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Virtual Sword Fighting
Faeton writes "SIGGRAPH is on, and Extremetech has the scoop on it. From Nvidia's N30 to ATI's monster 4x Radeon 9700 render board, the coolest thing was the virtual sword fighting simulator. With a VR headset and a gyroscopic force-feedback "sword", you could really be the badass knight you've always dreamed of. I want this at a local arcade soon!"
I think most of the slashdot community would use this be Jedi Knights.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Why does the display rotate? Why couldn't it just be 30 stationary displays? It would seem stationary displays would be a lot easier to create and maybe even synchornize. Also, less moving parts would help durability. Anyone have any info on this, or has anyone seen it live at Siggraph?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
And became interested in swords, and fencing. In college, there was a fencing class, so a friend I took it. After a while, we considered buying our own swords. Eventually, we decided not to, because odds were that eventually, we'd want to play with them, and one of us would end up badly injured or dead. I think we made the right choice.
2) Any mention in reference to the "vibrating stick".
3) Any polls that mention prOn or "vibrating stick" with a CmdrTaco last-choice.
4) Creating any troll-ific "Please refain from" lists.
I have to contend with sword-fights at all the local bars... now I get to do the same on my computer.
*twirls finger in air*
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
SIGGRAPH is off. I just got back last night.
:)
I was a student volunteer and I had the dubious luck to work at the Episode 2 special session. On the one hand I didn't have to wait in line, but on the other I had to deal with freaks with BO who got irate when I had to close the doors.
See you all next year in San Diego, where I'll hopefully be packing a demo reel.
It seems like VR stuff has advanced very slowly in the past few years - except the graphics part of it. We are now getting to the point with the new cards from ATi and Nvidia that movies can be rendered real time so the visual experience is great, but physically its still cumbersome. Why isn't the equipment wireless, using bluetooth or something similar for everything to communicate. Its not going to feel very realistic to me if I have a strand of wires attached to me. I think the VR industry needs to step back and worry less about pretty graphics and more about making the hardware more user friendly to help add to the experience.
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
..actually do it in real life, too.
:p
Aside from the fact that you have to a) leave yer basement and b) take some bruises.
this is sweet, cant wait till its available to home users. kinda cool how technology is advancing to new standards so quickly, and somewhat uncomforting, hehe.
Is not that out of reach - but one uses a foil or epee, and the sport is called 'fencing'. I was friends with the California state champ a long time ago. He loved it, and as a sport, it makes a person a bit more interesting than 'football player'. He did say it was nothing like what you see in the movies.
I've posted this idea to various bulletin boards many many times in the past few years, about time somebody listens to me. :-D
:)
(My idea was using off the shelf equipment though, and the controller had an estimated price of ~$90-$120, and was wireless to boot. No forcefeed back obviously, heh, would've required tons of batteries for that.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
SIGGRAPH exhibits closed on Thursday evening, but here are some of the biggest highlights:
SGI annouced their Infinite Reality 4 option for the Onyx series... comes standard with 1gbyte of texture ram and 2.5gbyte of buffer, expandable to 10gbyte of buffer for a total of 11gbyte of onboard gfx ram. Up to 16 IR4 subsystems can be installed in a single machine. Each subsystem can drive up to 8 monitors... or all subsystems can run in parallel for greater performance. The Virtual LA Urban Simulation project demoed part of their 3D LA using IR4 and the older IR3. They currently have over 1TB of texture and geometry data from Los Angeles, mostly in downtown areas... though they have 20,000 square miles mapped out, 4,000 of which are quite detailed.
Sun was showing off their XVR-4000 gfx option, a cardset that uses the IPA slot found in most Ultra-series machines. It has about 8x the geometry performance of IR3 and about 50% of the fill performance of IR4... for a fraction of the cost. 1gbyte of texture and 144mbyte of buffer. Different market targets, but interesting none the less.
What? What did you expect to follow "insert"? Get your mind out of the gutter. :)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Why isn't the equipment wireless, using bluetooth or something similar for everything to communicate. Its not going to feel very realistic to me if I have a strand of wires attached to me.
SGI was showing off some examples of what you are describing. Basicly, the big iron (clusters, or large machines such as Onyxes) sit in the machine room, while the users have wireless webpads and such elsewhere. It's the only way we can currently tap the power of thousands of processors and dozens of 3D accelerators in a handheld using current technology.
http://www.sgi.com/visualization/van/
I dunno. I think that ATI's demostration of REAL TIME RAYTRACING ON THEIR RADEON CARDS was the coolest thing at SIGGRAPH.
