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Virtual Reality With Unreal Tournament

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-kinda-anyway dept.

thegrommit writes: "It seems someone has been hacking the UT OpenGL driver to produce a relatively cheap VR environment. " It's really just another Cave thing, but it's still something to lust after. Imagine using a treadmill instead of pushing the up arrow. If only I was attached to my general pear-like shape.

23 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Get in shape! by ARColeslaw · · Score: 5, Funny

    All of those FPS addicts would finally get a decent workout (not just their wrists) if they had to use a treadmill. Nice concept!

    --
    ...would you like coleslaw with that?
    1. Re:Get in shape! by Mr_Matt · · Score: 5, Funny

      Heh...and all those Tomb Raider addicts would get to see what it really takes to jump twice your body height while carrying a shotgun, two Uzis, a priceless and magic gold artifact, and two cantaloupes in your shirt. Does the word "oof" come to mind? :)

      --


      But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
    2. Re:Get in shape! by InnereNacht · · Score: 5, Funny

      "..finally get a decent workout (not just their wrists).."

      Nevermind, I'm not even going to say it.

    3. Re:Get in shape! by fobbman · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wouldn't be much different for me. I'm such a camper...

    4. Re:Get in shape! by abe+ferlman · · Score: 5, Funny

      Heh...and all those Tomb Raider addicts would get to see what it really takes to jump twice your body height while carrying a shotgun, two Uzis, a priceless and magic gold artifact, and two cantaloupes in your shirt. Does the word "oof" come to mind? :)

      Good one - very funny. I mean, where would she put canteloupes with those enormous breasts?

      :)

      --
      microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
    5. Re:Get in shape! by achurch · · Score: 3, Funny

      Good one - very funny. I mean, where would she put canteloupes with those enormous breasts?

      I've never played Tomb Raider, but I'm not so sure I'd be all that thrilled about seeing cantaloupes with breasts...

      (:

  2. Waste of Time by Murdock037 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This isn't going to be particularly interesting until somebody figures out how to stick themselves into a game of Leisure Suit Larry...

  3. real FPShooter simulation by SirSlud · · Score: 5, Interesting

    VR can only take you so far.

    I am curious about extending 'laser tag' like games to include splash damage capabilities, wide beam fire .. basically, to facilitate all the features of modern FPS games into a laser tag like game, including a visor that projects a 3d world exacly the same as your physical 'arena'.

    I'd imagine your walls, floors, etc would have to be set up to instruct your base computer when and where they were hit, and then distribute damage if players are within a blast radius set for the 'weapon' being used by the shooter ... but can anyone divine whether this is technically feasible? Or has anyone attempted something like this?

    I know it sounds like laser tag deluxe, but I'm thinking deluxe deluxe deluxe ... laser tag taken to its utter extreme technological limits. I think that would be cool. Ideas? Comments? Anyone wanna work with me on just laying what this would require, technically, by catalog surfing or whathaveyou?

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
    1. Re:real FPShooter simulation by crawling_chaos · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I think you'd have to look at some of the stuff the U.S. Army's been working on for training. It's probably partially hype, but some infatrymen came out of the Gulf War claiming that the training was more difficult than actual combat. Of course, the training probably assumed competent leadership on both sides of the conflict.

      Anyway, my point (I did have a point when I started this post, I think) is that since most modern casualties are caused by "splash" damage from arty and whatnot, the Army's training program has probably worked out some of what you're after. The rest of it might come from some of the "smart" infantry weapons they've been working on, since they incorporate some VR and heads-up tech. I don't think any of that stuff is production grade yet. At any rate, it will be used to really kill people a long time before you and I can use it to play games.

      --
      You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
      -- Colonel Adolphus Busch
    2. Re:real FPShooter simulation by bhsx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      One of my first jobs, when I was sixteen, was working at the first lazer arena(in the midwest anyway), Lazer Zone. It was fun and the owner built all the equipment himself; they had reset machines that were really just electric magnets that created a 'circuit' of sorts when you placed the gun between them, generating a point for the other team. There were light sensors on the front of the gun, a small one on the battery pack (which you wore on your hip), and a ton of sensors on your little electro-yamaka... which had no functionallity besides being a good target. Of course, the die hard players had all the cheats/hacks just like today, only then it took some imagination.

