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Virtual 1930s Harlem

Raiford writes "Students can now take fully guided field trips in a VR environment. An article in the newsroom section of the IEEE website describes a trip to an historic Virtual Harlem setting in the 1920s and 30s. The article gives a description of the VR technology and programming and states that the simulation is supported for both Silicon Graphics and Linux platforms"

42 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. One more for linux by catwh0re · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    it's good to see that linux is supported, usually such advancements are held to specific proprietry servers like sgi, former silicon graphics, offerings.

  2. The Thirteenth Floor by Elphin · · Score: 2, Funny

    I hope you'll be able to drive to the edge of the world and see wireframe birds and mountains.

    1. Re:The Thirteenth Floor by Elphin · · Score: 1

      flamebait? wtf?
      http://us.imdb.com/Title?0139809

  3. Re:Help! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    My Led Zeppelin CD's raped all my Journey CD's! What should I do?

    Get some Michael Jackson CDs instead. As long as you don't have any boy band CDs, you won't have any more problems like that.

  4. I have an idea what they have been influenced by by Theodore+Logan · · Score: 2

    I wonder if they've chosen to simulate an American town in the 1930th because of this movie or whether it's just a coincidence.

    --

    "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok

  5. oh, virtual harlem... by mercx · · Score: 2, Funny

    When I first saw the headline I thought it said Virtual Harem...

    *runs away and looks for another headline*

    1. Re:oh, virtual harlem... by netsharc · · Score: 1

      I thought that's what it was too.. I'm sure we're not the only ones, and that site is on for a good slashdotting because of this fact..

      --
      What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
    2. Re:oh, virtual harlem... by Ooblek · · Score: 1

      Well, now that its virtual "Harlem," is there a guy that runs up to you with a tommy gun and yells, "Drop them Nikes before I blast a cap in yo' ass!"?

    3. Re:oh, virtual harlem... by Bunjo · · Score: 1

      Me too. Makes sense if you think about it. If I were to create a virtual world, you can be damn sure at least large part of it would be a harem. Minus the eunich though, I couldn't trust those guys, testicles or no.

  6. Why? by chrisseaton · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What's the point? Why not simply go there?

    1. Re:Why? by AngstMerchant · · Score: 1

      Well yeah, everyone can just pick up and travel anytime they choose. . .oh wait. I'm thinking of the enormously rich who do not have to work and have tons of time on their hands again.

    2. Re:Why? by geekster · · Score: 1

      To the time machine!

    3. Re:Why? by colmore · · Score: 3, Informative

      Speaking as someone who lives a few blocks south and west of the historic neighborhoods of south Harlem, the reason is simple: old Harlem doesn't exist.

      125th street is as much of a mall as you'll find on the island. The old storefronts, clubs, and apartments have been replaced by chain outlets like Old Navy and the like. The few remnants of the old days have been completely comodified and stripped of their sincerity. The Apollo no longer has any sort of focus on Jazz or Blues, and even then Jazz and Blues stopped being innovative areas of music decades ago. Harlem in the 1930s was a cultural center, a breeding ground for a new and uniquely American style of poetry, music, and art. Now it's just the last frontier for the complete Gentrification and Disnification of Manhattan.

      So where's the virtual East Village of the 1970s?

      --
      In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
  7. I've dreamed of this for ages by cdrobbins · · Score: 1

    FINALLY I get to meet my Angel of Harlem.

  8. Doh by sheriff_p · · Score: 5, Funny

    And I thought it said Virtual Harem ... so disappointed now.

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    Score:-1, Funny
  9. For all my Virtual Harlem needs... by marko123 · · Score: 2

    I play KingPin, Mother****er!

    Well, other than the game being crap, the city was awesome.

    --
    http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
  10. Re:My first thought was the 13th Floor by marko123 · · Score: 2

    I used to joke about that with a friend. He was going down on a girl and found a crusty bit. We just assumed that it was a glitch in the VR and left it at that :)

    --
    http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
  11. Where do I sign? by NightWhistler · · Score: 1

    OK, now that we're this far, where do I sign up for Avalon? ;-)

    --
    PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
  12. I got great idea! by Fex303 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Virtual Harlem project is a great idea, huge educational value, blah, blah...

    But what everyone really wants is to be able to blow stuff up. They need to use the system to create a modern day city. They should make it so that you can interact with its inhabitants, give you a selection of weapons, and set you loose to do as you will. Imagine a living, breathing city to cause complete havoc in! If only.