Typical. Give a geek a stick and he think's he's Li friggin' Huahua.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Intel's Glow-cube
Intel's Suctioncup Clock
3DLab's Fan/Lite
Just imagine everyone having one of these bad boys at home! :-D Then they'd profit when users had to buy new swords.
I've always wanted to learn kendo, but the nearest club from my university, is, alas, 50 miles away. And I don't have a car.
:p
Would be nice to know that in the future one could just don a VR headset and practice any sort of exotic martial arts
Probably safer for getting initiated into using sharp weapons as well..
Nice,
Michel
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
I can image the gyroscope could simulate a sword gently pushing on something -- but not the abrupt clanging together of real swords.
Also, the reason you don't see more demand for VR input devices for quake etc... is that that none can compete with keyboard and mouse. What you gain in immersion you lose in proficiency.
I want this at a local arcade soon!
This might be slightly off-topic, but it has to be remembered that since the 80s, arcades have REALLY had tough times.
Back in the 70s and 80s, the cost of the best games and technology was prohibitively high, so arcades did good business. Since the mid 90s (pretty much since PlayStation), however, you can buy something just as powerful as an arcade machine for home use and you don't need to go to the arcade at all.
I am somewhat saddened by the 'fall' of the arcade, and think they add a great social aspect to gaming. Imagine modern day arcades with 16 player Quake 3 style shoot-em-ups.. but it ain't going to happen for most arcades. Most arcades these days still have their crappy early 90s games (Test Drive, Sega Rally, etc) along with a bunch of lame shooting games.
Arcades are for tourists nowadays, not serious gamers. And that is sad.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I want it for home consoles... also when are they going to come up with a decent gun device for the current round of consoles... or a game with realistic gun sighting.
Sure, the Amiga version was higher resolution and more colors, but the Commodore 64 was first. :^D
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Armed with my foam sword, and utterly unable to use it, I cheerfully bumbled about with the rest of 'em, swishing the odd swish and generally having a good time.
Until I came up against Nick.
Now Nick is an interesting person. He has reactions like no-one else I've ever played against in anything. To give an idea, I had never been defeated in air-hockey by anyone I played (and I played a lot) until I played Nick. And Nick I never beat even once...
Back onto the role-playing session, and in my wanderings I ran into Nick, who was holding two rather better constructed foam swords. Turning to me, he did some ridiculously cool flick with both hands - crossing swords whilst swinging them, like you see in the old pirate films - and began his advance.
Role-playing to the hilt, I briefly considered. "What would my character do in this situation? Would he a) buckle his swash and fight like a man or b) flee like the cringing curr he really is?".
I ran like hell...
Cheers,
Ian
You can check out some of my favorite pictures of stuff going on here.
You can play this virtual sword-fighting game at Walt Disney World's Disney Quest area in the part of the park called Downtown Disney. It's pretty fun, and a good value, since you pay around $15 and get to play unlimited arcade games, pinball, and weird cool things like the sword fight. I don't think you need admission to the park, either. You could just do this if you wanted. I got sort of bored of the sword fight once I did it once. The gyroscopic sword is a really cool way of simulating an actual sword though. It's sort of funny to see 10 people wearing headsets and waving these handles around! There's also this incredibly cool thing at Disney Quest where you make your own rollercoaster and ride it. How that works is you lay out the track, then once you get all that good to go, the track is rated based on how severe it is. The attendant told me that if you're only going on it once, make it as severe as possible. Then you get into this rotating cabin that can spin a full 360 degrees in any direction. You look into this screen that takes up your entire view and the combination of the spinning, the video, and the fact that you have no idea which way is up makes your body feel like it's actually on a rollercoaster. It's a better feeling than a real rollercoaster, people have gotten sick on it. Amazing.
... the Shuttle SS51 had a 64bit PCI slot - then I could put one of these in it - CAE render board with 4 x Radeon 8500 GPUs
Mind you I would have to cut a big long slot in the top and front of the case to make it fit..... who cares though if my PC looks like a toaster when you have one of those.
- HeXa
I think those of us in the SCA would beg to differ with you laddy.