      They would come in with pen-lights, electric tape to cover the sensors, and the best team (their name now escapes me, it was a long time ago... oh wait, Team Wild) even came in with speaker magnets to reset their guns(which went dead after you got shot, until you hit aforementioned reset booth) and a hacked electric key to restart the timed battery packs.

      Having it be a sole-proprietorship was great for him too, it gave him the ability to do whatever he wanted. It was all black-lit with flourescent tape around the edges of the 'shields' and ramps, with white lite projected as the 'laser.' By the time we closed the place down we had nerf footballs hacked into flash grenades and huge burst cannons on the ramps for each team. He had some really good ideas, and testing/implementing them was always fun. That was 1987 or so, but what the hell, the impetus to shoot people hasn't left me, count me in... :)

      --
      put the what in the where?
    3. Re:real FPShooter simulation by praedor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Can't recall the link but do a search for "tetanizing laser". COOL! It shoots an electric bolt, of sorts, for hundreds of meters. Using twin UV laser beams to ionize an airpath between you and your target, a very high voltage (user-settable and with enough power behind it you could dial in anything from stun to kill) is sent down the ionized path.


      It is, in principle, even able to shoot around corners with appropriate mirrors properly situated.


      I want one.

      --
      In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
  4. Sketchy VR by Angry+Black+Man · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While it is "Virtual Reality" none the less the design is very sketchy. To get CaveUT working right you have to do a LOT of tweaking. You will want to have the view rotations and axis in the exact right place. I've seen this in action and it really is not worth the trouble it took to get it working. To tell you the truth it is cool to look at for a little bit but not all that much more fun to play with.

    The mouse/keyboard is really not a good setup for such an immersive environment. Real VR can map the movement of the head to look around and control movement etc with some other mechanism (usually either a handheld device or foot controls). CaveUT doesn't have real time head tracking. To get a real VR experience out of UT would be cool but it would not be cheap and that would defeat the whole purpose of this project (keep in mind it is developed to be an interesting alternative to real virtual reality gaming). The VR games out there now are pretty lame and I admit it would be very cool if they got games like UT and Quake III working very well in VR.

    None the less, the OpenGL code is made for MS Windows only. However it would not be difficult for it to be recompiled for Linux and there is still no version of the driver for the Mac.

    --
    the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
  5. i-Glasses!!! by dazedNconfuzed · · Score: 3, Informative
    Virtual I-O's "i-Glasses" have stereo vision and head tracking - why haven't any first-person games been tweaked to support this???

    --
    Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
  6. We've got something sorta similar... by mikeage · · Score: 3, Interesting

    well... not quite. Using WireGL from stanford, we've had great success running UT on 12 computers at a resolution of 4096x2304 (16:9 widescreen), with a physical screen that's over 13 feet wide, and 7.5 feet tall (15+ feet diagonal), which is something like 100 square feet of violent blood and guts. Quite cool to see. No UT hacking required. The only bad part is that the game assumes you're just using a monitor, which takes up maybe 15-30 degrees of your view, so when it becomes a full 90 degree view, it gets a little overwhelming, but hey, that's half the fun. Anyone ever in the princeton plasma physics lab, stop in to the high res wall and check out quake3 or our VR walkthrough using UT.

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    -- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
  7. This is cool... by cr0sh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But way out of reach for the average /.'er - these kinds of mods seem to be the only thing happening anymore in "homebrew" VR (and I use the term "homebrew" here in a very loose sense - there is nothing "home" nor "brew" about this mod, other than tweaking the UT software - everything else is closer to the high-end "commercial" realm of things).

    Which is very sad, considering today's "state-of-the-art"...

    The site I run (see my URL) has a ton of links and info on homebrew VR - but I receive little comment on it. I would love to hear about someone homebrewing a CAVE of their own using a few 100 inch TV projectors, a set of SEGA stereo glasses (or similar), and a PowerGlove. I know it can be done - but nobody is tackling it. If I could ever find the time, I would tackle it myself - but I already have too many projects on back burners (which is why the site hasn't been updated in so long).

