I'm going to let doctor Marchant know of my progress here. May I inform her also of your eagerness to see this project come to fruition? I think I can say with about 99 percent assurance that you would all love to see something like this happen. Have a wonderful day to you all my friends and we'll keep this discussion going. I'm loving what I'm reading thus far and keep those thoughts and feedback ideas comeing in.

Haptics, conflabit! Aereal, Ultrahaptics, Novint, a Wiimote stuck to an overhead cable that is stuck to a Delta-like system, magnets, clever manipulation of airpressure, flat surfaces with electrically-generated textures... Half of which, I should add, have been around for quite some time, but for some reason, no one does anything with any of them besides show it off at CES or CSUN and disappear into the ether.
Some might say it's pointless novelty crap, to which I say: so is VR in general. Does anyone hear about the Nintendo Switch half as often as, not the PS4 or Xbox, but individual games available for the latter but not the former? Some phones are Immersion™ enabled. Am I going to have to buy 10, take classes in how to develop for it, and then teach people who are better at making games people outside my head can understand to make examples? Immersion™ sounds pretty minimalist, even, but for some reason people only buy things with vibration, so it works with what's available. It'd work much better on a force-feedback mouse, but PC gamers hated them, because apparently no one can imagine how a developer could compensate for active effects which they themselves generated! I mean, it's not like every touch device with any market value to speak of has to compensate for its own electronics and activities, or anything.
But if audio must, then fine; let's get creative. Has anyone tried Audimesh?

Installers have been known to offer to download optional components during the process. I've been thinking about that sort of thing as relates to, for example, voiced language packs, that would be too big to want to download in bulk, but more than one might be worth getting with the installation. That sort of thing could apply to accessibility components, maybe even the visual components but that's probably pointless since the visual properties of objects will still be there under the hood.

I would love to have this be a reality! It sounds amazing, however it is a major major undertaking. I would mean creating a totally new framework and new game mechanics and a server to host it all. Try to build on top of other frameworks and use systems people have already created. Building this would take too long.
I would encourage you to retrofit something else that is already present. the development time and cost would be huge!
Please use speech synthesis for all talking in game. It is extremely hard to replicate sound characteristics in a room especially one that is always changing. I wish you all the best!
Hope you get this done!

We shouldn't need a different installer, or the option to install those features during install.

That would just make things more complicated than they need to be.

I'm going to refer again to swamp, even though it's been years since I've played, that particular game doesn't have an installer, at least it didn't last I played it.

It just had keystrokes to toggle on and off the navigation.

There is a word processor I use on occasion called EdSharp, now that program does have an installer with optional features for jaws users, but because I use NVDA, I chose not to install those features.

If you do decide to go that rout, I would use what they call an installer stub.

It is what firefox and dropbox do after all.

For those who don't know what an installer stub is, it's meerly a setup file, you pick what you want to install, then the installer will download your choices, rather than having everything packaged up in one big installer, most of it is done online.

Hello there everyone, karate25 here and I was just wondering since I've just finished watching a video of virtual worlds and their future from epic games. This gentleman in the video says that the unreal engine is completely free to download and build with. I know that unity isn't accessible but would it be at all possible for me to use unreal engine and have us a virtual world built that way with keyboard and game controller support? along with the visuals for our sighted counterparts to enjoy? let me know because apparently with this next release of the engine, you'll be able to do some pretty fancy stuff with sounds like having them bounce off of walls along with the music and have it muffled so that you can hide behind it and everything. So really cool stuff on the horizon from what it sounds like and if it can be used, Unreal engine just might be the gaming engine that I decide to use for our world. I'd like to have this world as lifelike as possible right down to the quality of the audio inside the environments. Have a wonderful day my friends and I look forward to your feedback.

Hello there everyone, karate25 here again. I have some very happy news for you all that I've just received from Dr. Marchant, and she says that once they've got their program assembled which should take about a year or so, since they're in the process of hiring staff for it, she feels very certain that not only will I be able to find the people to do all of the work that needs to be done but also that they could help me with obtaining a grant to support this project as well as helping me to make it commercially viable. So keep your fingers crossed and here's hoping. We just might get our virtual world after all if I have my say about it.

Mainstream engines like Unity, Unreal, Doom, Blender, etc. are not generally accessible to develop with. But, if your planning on directing a team for PC/VR, then the Unreal engine isn't a bad choice. As connor142 touched on, it would probably be a good idea to come up with a Design or Technical Document to tackle [The Door Problem] before you start hitting the funding pool and putting a team together. Having a general idea of what the game is supposed to be, whats in the game, how it works, what players do, etc. will cut alot of time out of development, and thus save you money. There may still be a few bumps and changes along the road if some parts of the design conflict with others, better ideas come along, or with unexpected complications during development, but having a design ready really helps.

Having the world be a surprise is up to you, but sharing such ideas can also be a good way to quickly shake out problems and gauge peoples responses to them. As always though the devils in the details, and its important to be explicit with those details in the design. Having a story and themes is good, but how do the mechanics of those things work and interact with each other in the simulation? Figuring out those rules early on is what can really help streamline development.

For example: You say players have their own starships, yes? What roles are there that they can fill? How do they fly those ships? What are the controls and inputs? How is flight data conveyed to the player? In what ways can the ships fly? Is there an auto-pilot? Do they need fuel? Can they be damaged? If so, how? How much damage can they take? What happens if they are damaged too much? Do they have shields? Can they be repaired? If so, how? Are there restrictions on where they can fly? Are there hazards that can damage or impair the ship? Can the player buy ships? For how much? Where? Can they build ships? If so, how? Can they customize those ships? If so, how? What kinds of customizations are there? Can you mount weapons on the ship? What kinds? Where do you get them? How are they attached to the ship? Can you carry cargo in the ship? How much? Does it effect how the ship flies? Can you jettison it? Can multiple players ride on a single ship? Can you jettison them?

And so forth and so on... Working out all these details and writing a solid design can take time, but its time well saved having to figure all this out when coding it. It can also help give a good sense of how much time may be involved to implement it, and thus, cost.

Hello everyone. No, I'm fairly certain that the combat style will not be like miriani and I agree with you. I was absolutely horrible at that style of combat. You won't be typing in numbers and other punctuation for combat anyway, since this won't be a text world but rather full of rich and lush audio of all kinds to make you feel as though you're really living in this world. My goal with our world is to build it in such a way that the inhabitants will want to literally come in here, carve out their own lives and really want to stick around. Once I start to put together plans for the world I think I'll share them with you all so that you can get a real feel for what I'd like to accomplish here and you can help iron out the rinkles and make suggestions. You've been doing extremely so far so why not. Incidentally, I do have a question about our ships needing fuel versus batteries? is one better than another? I mean to say is fuel better than running on batteries or the other way around? also, no, combat is absolutely not the only way to earn credits in our world. You can live your entire life and never even pick up a weapon of any kind if you really don't want to.

Good heavens, am I ever glad that I asked the question about batteries versus fuel for our ships. What a lot of wonderful meat to chew on and mull over as I set to work on my outline tonight. And I'll share it with you as I work on it so you and I can iron out all the rinkles and fine tune our world. That actually makes lots of sense having the battery take up so much space, space better used for cargo and docking bays as well as vehicle bays and other things. Have a wonderful evening to you all my friends and get ready to check out my beginning outline.