    Oh wait... Maybe it's not just a daydream, maybe someone's already done that.

  13. Re:GTA3 is for sickos by Per+Wigren · · Score: 2

    Yes, I would play it. And yes, I would be disgusted, just as i can get disgusted by virtually blowing peoples heads off in other games.. The thing is that I actually LIKE getting disgusted! ;) I like filth! I like virtual violence! The nastier and filthier the better! There are no limits in the virtual world!

    In IRL though, I have never been in a fight since I was about 6 or 8 years old. Not once! And I've been out partying on average maybe 3 times a week since I was 15, and I'm 25 now.. I've been into the punkscene, gothscene, industrial scene and metal scene.. My hair is a black mohawk. I often wear makeup, plastic clothes and sometimes even highheel boots.. I almost always hang out with goths, industrials, punks, hippies, transvestites and other non-mainstream "genres" of people.. I also often go to BDSM- and fetish-clubs.. I know that many people just reading this post are thinking "I want to beat this sick fuck up", but still, I haven't been in a fight NOT EVEN ONCE for the last 17 years or something.. Surely it happens all the time that people want to fight with me, and it's always the "suit people" who do, but I can always just ignore them and walk away or talk myself out of it and calm them down...

    What I wanted to say was, although a bit too verbose, that I'm kind of the opposite of violent. Still I love watching filthy gore-movies and play ultraviolent computergames. Not ANYONE should tell me what I can do and not do, as long as I don't step on others toes (if they don't want to be stepped on, that is *G*)... If you don't agree with that, you're just being narrowminded, or a control-freak. Or both.

    --
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  14. Are you serious? by dazdaz · · Score: 1

    Is this a joke? Who wants to see Harlem? Has the world gone mad.

  15. Re:GTA3 is for sickos by Per+Wigren · · Score: 2

    That's called being a fucking pussy.

    Then I'm a "fucking pussy" then. I simply see no reason to fight for such stupid reasons.

    --
    My other account has a 3-digit UID.
  16. Re:Help! by RebelTycoon · · Score: 1

    Or kids choirs!

    Of course, if you ahve Curious George stuff, the monkey might also be in a little trouble.

  17. Harlem 2002 by snoozerdss · · Score: 1

    Harlem 2002 just a joke!! don't mod down.

    --
    Snoozer.
  18. I bet its for college schools like harvard by HanzoSan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We need this stuff in highschools

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    If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
  19. I've gotten to play with early stages of this.. by beldraen · · Score: 1

    It's interesting to see a /. article to which I can personally relate. A friend of mine would invite me over to campus because UMC has this HUGE screen down a bottom computer lab to watch Star Trek. Since he was part of the computer crew, he had access to all the cool equipment and programs. I've played with the simulator. What gave it a different feel educationally is that you had the perspective of town to wonder around. As you got closer to characters or events, you would begin to hear them calling, talking, singing, etc. At the time, they didn't have a lot of people in it, but I still remember walking around and seeing all the people. Unless they've really splashed it up, it wasn't anything like seeing 3D characters walking and moving. The people were all 2d sprites. But, it gave a new definition to the term hi-res. I think they were rendering it off of a video card with 1 gig of memory. It left an impression on me and I think it would for anyone to get some since to feel what it was like back then. Oh, that and the 3D, VR, simulated helicopter with three-foot tall motion pad. That thing was fun as hell to play on. It had a five-point harness because that thing could take you for a ride. If you hit the ground and you knew it.. :)

    --
    Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
  20. Why so resentful? by MisterSquid · · Score: 1

    You're full of it, and a coward to boot. Post with your id, why don't you?

    I'm writing my dissertation, in the process of earning a Ph.D. in English, so I have plenty of education. I don't use drugs. I teach at the University of Virginia. I am biracial and am at times racially oppressed.

    What's so hard to believe about the possibility that some of us experience oppression in ways you cannot understand?

    I'm not saying oppressed people don't do bad things. They do. But most oppressed people don't do such things. Most oppressed people--black, white, geek, female, asian (what you call chink), handicapped--are exactly that: oppressed.

    --
    blog
    1. Re:Why so resentful? by colmore · · Score: 2

      Ummm... did you read the parent post? He's saying that racism and opression are still alive and well in America. We've wiped out the easy and visible signs of it- segregation, the KKK, etc. but that hasn't changed a lot of people's attitudes about race. Good luck on your English Ph.D. It might help if you learn to read.