    Hey, /.'ers! You see this stuff, drool over it, and want it for yourself? BUILD IT! PLEASE! It can be done, and cheaply - hell, a cheesy TORUS-style screen CAVE could be done using all off-the-shelf equipment for under $2500 (including projector!) - it could be done cheaper using homebrew projectors. Or, if your want an HMD, hack a StuntMaster or VFX-1 off Ebay, or build one yourself using cheap LCD TVs from Frys.

    For a long time, I have expected an "explosion" in homebrew VR - a lot of people "oohhh and ahhh" over it whenever demos like this are shown, but everyone seems to think it is impossible to play with anymore - that you have to have big $$$ to do anything - UNTRUE! REND386 and AVRIL were born out of this falacy, and used modest and cheap hardware of the time to do a whole heck of a bunch - PCVR (the magazine) was born, and for a while, it seemed like VR was the next "thing" - then the bottom seemed to fall out, the internet became "big" and VR has been nearly forgotten...

    Sad...

    --
    Reason is the Path to God - Anon
  8. Re:Errm slight problem with this as a UT environme by praedor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That would be about the best option, though expensive. Full movement in all directions...but momentum would be a problem without expensive correction. You start moving (in your hamster ball) in one direction and then suddenly stop...but the ball's momentum carries on and you end up face-planted on the floor.


    More expense: use computer control and drive motors to work with you. You stop suddenly and the controller actively brakes the ball to match your movement.


    The ball would have to be reasonably large, I would think, to reduce what would otherwise be REALLY substantial spherical error and distortion.

    --
    In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
  9. Like Ender's Game? by maddogsparky · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I kinda like the idea of flash suits that freeze the appendage that has been hit. I don't know what could do that though...maybe some fluid between two membranes that solidifies in an electric field? Of course, motion feedback would be even better.

    --
    science is a religion
  10. VR = R? by Arkhan · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, not to be a smart-ass, but...

    "a visor that projects a 3d world exactly the same as your physical arena".

    If it's exactly the same as your physical arena, what are you gaining? And how do you know when it's broken?

  11. hey guys, by cosmo7 · · Score: 4, Funny

    haven't these people ever watched sci-fi movies? obviously, anyone who gets killed in a virtual reality game will be killed in real life. messing around with this stuff is suicide.

  12. Another idea... by neema · · Score: 4, Funny

    Keep the treadmill moving fast, so if someone decides to stand still to spawn camp, they get thrown to the floor.

  13. PowerGloves by cr0sh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Agreed - PowerGloves are not what they are all cracked up to be, but they are easy to hack for a PC. Your comments and ideas are all valid (in fact, look around my site, and you will find an old "issue" of an online "zine" I wrote for VR called "Cheap VR" - issue 2 deals with building your own homemade glove and wireless tracker.

    The issue of tactile feedback is an appropriate issue, which is something I have considered. Using an object to represent what you are using or navigating with can be more "intuitive" and understandable. I suppose that is why there is a prevalance of "wand" type devices used in CAVES. One thing I have thought about playing with is this small "off-table" trackball, that you fit one finger through trigger style, and the other goes around the front - there is a trigger button, and two front buttons. The thumb controls the trackball - this would allow navigation as well as manipulation in a 3D environment. Coupled with a chorded keyboard, it could be a useful system.

    --
    Reason is the Path to God - Anon
  14. Inexpensive Cave UT by InferiorFloater · · Score: 3, Funny

    "or, if you want a dirt cheap Cave setup, simply get 3 PCs, two LCD projectors, and an empty white corner"

    Come on, man! What kind of UT fanatic has these kind of resources? I mean, a blank corner?

    My low budget suggestion? Take your laptop to a real cave, play UT, and have your buddy throw a rock at your head every time you get fragged.

    --

    ---------
    Get back to me when my brain starts working.
  15. Descent by dbowden · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I have a pair of the original i-glasses!, and the only game I ever enjoyed playing with them was Descent. The resolution (320x200) pretty much bites, and the head tracking is useless for aiming.

    It was always fun letting friends use the system though, because anyone who wears the glasses while playing a game inevitably ends up looking like Stevie Wonder, turning their heads around at wildly exaggerated angles, trying to control the game.

    I used to have to stop and reorient myself every so often or I'd end up with my head between my legs staring at the ground, or straining to try and turn my head around backwards, just to go straight ahead.

    --
    Help find a cure for Gidget.