A$$ to your partner balls against the wall,
if you can't get laid in the SCA,
you can't get laid at all.
There are actually groups that do this frequently. There is the origional, Dagorhir, The rescent spin-off called Belegrath MCS, and if you want more role-playing, Amtgard. I've never participated in Amtgard, but I have in Dagorhir and Belegarth, and while the concept of dressing up in medeval clothing and fighting with foam swords and sheilds on central campus seems strange to some people, it it actually a lot of fun, and it's completly safe...doing it several hours a week for a year, the worst injury I ever sustained was a bloody nose.
The article text is:
One of the more amusing displays was this sword-fighting simulator that used a VR headset along with a "virtual sword" that had two gyro motors running it that allowed for tactile force feedback. Apparently, one overly exuberant combatant in a moment of pique jumped up to deliver the death-blow, and upon landing smashed the sword into one of the posts you see in this picture, leaving it in pieces, and the device's creators nearly in tears. But, they were able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, and the virtual combat raged on. This system also used multi-channel audio to help the player localize sounds and better immerse them in the scene, and also used video compositing to put an image of that particular player into the rendered 3D scene.
If this became a home entertainment unit, can you imagine the sort of waiver the company would want the average geek to sign before using it?
"The undersigned (hereafter, "they") agrees that Swashing Buckles Incorporated (hereafter, "we") were just sitting around innocently when the undersigned came in and DEMANDED to be given one of these virtual sword units, despite the fact that we warned them OVER and OVER that they hadn't done anything more strenuous than click a mouse in TEN YEARS, and therefore would ALMOST CERTAINLY strain EVERY MUSCLE IN THEIR BODY within minutes of engaging in a virtual battle. The undersigned further agrees that we warned them that they would QUITE LIKELY destroy a valued POSSESSION, PET, or LOVED ONE, while leaping about blindly inside the virtual reality helmet. The undersigned agrees NOT TO COME CRYING TO US when these things happen."
Dueling with a lightsaber... every geeks dream ;)
Well, ours was not as cool, but we tried as hard as we could. We used World Tool Kit on a Sparc 5, and the Polyhemus tracking system stuck on the end of a plastic Lightsaber toy. Graphics not quite up to snuff, but fun. Wow, almost ten years ago now. Feel somewhat old.
I thought Die by the Sword was pretty realistic with a mouse. Fun multiplayer game for a while, then it got boring.
Thought some people might be interested that there's an (admittedly less sophisticated) sword fighting game from Konami out in arcades which uses a motion-sensor sword controller. It's called Tsurugi (apparently Blade of Honor is the US). Here's some pics and information from the Magic Box.
Have at thee! *Clash!* *Opponents arm falls off* 'do0d... the bl4ck n1t3 n3v35 d13s!!!' Your arms off! 'n0 1t's n0t d0od. I'm 2 1337 4 d4t. come get some' *Clash!* *Opponents other arm falls off* 'd0od you cheat! CHEATER!' I beat you fair and square! 'the bl4ack n1t3 n3435 dies! NONE SHALL PASS OVER MY L33tz0r BRIDGE!' *You tire and log off*
user interface just got a lot easier than:
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If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
This wasnt even close to the coolest thing at SIGGRAPH! Takeo Igarashi's work on predictive interfacing making easier 2d and 3d drawing tools was cooler. Digiplasty , a kind of 3d exquisite corpse as shown by Stewart and Makai was cooler. (For that matter the Studio, manned by Makai, Stewart, Scott and many others, where you could create 2d and 3d art and print 2d and 3d was AWESOME - you could work in there for hours, vs. the few seconds of playing with a silly virtual sword.) Scotts Dodecahedron was a wonderful example of taking something abstract and virtual and making it real and usable. Isa's overview of wearable tech and cyberfashion (she took out the notes, dammit!) was refreshing, if not so new to a frequent slashdotter. (She's a burner too!) Some of the mixed reality work being done at the University of Singapore was really neat. (This is an example of some of the most exciting stuff there. Several researchers showed some great work being done in augmented reality, and combining that with some of the reasonable priced wearable and wirelessable computing, we can see some real headway being made. One researcher even composites a virtual face back onto a fellow participant in the augemented reality environment, masking the HMD, even going so far as to track the eyes and simulate the gaze.) The results of last years meditation chamber research installation was an interesting and possibly VERY useful application of VR technology. W. Bradford Paley's work on applying alternative interfaces to explore other media was fascinating, where you can use this LARGE java tool named TextArc to examine graphically over 400 literary works. The Web3D Consortium's release of the final working draft of X3D (with tools) could end up being much more important than the newest video card from ATI. Dietmar Offenhuber's work on non-isotropic spaces at wegzeit was an interesting approach to mapping and representing real places. Zachary Simpson et al's delightfully simple shadow interactivity was many times more fun than the virtual swordfight. Fabric.ch's knowscape was also exciting, both for the viewers and the presenter, as he would find additions from his European counterparts each morning when he logged on to the shared 3d space. Kenneth Huff's beautiful art using maya was just one example of some wonderful digital work being done. Lastly, Michael J. Lyons soon-to-be-published research on the aesthetics of Tokyo's Kyoto Gardens was both informative and inspiring. And this is just a TINY PART of what happened there!