      --
      In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
    2. Re:Why so resentful? by Bedouin+X · · Score: 2

      I am so fuckin sick of people using that "Niggers vs. Black people" Chris Rock skit to excuse mass generalizations of black people. Every group of people has an element that is undesireable, in pretty much every case that element is the minority of the population.

      I live in downtown Atlanta and I see a huge share of ignorant ass black and white people, mainly young ones. Both populations have a formidable number of obnoxious members. This is evident after any major event here. A black targetted concert will be accompanied by lots of trash in the streets, loud music, and kids shouting all types of expletives. The white concerts generally have more trash, at least as many expletives, and a tendency to sporadically shout out "wooooooo!!" and "owwwwwwww!" at ridiculously loud volumes for no apparent reason.

      Anyhow, the bigger point here is that the Harlem Renaissance was a wonderful period of artistic development in the United States and the original poster was probably frustrated at people making comments about crime and drugs in that neighborhood. It is sad that such small minded thnking is still around... but whatever.

      --
      Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
    3. Re:Why so resentful? by Bedouin+X · · Score: 2

      There was nothing knee jerk in that post. I read your whole response and addressed the Chris Rock part. I could talk about many other times that non-blacks have acted less than exemplary. My point isn't that black people are a benevolent group of victims, nor that people want to hold hands and hug all the time (I'm still trying to figure out where that came from). The point is that people constantly try to oversimplify race relations (and also justify the use of the word nigger) by quoting a skit by Chris Rock. It's easy to argue that this oversimplification based on something that you saw on television has more to do with mass generalizations than exposure.

      I've lived in predominately black and predominately white neighborhoods. Downtown Atlanta just happens to have a mix of millionaires (and at least one billionaire named Ted Turner has moved around the corner), middle class, and homeless people with the usual business people thrown in during the daylight hours. It also happens to be in the middle of one of the most diverse college campuses in the U.S. (Ga. State University). In an environment like this, EVERYBODY shows their asses. I'm not old or squeamish, I love it downtown. I'm just telling you what I see and it ain't just black people acting a fool.

      Peace.

      --
      Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
  21. Re:GTA3 is for sickos by realgone · · Score: 1
    I'd really like to see a serious, rational reply to this objection, because up until now, I have not heard one.

    Okay, how's this: it's a modern spin on the cowboy archetype (or going even farther back, that of the bandit wandering though the woods, as in Rashomon). There's always been a certain glamour to a lone figure who makes his/her way in the world by living outside the bounds of the law. Yes, crime is involved -- cowboys held up banks and shot up bars, bandits robbed whatever nobility happened to be schlepping through the forest on a given day -- but almost never to the point where it's disturbing enough to shatter the fascism. (Which is why the lynchings and rapes you mention would have no place in GTA3).

    Pure and simple: it's escapist entertainment of the type that's been going on for centuries.

  22. Funny, that by realgone · · Score: 1

    Now that's pretty cool; my spell-checker made a Freudian slip. Substitue "fantasy" for "fascism" above and then start wondering if computers really do have a sense of humor. =)

  23. One of those overpriced SGI-based things by Animats · · Score: 2
    It's location-based entertainment; you have to go to the place where they have multiple video projectors and SGI systems set up.

    If they made the thing available as a VRML world, it would be more accessable. VRML isn't used much any more, but it finally works quite well. VRML 97 sucked on 1997-vintage PCs, but with a modern graphics board and a broadband connection, it's far better than it used to be.

  24. Re:Black people and crime statistics by Afrosheen · · Score: 2

    How can you even begin to mention 'overzealous political correctness' when you pepper your paragraphs with PC terms like 'afro-american' and 'n-word'. Later you go own to say 'black chicks', etc. Pick a side of the fence, man.

    Percentage-wise, I'd be willing to wager that more blacks commit crime than people of other races. This may have more to do with predisposition than poverty, I haven't read any reports to swing my opinion either way. One sidelong glance at modern day Africa tends to skew one's view, however....

    Let's say you have a 100% negro neighborhood in south Dallas or any other poverty-stricken, negro-filled neighborhood. Will there be a higher rate of teenage pregnancy, drug use/addiction, substance abuse, domestic violence, welfare mothers with dozens of children, and fatherless families? Of course there will. These are all inherent side effects of extreme poverty. These are the children of a welfare state.

