MWorks and Virtual reality experiment

Support
1

Hi, Chris.

I was wondering if it is possible to do virtual reality (VR) experiments with MWorks, such as walking through a maze.
I haven’t seen any examples on VR tasks with MWorks yet.
If this is possible, it would help me a lot.

Best regards.
Jungryul

2

Hi Jungryul,

No, MWorks does not support VR at present. The primary issue is that existing VR headsets and their associated software don’t support macOS. (SteamVR announced beta support for macOS over six years ago, but it doesn’t look like much has happened with it since then.) Porting MWorks to the upcoming Apple Vision Pro is a definite possibility, but that device is more focused on augmented reality (AR) and, at least initially, will cost considerably more than most existing VR headsets.

Cheers,
Chris

3

Sorry for the confusion. I wasn’t taking about VR headsets and VR systems.
My interest is in 3D visual stimuli.

I’m trying to plan a simple experiment (a 3D maze game with a first-person view on a monitor screen), where the subject has to choose left or right with a joystick to reach the final destination.
As a newcomer to MWorks, I hope this is feasible.

Best,
Jungryul

4

Hi Jungryul,

Thanks for the clarification.

No, MWorks doesn’t support what you describe. Another lab expressed a similar interest a few years ago. At the time, it seemed like the best solution was to use ThreeDWorld (TDW) to the render the environment, with the MWorks experiment using Python actions to drive the simulation via TDW’s Python API. Although that lab never followed through on that plan, I still think it would be a good approach.

Of course, it would also be possible to implement 3D environment generation directly in MWorks, possibly by making use of Apple’s SceneKit or RealityKit frameworks. That would likely be a large project, but I could imagine it being useful to multiple labs.

Cheers,
Chris