Really, SIGGRAPH was NOT just an exhibition floor with cheesey swag (although the little green LED lights were very nice) and some cool new toys. It was presentation after presentation by resesarchers, some barely able to speak engrish, but all excited about their work and open to collaboration. It was hours and hours of animation, some (Like Allain Escalle's "Le Conte du monde flottant") were so stunning as to make you forget where animation ended and life began. Disney's work on replacing one actors face with another, retaining ALL facial expression, was downright scary. And the Spiderman gag footage, his spidey-suit oddly replaced with a fully reflective silver surface, like most of the rest of SIGGRAPH'S less entertaining presentations, were surely an indication of things to come.
Take the time to go to SIGGRAPH2002 and look around. If you find something interesting, write the author. This is where the new VR and AR comes from - not ATI!
Hahaha! That was you!!! (Isn't it great to know that there's always someone more watching you?) :-) Have a nice day!
If you want to see a video with the Virtual Chanbara (sword fighting) in action, to to this SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies page. Actually, a coworker of mine is a committee member. Lucky bastard.
Click on the video stream towards the top of the page for audio visual enjoyment (which includes the virtual sword fighting and much more). I *so* wish I was there.
A very Quick Summary of the Virtual Chanbara is also available. Trust me. The video does a much better job.
I was cruising at +3 almost 4 hours after the story hit, and hadn't seen a Hiro Protagonist reference. I was about to add one, but first I dropped Score back and found this one, with no mod points. Has /. lost its core literacy?
Perhaps a better question, does/should Neal Stephenson constitute core literacy for a Geek crowd?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I just spent 4 hours makeing armor adjustmers on a friends suit so we can go to practice tomorrow. I can say with some confedenect that there is a lot more to sword fighting than swinging a stick. I would incorage anyone that wants to learn to take a class or find there local fencing club or find there local SCA practice. There is something to be saI just spent 4 hours making armor adjusters on a friends suit so we can go to practice tomorrow. I can say that there is a lot more to sword fighting than swinging a stick. I would encourage anyone that wants to learn to take a class, find there local fencing club, or find there local SCA practice. There is so much more when you do it for real, I jest don't think there will ever be enough polygons.
Charles Puffer
know in the SCA as
Lord Duncan Forbes Squire to his Grace Brion Tarragon
As far as the graphics are concerned, we're back to VirtaFighter 1. If high poly high texture models are your thing, this wont interest you. But,the graphics didn't worry me as much as the animation. I counted about 5 different cycles of animation from the enemy, which include predicable routines of slicing vertically, horizontly, the spinning cyclone of um, death, and the backward leap. Your enemy is no samuri. :)
I also found it intesting that everyone who played won. It was that easy. I long for realistic, fun vr experiences, but this was hardly much of a step forward.
Kendo requires that you look directly into your opponents eyes.
And nowhere else.
You must see every little contraction of his iris, every slight flick of eyelid.
Lose concentration for one thousandth of a second and the next thing you know your head has been split in two.
No VR system is gonna allow you to do that.
Great sport anyway.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Might have scored better if not for the blatant mispelling. "Hiro Protanonist" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
14 digits of Pi are all we need.
Using 5 cameras to detect your body in 3d space. Street fighter, the real edition coming soon :)
God spoke to me
Virtual sword fighting?
why not virtual light sabre-ing?
i can see it now... Jedi Knight VR!
