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Walking In A VR Future
neol'schmoe writes "There's a new solution to the age old problem of physical movement within a virtual world. Researchers in Japan have come up with tiles that move in concert with a user's pace and motion to allow free range of motion while literally walking in a virtual environment and never leaving a very small area in the real world."
We have hot cyber-chick slaves to invent and perfect!
Didn't Magneto do something like this either end of X-Men 1 or the beginning X-Men United? :)
Holodeck jokes in 5...4...3...2...1...
Does it come with a 'sticky-spot' mod to simulate chewed gum on sidewalk?
Looks cool, but i can't wait to try it out. Todays VR gets you disoriented because your mind sees movement but knows that your body isn't moving. This at least lets your body move, even if you're not actually traveling...
Who do I have to blackmail to get some representation around here!?!?!?!?
But what about manipulating objects and the hundred other things(scent, texture, taste, etc.) that we'll need for life-like VR?
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Hum, looks like Holodecks are just around the corner! mmmmmm holo babes and beeeer!
when in doubt press enter and we'll figure it out later..
I didn't even realize people were working on VR still. Are the graphics getting better too? Id assume so. This thing looks like a really nifty fun invention. Of course, I'm wary since practical applications are the ubiquitous "5 years" away. Hopefully unpractical applications come sooner...I can see VR-DDR now with shifting tiles for people to dance on...
Moo.
getting exercise while gaming would be nice for once... but It sure would suck when you try to roll/duck behind something in a FPS and you fall off the tiles and bust your ankle.. There's no way they can predict and keep up that well.
?SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 42
Now I don't even have to go outside to stroll down the street.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Once this becomes mainstream, how long until we see this as the ultimate peripheral for FPSs? Look at me I can run around in Doom 7 by really running!
Can it handle running, as if from a dragon?!?!?!
i do hope this is the first step to a holodeck. i've got about 15 years of fantasies to live out.
Is it?
Those japanese are always inventing stuff like this. I guess they got no square footage.
My American answer is to put your VR goggles on in the middle of one of our spacious fields or parks, and just run around all you want.
Drop someone in the middle of the desert with his LCD goggles and mo-cap mittens and he can VR his brains out.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Could definitely be a downer if you're the next in line for that arcade game.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
You think wow, games could be awesome.
don't forget walking is a form of exercise.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
so now I can I walk a great distance without actually going anywhere and never leaving the comfort of my computer (and by extension pr0n)!
Finally, an excerise program I can get onboard with!
-Teiresias
I think most of us would agree that 'age old problem of physical movement within a virtual world' has absolutely nothing to do with walking. Its waaaaay more rythmic and horizontal than ambulatory.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I purpose that we generate power by putting humans inside these and let them walk around a virtual world - while we harness their power.
I like to call it a "treadmill". Sounds much better than "shifty tiles" IMHO.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
but its gonna suck the 1st time it breaks in mid-stride and sends you crashing into your rendering farm for the VR.
Ok, how do they plan on simulating momentum? Try running at full gallop and then stopping dead. Its pretty hard to do in reality. It would be easy on a treadmill that responds in the same way as the tiles above. The act of walking without the feedback that we feel from our momentum might be a little disorienting.
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
Finally, FPS games will require moving around physically... I can see the game contestants' average weight declining rapidly as this device picks up support for Doom 3, etc.
"I'm on the VR FPS diet! I just run around and pretend to shoot people for 8 hours a day."
stuff |
SHHHH! Don't remind them!
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This really seems like the sort of technology you'd want to show video of. Is the motion smooth, if you make a quick step forward then back will you fall as it keeps trying to move forward? These are the things I'd like to know. This is an awesome technology (if it works) and could be of great use to us where I work. We're currently working with omni-directional treadmills... which leave a lot to be desires as well as make noise that sounds like a jet engine.
Can someone explain or theorize about why they use tiles instead of a uniform treadmill-like surface that can scroll on two axes?
Treadmill.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
There's not much more to say about this other than yes yes yes! With more clever thinking like this we can achieve "real" VR without having to jack wires into our brains. All we need now is a body suit that makes you feel things and tracks the motion of your entire body.
If you combine the tiles, vr goggles, a body suit and a light gun peripheral you've got the first quality VR fps. No more wasting money on airsoft or paintball. I can't believe nobody ever though of this before...
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If you are "running" and suddenly stop, what then? In the real world you have to work to kill all that momentum and slow down.
Will this work if you have a group of people and you all scatter in different directions?
What if you jump?
Live forever, or die trying.
I think this is a great step forward in the VR developments (no pun intended). What I think is going to be really interesting to see is, in say 10 years or so, what newer VR technology does to the relative fitness of your average hardcore computer gamer. Think about it - instead of sitting in a chair, you'd actually be exercising, which would burn those pizza and Dew calories.
If that becomes the case, what would happen to the labeling of games? All games could have "calorie burn factors" printed on them, so the more intense ones would have higher "calorie burn" ratings.
Does anyone know if there are any statstics out there for what the physical impact of today's games is that are a little like this - like "Dance Dance Revolution"?
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
These tiles are neat but it seems to be making the problem more difficult than necessary. Yes a sphere wouldn't allow doing a duck and roll but most applications would probably be walking/running anyway.
