“Curator SVV allows you to measure visual-vestibular biais in Virtual Reality. 10 tilted famous paintings are presented on a black background. With a remote gamepad, you will adjust the painting to straighten/level it, as you would do with a painting on a wall.”

This is the description given for the research app I developed for the OpenLab. There is an actual physical test used in hospitals that places people in a pitch black environment and asks them horizontally align an object using a remote control. It’s quite a setup and not portable at all.

This app aims to replicate the usage of the hospital setup using a standalone VR headset that can be used anywhere. Currently the app works on Gear VR and Oculus Go – you can find it here – Curator SVV

The results of the test is output to a CSV file, this includes, in degrees, the starting position of the painting, the final corrected position from the user, the users head position, the time taken for each painting and a few others.

The app has been slowly evolving since it’s original release. There are several “conditions” that can now be applied to the scene instead of it being all black. A rotating sphere of dots rotating in either direction and at alternative speeds is one and surrounding the painting with a tilted frame in either a positive or negative rotation is the others.

It’s very interesting watching people use the app, for example, with the rotating dots, almost always people start to lean the direction of the rotation. Also when rotating the painting the same direction as the dots, there is a dot rotation speed that almost matches the painting rotation speed – people swear the painting is not rotating… until they realise it has!

Being the first app I’ve put into the Oculus App Store it was a learning experience also – there is a lot of documentation online, you will find most of it on the official site – https://developer.oculus.com/ but you will have to dig for it.