-judging another only defines yourself
My 11 year old son and I tried this exhibit at the 'Emerging Technologies' section of SigGraph.
The headset doesn't fit well and moves around all the time. This would be OK for the usual sitting in a chair looking around" kind of VR, but when you are jumping around and spinning to see where he bad guys are coming from - it's hopeless.
Your field of view is *WAY* to narrow for fighting.
The graphics were very 1995 - it looked like they were almost an afterthought. Hardly any texture, plain green floor, crude enemy animation with red triangles for blood splotches and yellow triangles for sparks when the swords hit.
The spatialised audio didn't help in locating your enemies. People watching the show were forever shouting "He's Behing You!!" to players who couldn't see that they were being chopped to bits by enemies they couldn't see. The narrow field of view wasn't helping any.
The fancy "force feedback" sword was about as effective as a Nintendo 64 rumble-pack in conveying that you had or hadn't hit something - but that was about it.
It was a brave effort - and fun for a short time, but definitely *NOT* earth-shattering VR.
www.sjbaker.org
Hell. I want this in my livingroom!
Does it make those WNNNG! WNNNG! SKKKSH! noises lightsabers do?
;)
If so, soon we'll see the likes of Darth Hemos and
Padewan CowboyNeal
[o]_O
The Virtual LA Urban Simulation project [ucla.edu] demoed part of their 3D LA using IR4 and the older IR3. They currently have over 1TB of texture and geometry data from Los Angeles, mostly in downtown areas... though they have 20,000 square miles mapped out, 4,000 of which are quite detailed.
Imagine an add-on to the America's Army game - urban warfare, utilizing maps and geometry from the UCLA project. I'm surprised that they're getting funding from NSF only (that's all I saw on the site.) I would have expected at least some DoD or Navy funding given the potential applications for VR training and research (ie, into AI and simulations in an urban environment
Does kendo also promote hitting the return key twice as a general practice?
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
*bop* dead ;)
Sounds like someone is finally coming up with appealing stuff to help us geeks to stay in shape.
Very true. Once you overlook the sales persons, booth babes, and mo-cap girls, you were left with lots of enthusiastic geeks (mostly the best of the best).
After that, it is hard to come back to work with a bunch of 9-to-5ers.
You have NO IDEA how much time I spent in the shadow garden! I want that thing IN MY ROOM! :)
My brother's currently on an engineering internship in Japan and he says many of the larger arcades already have this. Forget DDR, there's people swinging swords around, swinging baseball bats, and even golf clubs. There's even some *AHEM* adult interactive games.
There were booth babes? What Siggraph did you go to? The models at Sony Pictures Imageworks and The Art Institutes don't count. :)
I spent quite a bit of time looking for 3D glasses at Stereo3D.com a while back and ended up with this information:
/., are monitors that are physically 3D. Using several layers of LCDs, these monitors provide pseudo-3D similar to shutterglasses but without the often ugly and uncomfortable glasses. Often, however, this 3D has much less depth, and is also extremely expensive.
To the uninitiated, 3D might seem to be a pair of big goggles set on someone's head with inline monitors (and possibly gyros to detect head movement and adjust the view direction accordingly). However, there ARE different methods of 3D. (Goggles are, at the moment the most immersive, but also the most uncomfortable.) Another more "popular" (as in sales) but less known method is 3D shutterglasses. More on those later.
First, a little information on 3D goggles. The resolutions are usually less impressive than their specifications first indicate. The LCD panels usually used in consumer goggles offer a resolution of 789*230 (181470 pixels per eye). That sounds quite good, but it's not. They use 3 pixels (red, green, and blue) to produce one colored pixel. So the true resolution is 263*230*3. There are professional products out there with 1920*480. These should give a resolution of 640*480*3 (640x480).
Any decent (800*600*3) pair of goggles costs upwards of $3000, and those often only have an approximate 31 diagonal field of view. (Typically, a human can see with a horizontal field of view of 200 and a vertical field of view of 135. That's a diagonal view of ~241.3.) Anything more and you get into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars ($15000 for a 1024*768(*3?) pair with 35/50 horizontal FOV, and even, in the past, $100000 (yes, $100K) for a 1600*1200(*3?) [CRT] pair with a 40/60/75/90 horizontal FOV).
