Lightsaber: Input Device Of The (Near) Future

Jacek Fedorynski writes: "Take a look at Project Earthlight, described in this interview. Basically, this guy took a webcam and a lightsaber toy and turned them into a virtual saber duel. Sounds supercool to me. Plus, he gets a style bonus for quoting Carmack's .plan." (Admit it -- you're swinging your hands and making lightsaber noises.) Since I grouse a lot about the disconnect between controllers and game actions, this is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

Comments

How "closely connected" do you want to be?

[kaphka]

The main point of computer games is to allow us to experience things that we can't do in real life. If you make the interaction too realistic, then it becomes just as hard to play the game as it is to do the real thing (and not as rewarding.)

Personally, I'd probably like a "virtual lightsaber," but, like many /.ers, I have experience with martial arts. There are a lot of other people out there who would find such an interface frustrating.

RealityFusion

[cd_Csc]

A company named RealityFusion has done something similar a while ago. From their web site, you can request the SDK. They also have a "Variety Pack" available for download that has a couple of demo programs.

Does anybody here have any experience with their SDK and/or demos? Are there any other companies doing similar things?

BTW, Digimarc and Wired are giving away free USB webcams (does not include shipping/handling) at http://www.digimarc.com/household.

Evil empire

[BlueUnderwear]

Unfortunately, only Windows drivers will be available, so tough luck defeating that empire with your lightsaber.

now all we need a tactile and resistance

[orpheus]

This is certainly a promising step...

but in my experience, the more experience you have with 'the real thing' (e.g. martial arts, flight, or firearms) the less satisfying the imitations are. That doesn't mean that DOOM or dogfighters aren't fun anymore, but they're fun for reasons only tangentially related to the activities they model. Doom isn't a 'cop-style' tactical shooting simulator, and most dogfight games are pale echoes of a flight sim

Moving up the scale of involvement, manual combat games (martial arts) totally fail for me because of the controller problem. I find the five button arcade interface insulting and unsatisfying, and I think that a swordfighting game would be similarly hollow without the constraints that make real swordplay challenging.

Fortunately, the hollow plastic lightsaber gives us a great opportunity for tactile feedback and resistance.

Striking an opponent's sword has three major components:

Tactile: the 'thump' of impact on a timescale of 0-40 milliseconds
(could be a solenoid in the handle: cheap, easy to install, and minimal software driver needed

Resistance: during an impact, the opponent's sword resists your sword, depending on the force and direction of impact. The force may not be much greater thna the solenoid 'thump', and the timescale is not that much longer (say 100-200 msec), but even brief sustained forces require something far more complex than a single solenois
Possible mechanism: independent heavily imbalanced motorized cams on the axis of the saber shaft, and sophisticated drivers to allow the individual cam torque impulses to sum, simultaneously or sequentially, to the desired force profile.

Blade Inertia: throught a fight, the inertia of a blade's motion resists maneuvering. This is a very significant factor in the overall fight.
Potential mechanism: Easy way out? Use a heavy saber. Unfortunately, this might tend to wreck your den, your cubicle, and nearby friends. Cheesier way out? "Light saber blades don't have mass, harrumph!"

Re:now all we need a tactile and resistance

[orpheus]

Gyroscopes *precess* which means they move at right angles to the applied torque.

If you press on the front of a gyroscope, it tilts to one side (depending on the direction of rotation), etc. This might feel 'cool' to a kid (I think some children's toys have tried this), but in a realistic interface, it would feel incredibly unnatural.

The above applies to 'torques' - forces that tend to alter the axis of the gyroscope. Non-torque ('central' or 'direct') forces produce the same response as they would on any mass. However, this eliminates any advantage you might expect from a gyroscope -- it might as well be a chunk of rock, as far as non-torque forces are concerned.

If a gyroscope is fixed to the outside case of the blade, most reasonable swordfighting moves will produce mostly torque. If it is mounted on a gimbal, most moves will produce very little torque (depending on how good the gymbal is). You could have a variable resistance gymbal; or accelerate and decelerate the gyroscope rotation to modulate the the size of the precession force, but the direction would *still* be all wrong. It would be like wrestling a snake.

Just what I need...

[SirWhoopass]

holding a weapon while playing games. Considering the damage my PlayStation controllers have to endure after a bad loss, someone better look into making armored monitors.

Haiku

[575]

Lightsaber in hand
Leap and slash like a Jedi
Hide broken heirlooms