By Jim Rossignol on October 15th, 2009 at 12:39 pm.
This is an outrage! Mice – who scientists believe don’t care about games at all – now have access to a first-person shooter style virtual reality system. Where is our all-encompassing virtual reality kit? We were promised them back in the Nineties and we’re still having to make do with screens, desks and chairs… and sometimes funny goggles. It’s not good enough. You can check out the blatant favouritism towards mice in the video below.
15/10/2009 at 12:43 Ian says:
You can tell Jim is outraged, this got posted in the forum three times.
15/10/2009 at 12:44 Gilly says:
I’ll be envious here as soon as I learn to run over a ball like that without falling off.
Can YOU do that?
15/10/2009 at 12:45 Okami says:
Fools! Don’t they realize that these mice will now become super intelligent and rise up to destroy us? Have bad 90s virtual reality movies taught us nothing?
16/10/2009 at 03:39 Mr. ThreEye says:
The Lawnmower man? Man that was an awesome movie!
15/10/2009 at 12:48 Schaulustiger says:
Poor mouse. Trying to run away from badly textured walls but not getting anywhere.
15/10/2009 at 18:28 WilPal says:
I laughed at this for far longer than i should have done. xD
15/10/2009 at 12:49 futage says:
You mean the…
the…
the mouse ball?
:(((((((((
15/10/2009 at 12:49 itsallcrap says:
How interesting. I must link to this on facebook as if I’m somehow inately aware of such developments and not just dumbly staring at the web like everyone else.
15/10/2009 at 12:54 Gabanski83 says:
Umm, is it me, or is that maze just really a box, with nowhere for the mouse to go except round and round the perimeter, until it descends into cheese dream madness?
15/10/2009 at 12:56 futage says:
That’s what the mice say when they watch us playing the Half Lifes.
15/10/2009 at 13:09 Yargh says:
It seems to me that they are watching the mouse run from cover to cover and analysing it’s propensity to hide under things to avoid being eaten.
15/10/2009 at 15:01 RagingLion says:
Exactly my thoughts. They could of at least had the decency of designing a proper maze for the mice.
15/10/2009 at 13:00 EyeMessiah says:
I worry that the mouse cannot fall off the ball BECAUSE IT IS ATTACHED TO THAT CONTRAPTION BY THE HEAD!
Fearsome.
15/10/2009 at 13:45 Orange Required says:
Ten years from now, when the technicians who built this experiment are attached to their giant human-balls by the head, forced to run endlessly through a Lynchean nightmare of mobile phones and social networking sites as mousey scientists look on approvingly, they will rue the day.
RUE THE DAY.
15/10/2009 at 13:06 DMJ says:
The scientific world needs to know the answer to a burning question:
Which TF2 class do they prefer?
Is the nippy, evasive Scout just natural to them? Do they prefer the escapist mouse-power-fantasy of a Heavy? Or what?
15/10/2009 at 13:42 Orange Required says:
I want to make a pun, but the best I can do is “Demouseman.”
Dammit.
15/10/2009 at 15:17 Dave says:
That mouse is a spy!
15/10/2009 at 16:37 Geoff says:
And the cheese is a lie?
15/10/2009 at 20:47 Jugglenaut says:
Orange Required, Demouseman was good enough a pun to make me regret reading this in a library and not being able to actually laugh out loud without getting weird stares (which happens, coincidentally, when I play too much TF2 at the library).
15/10/2009 at 13:16 Sobric says:
Hmmm I dunno. That game looks like one that claims to be “sandbox”, but in fact ends up as linear. The graphics are OK I guess, no CryEngine obviously, but that’s to be expected from an indie developer. I’m mostly interesting in the story and character progression anyway.
Anyway, the video is exactly what I like to see from a DEV diary, informative and energetic. Could use some Marilyn Manson chords at the end though.
15/10/2009 at 13:16 Karhax says:
Did you not read the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
Of course mice gets stuff like this first.
15/10/2009 at 13:28 Richierich says:
The question really is, what are our pan-dimensional creators trying to teach us with with experiment?
15/10/2009 at 13:25 Surgeon says:
And not a piece of virtual reality cheese in sight.
Evil scientist gits.
15/10/2009 at 13:27 against says:
Sick fucks.