A second method, 3D shutterglasses, are a thin pair of LCDs that go over your eyes and "mask" (black out) one eye for one frame, then masks the other eye for the next, and so on. When it does this, the monitor draws two images: one for the left eye, and one for the right eye. This gives the appearance of 3D. (With goggles, these two images are drawn separately on each LCD.) There are many problems with this. First, synchronization has to be PERFECT or you'll see the image intended for the other eye, which "spoils" the 3D effect. As a companion to this, many glasses use a shortlived and now largely non-existant "DIN3" connector to synchronize. (Others use special ISA cards. ISA slots don't exist on modern motherboards.) While there are a growing number of glasses using VGA instead of DIN3 to synchronize, some of the "highest-rated" use DIN3. Second, the way 3D glasses work causes the image appear to be darker than it is, because one half of your vision is "black" for each frame. Third, most monitors use slow or medium-slow phospors, which means that they don't become black quickly. This means you can see remnants of the other eye's image in the unintended eye. For a good example of this, watch white-on-black credits, and notice the trails after each line. The only fast phosphors are monochrome, are used for medical equipment, and are rediculously expensive. These can only be colourized through projection. Fourth, your screen refresh rate needs to be and stay high. Because two images need to be drawn per "frame," your refresh rate needs to be at LEAST 60Hz (which, when halved for each eye, ends up being 30Hz or 30fps; seven frames less and you're watching a slideshow). Fifth, the field of view is limited to the size of your monitor. This is no problem for large theatres like IMAX, but even on a 22" screen the range and area is extremely limited. The upside of shutterglasses is that they're cheap. Usually $100 or less per pair. (Excluding the monitor, but you have that anyway.)
A third method, used in IMAX theatres, is projection 3D. This works by polarizing light, and then using polarized glasses to filter out the positive in one eye and the negative in the other. This works extremely well, but you'll be hard pressed to find any projectors capable of polarizing light.
A fourth method, discussed previously on
The final method is holographic technology which is in its extremely infant stages and is not something that a consumer would be able to purchase or use.
Tactile sense is something much harder to do. For the most part, the only common tactile sense creation devices are weighted motors (for example, the vibration system in/on game controllers). For a while there was a chair (the name escapes me) that physically vibrated and had built-in speakers, but that was a flop. Other ways this COULD be accomplished are to wear tight suits with motors in them, but that would be a costly and difficult thing to choreograph correctly. In the end, there really isn't much of a way to do this short of leaving your house and getting into a real fistfight/car accident/gunfight. Yet.
[insert witty comment here]
InfiniteReality graphics has remained fundamentally unchanged since 1996 or so... That's pretty amazing.
Only because SGI canned Bali, the original planned successor to Kona (InfiniteReality). When the company decided to Suddenly Go Intel, they killed all current MIPS/IRIX projects in favor of commodity PCs and commodity graphics. After much prancing around, SGI eventually resumed most of their previous projects. Bali wasn't resurected, but InfinitePerformance does have some similarities. (Word on the street says IP isn't even close to the raw performance that Bali would have had... not until SGI releases a successor to the V12 and supports 16 subpipes per IP channel. -- then there's the whole issue of the sheer number of CPUs and rack space required to drive 16 V12 subpipes per channel. Ugh... where's a "Xtown2 InfiniteReality10" when we need it...).
It's sad, really... SGI would probably be about 18 - 24 months ahead with its projects if it hadn't been for the Intel experiment.
My company is in the process of replacing many of our older SGIs with IBM x86 Linux PCs and HP Itanium2 Linux workstations. Our Onyx2 will be around for awhile, as we need it to drive 8 displays for simulation software. It'll probably even be upgraded to IR4 sometime this winter -- too bad SGI didn't totally overhaul the geometry engines in IR4... they're only about 40% faster than IR3. At least the fillrate is 70% faster, we can get by with fewer raster managers that way.
I love SGI. My company loves SGI. But they still have a long way to go before they regain their tremendous lead.
C'mon people as cool as it is to have ultra hi-res graphics and force feedback their is nothing like actually doing it.
T( H)GSB Apr 21-27
...a code word for homosexual play?
I'm not trolling, but whenever I hear about "sword play", its right down there with "towel snapping incidents".
I would have used a different phrase.
You mean the legendary Homosexual and Retarded
"Hrothgar the Stupid"?
Its said all his descendants are either Retarded or Queer.
So which are You?