    Now let's say you have a 100% white neighborhood in a trailer park in Anywhere, USA. Will they suffer the same ills as the negroes in a similar situtation? Of course, and more. For some reason whites in poverty tend to be more morally bankrupt than negroes in a similar situation, hence child abuse and molestation among low income families being higher among whites than any other race.

    If anything, cash flow plays the largest factor in how any group predictably acts. A middle class negro neighborhood would closely mirror a middle class white or asian neighborhood. Class reflects education (in most cases), and we all know the value of education. Education generally brings a higher quality of life through wider and more lucrative employment opportunities.

    Overall, people tend to be 'classist' first and foremost, and 'racist' secondly. They're both pretty tightly integrated after all. I realize being honest about my opinion and this issue is risking Karma, but mine is pretty high and I think I present some intelligent thought.

  25. Re:I have an idea what they have been influenced b by Nic33 · · Score: 1

    That movie sucked and nothing should ever be based on it intentionally. Enough said.

  26. That's over at VirtualIslam.sa by glrotate · · Score: 1

    Something about 70 virgins and paradise.

  27. Re:Black people and crime statistics by Com2Kid · · Score: 1
    • One sidelong glance at modern day Africa tends to skew one's view, however....


    The same could be said for a goodly part of eastern Europe, certian sections of Asian, and regions in the middle east.

    Remember that nearly the entire CONTINENT of Africa was screwed over, enslavement, disease, then a dependency upon a heavy consumption based cultural living method was created, and Westerners are STILL paying for slave labor and even EXECUTIONS to take place over there to further their business means.

    You want fucked up? Well yah Africa is fucked up, and it is going to stay that way because big businesses are paying for it to be fucked up.
  28. Re:Black people and crime statistics by Afrosheen · · Score: 2

    So what's Eastern Europe's excuse? What's Asia and the Middle East's excuse? Are westerners oppressing all these countries?

  29. Re:Black people and crime statistics by Com2Kid · · Score: 1
    • So what's Eastern Europe's excuse? What's Asia and the Middle East's excuse? Are westerners oppressing all these countries?


    My point exactly. It is NOT an African thing, everybody does it. The way you said it was implying that African's and those of African decent have a tendency towards anarchistic attitudes and behaviors, I was just pointing out that the rest of the world is pretty damn nutty as well and that singling out Africa was not fair.
  30. Re:Black people and crime statistics by Afrosheen · · Score: 2

    Point taken. My bad. :(

  31. Re:GTA3 is for sickos by Fex303 · · Score: 1

    Let me see if I can be bothered to explain why you're wrong... First of all, read this as well as being some good background reading, it covers a fair number of facts and figures about gaming in general, and GTA3 specifically. Second, are you bitching about GTA3 or gaming in general here? Most games have combat and violence in their core concepts. Why not suggest that the Civilisation series encourages people to wage war and enslave opposing civilisations? Quake seems to be far more violence focussed than GTA3. Thirdly, you seem to have missed the important difference between a game allowing you to do something, and a game encouraging you to do something. For example, you are NEVER best off shooting all the police officers in sight. Doing that will just mean that the FBI and the army will show up and you'll get shot down. The fact that the game allows you to do it means that lots of people do, but that's not the point of the game, and won't help you in the game. Most of the time, the game's storyline is best served by running from the cops, not shooting them. The point you miss is that videogames are a form of media, not a life experience. Your argument can be extrapolated to most mobster films and it holds true. I can think of various films in which the hero has done all of the things you mention in your opening sentence. Why are games different from movies in this respect? As a 20 year old, I see games as a form of media with the same value as film or television (ie just under the value of books music). You need to understand that the way you see a game is not the way that gamers see that game. If you agree that your argument applies to all movies which include your list of nasties, that's fine we'll have reached a point where we can agree to disagree. If you don't, please explain why gaming is so very different from other methods of media consumption. Either way please respond, as I consider this to be a rational reply to your objection.

  32. Re:Colonialism was the best thing to happen to Afr by Com2Kid · · Score: 2

    Oh yeah, I forgot, all those great ancient African civilizations no one has yet been able to find proof of hidden deep in the jungle.


    Do your research, "civilization" found them, and then shot them. They where taking up valuable forest land you know. . . .