15/10/2009 at 13:46 Ansem says:
If anything made we want to become an animal rights activist it was this. Poor mouse! It seems to be trapped in a box with no-where to go! How must that make it feel? Worst of all is that plodding pace at which it turns. It must take several seconds to turn 180 degrees.
15/10/2009 at 14:41 Starcide says:
I love RPS to death but i have to agree this is fucking sick :( Why can’t we learn to treat other animals with respect?!
16/10/2009 at 00:02 Doug says:
“It seems to be trapped in a box with no-where to go! How must that make it feel?”
Like every. single. office worker. on earth.
16/10/2009 at 00:08 Earl_of_Josh says:
Eh, speaking as someone that works with animal models, if what is going on here makes you sick, you do NOT want to know what happens in medical research.
15/10/2009 at 13:33 Dominic White says:
So, mice are cover-whores. Do rabbits bunny-hop? We need to test the whole animal kingdom!
15/10/2009 at 13:36 mrrobsa says:
Don’t forget they are getting their own robots too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QPiF4-iu6g
Damn mice have it better than I do.
15/10/2009 at 13:40 Stense says:
So next time you log on to World of Warcraft, beware that Man of Magic you’ve been fighting could be a mouse in disguise.
15/10/2009 at 13:52 Jayt says:
I would 1v1 that mouse
15/10/2009 at 15:50 Severian says:
totally.
15/10/2009 at 14:06 Rigonzo says:
If I were a mouse I would definitely play… wait for it… Py-rodent.
15/10/2009 at 14:17 BigJonno says:
Will someone please give the poor mouse a shotgun? Or a crowbar, at least.
15/10/2009 at 14:29 The Hammer says:
Ladies and gentlemen, we are overlooking one important detail.
The co-author of this study…
He is called Professor Tank.
15/10/2009 at 14:29 Malibu Stacey says:
I could take that mouse easily.
Unless it has a medic.
Then the medic dies first & the mouse gets it when I respawn. Damn mice & their permanently attached medics. Who do they think they are?
15/10/2009 at 14:29 Lilliput King says:
First mice get ears on their backs before us, now this!
Too much! Also, this really looks like some kind of sick inescapable nightmare-world.
Also also, it’s not really clear the mouse is actually ‘playing’ what hes seeing there. He seems to be attached to the machine by some kind of firm grip on his tiny head, and his feet are probably only moving so fast because hes trying to climb up on top of that ball, a task he CANNOT ACHIEVE. In fact, seeing as he cant fall off without his mousey skull breaking, and he can’t climb up, life must be pretty hard for him.
15/10/2009 at 14:52 Wisq says:
Except that if the mouse weren’t actually “playing” the game, he would just run to escape and noclip through a wall.
Evidently, mice are our betters — when faced with an unwinnable game, they just keep on playing rather than resorting to cheat codes.
15/10/2009 at 17:05 EyeMessiah says:
Yeah, I find it pretty horrifying!
15/10/2009 at 14:39 Tei says:
Yo dawg, I hear that you PC types like mouses, so we have put a mouse on a giganteous trackball in a “boxmap”… in second life 1992 graphics.
15/10/2009 at 15:39 Lack_26 says:
I demand we put mice in giant farms and use them to power the proper TF2 bots we so desire.
Also, could we use these mice linked to machines to explore planets? Put a craft in orbit, full of mice, and then launch the virtual mice machines onto the ground to do explore while begin controlled by the orbiting mice.
15/10/2009 at 15:41 LionsPhil says:
Erm. It’s a mouse trying to scramble up on top of a sphere—given how it’s going round in circles from trying to climb at the same angle, there’s no real evidence there that it’s reacting to the environment at all. Give it long enough, and it may well drift its circle enough that it does noclip right through the wall.
15/10/2009 at 16:07 pepper says:
They probably tested the mouse reactions to the ball first before hooking a computer up to that. We do not know that, so therefore i think its kinda rough to judge on the lack of good research.
Interesting, now we know he responds to something, it would be far more interesting to try and capture the mice’s brainwaves and see what happends then.
15/10/2009 at 16:12 LionsPhil says:
Of course, perhaps it’s just trying to practice its circlestrafing, but is compounded by in an inability to move in a direction perpendicular to that it’s facing.
15/10/2009 at 16:16 Bret says:
Are you insulting the honor of James Tiberius Kirk, good sir?
Fie on the notion!