Together with those we could defeat England!
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
Guess we need to wait for IBM's high-density 200dpi LCD then :)
It probably would still be useful for beginners - or for people who don't expect a realistic AI, the way a lot of car racing titles these days have an 'arcade' AI setting (ugh)
Regards,
Michel
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
There are wireless gloves from various VR companies like Fifth Dimension Technologies and others.
http://www.5dt.com/products/pdataglove5.html
The sad thing is, I did correct the spelling... Apparently I deleted the "g" at the same time as fixing my other botched spelling. *Sigh* Proving once again that previewing doesn't guarantee anything. :(
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
There are several ways to make swordfighting safe for practice purposes. You can use real swords, blunted, and avoid swinging for the head (Empire of Chivalry and Steel does this). You can use foam swords of various degrees of hardness, and then armor is almost unnecessary. You can use a wooden sword with padding on it (like the Historical Armored Combat Association), and light armor. Or, as in the SCA, you use hard wooden swords, and heavy metal and / or plastic armor.
None of these systems can accurately reproduce all the nuances of real to-the-death sword combat.
For safety reasons, live steel is out. Foam swords are far too light; you wind up moving them in ways that real swords simply don't. SCA swords bounce off armor exactly wrong, and they tend to be round, making it hard to tell when you are throwing flat (the aerodynamics of a real broadsword make this obvious), and SCA rules prohibit shots below the knee. The padded wood swords that HACA uses feel right and swing right, and with heavy armor you can even play full-speed, full-force (HACA members often say they can go full-speed and pull your shots, which just demonstrates that they are used to going slow, I think).
The HACA system would be the best combination of safety and accuracy, but it is not popular enough to have the critical mass of players needed for advancement of the style. Last I checked, it was still low-speed cut-and-thrust stuff straight from the books, and a giant chip on their collective shoulder about it.
The inherent problem with the HACA system is that, like all these, the sword doesn't cut, and that matters. Take the Viking Holmgang style - three light center-boss round shields per combatant, and the sagas tell us it was quite common for blows to cut through the shield, and the leg beyond it. Therefore, correct use of a light Holmgang round shield would be to block with the boss, and probably try to bind your opponent's blade in the wood of your shield. This can only be done with a sharp sword. QED, no system of swordplay can be both safe and accurate.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Virtual kendo lessons! Cool! Always wanted to be just like Toshihiro Mifune!
I was at SIGGRAPH (very cool!) and did try the virtual sword fight. Again, very cool - but it does still have a bit to go. First, it was breaking all week - and second was that you cannot do successive multiple attacks on your opponent. So if you "stabbed" him, then you have to wait a few seconds before you can make another attack. It has a bit to go - but is still pretty cool. -knepper
Foam weapons would have been good in that situation, even though the few rare combats were actually run by dice rolls and cards. I think anytime adults play at fighting and heavy objects are involved there should be either protective gear or a lot of empty space sepating the business end of the blunt object and the target (eg. virtual fighting on opposite sides of the room).
As a kid I used to thump at other kids with a six foot wooden staff (the nature of monkey was irrepressible), but that usually involved hitting at the other kids staff or lots of slow motion theatrical stuff. If a kid with a blunt object loses it people are less likely to get hurt than if an adult loses it.
With something like this setup and two people in the same room with virtual headsets I can forsee someone beating the guy in marketing to a bloody pulp with the gyroscopicly stablised VR sword during what would start as a friendly game. Keep it virtual, stay in your corner.
Never say never. Remember the thought of a computer fitting in a single room, let alone a desktop was a pretty far-flung idea forty years ago...
VR equipment would have to minimize any conflict between the senses. This would essentially mean having featherweight equipment, olfactory output, real-time photorealistic graphics, among other things. The way this will probably all be feasably done is by figuring out some way to hook some wires into a human brain in such a way that all the inputs and outputs to/from the brain can be monitored and controlled.
Neural Interfacing - still a decade or three away, but quite possible.
Just another freak in the freak kingdom.
i was wondering though, what notes did i take out? that links list was never annotated, but perhaps you imagined it as my presentation was so thourough ;)
and if the stuff i showed was old hat to you, then please please send me links to the new hats! i am already seeking new possibiities for incorporation into next year's cyberfashion show, anything tech and wearable will be considered, just point me to the right people/products/fun stuff.
see ya on the playa?