15/10/2009 at 16:31 Heliocentric says:
Mice are rocket camping bitches.
15/10/2009 at 16:43 Geoff says:
“Where is our all-encompassing virtual reality kit?”
It’s on a recent episode of House. Do you Brits watch House? It’d be silly it we were able to import Hugh Laurie from you guys, without exporting his show back to you.
Anyway, your all-encompassing virtual reality kit is running late, because the developer was very sick.
15/10/2009 at 16:58 Richierich says:
Indeed we do. The current series running on Sky is about two episodes in. He’s just been let out of the nut house.
15/10/2009 at 17:17 Geoff says:
It’s that second one, entitled “Epic Fail”, that I was referencing.
15/10/2009 at 16:43 sfury says:
look out, it’s got a rocket-launcher!
15/10/2009 at 17:33 Devan says:
It doesn’t look like the mouse is reacting to the “environment” much. He’s just climbing in a mostly straight line (straight for him, the computer thinks he’s turning) and occasionally pausing to consider whether he’ll ever get his head out of that vice.
VR would probably need to get a lot less intrusive and uncomfortable to properly fool an animal. They don’t go for the willing suspension of disbelief so easily.
15/10/2009 at 17:40 Garreett says:
Of Mice and Medics?
15/10/2009 at 17:51 BaronWR says:
I’m quite impressed at the speed at which this has circulated round the interwebs, given that I only heard about it from Nature today. The most amusing thing is that they were using the game to see how the mouse reacts to things that can’t happen in the real world, like teleportation, or looping worlds… It’s only a matter of time before they learn how to telefrag…
15/10/2009 at 17:54 Pinbag says:
I wonder how they stimulate the mouse ?
15/10/2009 at 17:57 Jack says:
Poor space mouse, Trapped in
an existence of poor game
design.Will find cheese?
15/10/2009 at 18:11 Rane2k says:
I was just waiting for Imps and Cacodemons to attack the mouse.
Unfortunately, it wouldn´t stand a chance, needs to learn strafing first. :-)
15/10/2009 at 18:48 Pilou says:
Possibly they want to train mice so then they can give them weapons and create an army or mutant mice with an ear in the back and phosphorescent body.
I would like to play Quake Live online against those mice anyway.
15/10/2009 at 19:10 Owen says:
Ooh those Evil Cat Scientists are MEAN!
*sniggering behind their paws*
“Run you little bastard. Run!”
“Graham can you pass me that clipboard, ooh and another custard cream”
15/10/2009 at 19:31 yns88 says:
For those of you claiming that the mouse is just running straight: There are two moments in which the mouse draws near to the “wall” and stops for a moment to adjust the angle at which it’s moving. Additionally, the mouse is running in circles because each time it runs under a “cylinder” it gets a small taste of water. It’s a simple conditioned response experiment, but I think the maze design is not very good.
15/10/2009 at 21:04 reginald says:
that mouse ball needs more traction, you can see his little feet slipping.
15/10/2009 at 21:07 Rei Onryou says:
Humans are slowing getting there. Our equivalent of the mouse ball can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rtX2pWRh6w
15/10/2009 at 21:58 GameOverMan says:
They must teach that mouse how to grind and level up in World of Warcraft. One of those would be cheaper than paying a Korean guy to play the game 14 hours a day.
15/10/2009 at 22:56 mejobloggs says:
Someone should make a TF2 mod to make all the characters mice :)
15/10/2009 at 23:22 Santiago says:
This has nothing to do with science but with Corporate America coming up with a way to defeat the economic crisis, by expanding the market base. Of course, the first commercial use for this technology will be rodent porn.
15/10/2009 at 23:26 Spacewalk says:
So how long until they turn this into a murder simulator? And how long until people complain about mice playing murder simulators?
15/10/2009 at 23:36 shiggz says:
If mice didn’t want to be experimented on then they should have evolved mounted rockets and laser beams faster.
17/10/2009 at 13:46 john says:
@pepper, except that is exactly what they did, and showed the signals from the brain are very similar to signals you see when a mouse is actually walking around. And in fact were able to measure those signals in a new way that was impossible before, and learn something about how they worked. That’s what makes it a nature article rather than just some stupid youtube video.
29/10/2009 at 19:35 petemayo says:
I made a virtual reality setup to work with any pc game :)
Chex it out, you could be as cool as a mouse!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CoJOHuKy28