I think many manufacturers miss the point that most people won't want full locomotion in a VR environment. Yes, many environments, such as rescue training, will require full locomotion, but most couch potatoes in a VR game or movie, won't want to exert the energy required to do full locomotion. I personally would enjoy the physical exertion of a VR bike ride across the planet Mars, for instance, as I already average 40 kM a day on a non-VR bike, but most of my friends would much prefer being taken along for a ride in a powered vehicle.
Nah, they're in space, so if you turn off the "gravity generators" in the holodeck, they can just float.
Now you can apply force fields to the floating bodies to mimic the environment, like the resistance of the floor to your feet or the wind on your face, etc..
What I never got was: 1) Why did they dress up to go to the holodeck? Data would put on his whole lil Sherlock outfit.. Why bother? Cant the holodeck generate the funny hat and pipe? Is there really enough personal storage space on the Enterprise for such things? I doubt the crew of your average aircraft carrier have room for sherlock holmes outfits to play dress-up in their downtime.
and 2) they could take stuff out of the holodeck. I forget the episode, but I think it was Picard walking around when suddenly he gets hit by a snowball, and you see Crusher and his boyfiend apologizing, they just came from the holodeck after skiing on the moons of endor or some shit. Why would the holodeck allow this to happen?
Of course, the whole holo-doctor thing on Voyager just got silly.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I am a runner. I have just moved to an area of the US where it gets quite cold and snowy in the winter, and I would absolutely *love* to be able to go running in a virtual environment this way...
Maybe the YMCA of the future will have Oakley-style VR glasses and boxed in treadmills and bicycles...
Live free or die
I can already think of improvements:
1. Scale up the 4-tile model for walking, and have a 12-tile model for running.
2. Force-feedback tiles for seismic or moving-walkway effectts.
3. cushiony lifting-tiles to simulate low-g walks/runs/jumps.
Of course, can you imagine the liability issues for a manufacturer of such a product?
Very neat. I can't wait to have one. When they have it work with Unreal Tournament, I'll be sold.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
These guys are out at Siggraph Emerging Technologies, and I'm trying it for myself even as I type.
Your pace has be be quite a bit slower than the article suggests, and the compensational backwards movement of the platform throws you off. I'm laughing at the picture in the article where the guy wears the blindfold, because just now, the vendor won't let me wear one. I'm going to show STFA to them in protest in just a few seconds here...
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
It seems to me that there would be motion sickness potential since the floor tiles have to move in the opposite direction you are moving. If you are walking forward at a constant pace, you wouldn't notice. It would be like walking on a people-mover. If you abruptly turn sideways, however, you'd certainly notice the change in movement of the tiles.
Did you ride the short bus? http://sh.ortb.us
What might be interesting for uneven terrain would be something like those old "pin art" toys you could get at Headlines or Yarmo Zone. You know, the ones with 1000 pins on a rack in square formation, and you would reset them by dumping them all to the back, and then pushing something--your face or a fist or something uneven--into them, and on the other side you'd get a pin sculpture of your hand or whatever.
It wouldn't work for everything (i.e. simulated overhangs in a climbing situation), but if you had something like that on a huge scale, maybe covered with some sort of flexible surface, you could simulate some pretty interesting terrains if you had the computer determining the pin positions.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Unlike the average slashdot user, I read the article and looked at the pictures, and I gotta ask: how is this useful? The dude's about to step off the last platform.
All it says in the article is that the panels shift as he walks, but it mentions nothing about what happens when he hits the last end of the last panel. Presumably one of the other panels would come zipping around and stop under his foot, but the article seems to imply these are just dumb panels on rollers.
"well, add more panels" you say. How is this different from a guy walking around in a room? The only advantage seems to be that the room now moves around him, but so what? He's still going to reach the end at some point and need to stop (either by the vr telling him to stop or him falling flat on his face).
Note the ultra sound sensors are a few feet behind the guy, not on the panels themselves.
What if you made this thing on a little larger scale and dropped a convict in the middle? I guess you'd have to try to keep him from diving around, but you could have the device sense where the weight was and keep that object in the center of the path.
Might also be really nice for taking your dog on long trips - he could run around all he wanted...
Attn all employees: Your sleeping tubes have now been upgraded, to a modestly sized bathroom, with movable tiles with VR-capability! You will live in a virtual mansion! Note: All employees will receive an annual $10,000 deduction for VR-Mansion maintainence fees.
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Cycling while watching a TV can be a little dangerous, especially if you are watching a race, or something else from the first person perspective. The problem is that you will unconsciously lean into turns. With a wind trainer this isn't too much of a problem, but if you are riding rollers, it can hurt. Trust me.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
a big gerbel wheel.... errr.... ball.
virtusphere.com
The last thing I want is exercise when I'm playing my video games.
---
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Those who can't, teach
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Not sure if anyone else pointed this out, but the actual website is here and includes a demonstration video.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Moving tiles means there are gaps. Gaps means things can be wedged into those gaps. Now what happens when you're running in VR land and wedge your foot into the fast-moving tiles? Suddenly, not being able to see your real-world foot doesn't sound so good ...
Anonymous Kev
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Points 1 and 2: The holodeck used holograms for the scenery, but objects were created using the replicators (for example, clothes). So when you reach down towards a patch of snow, it quickly created some real snow that you can pick up, instead of just using a force field.
The EMH on Voyager, IIRC, used something slighty different. Instead of a replicator, his mini-projector used a true hologram with force fields. He attached it to his shoulder and the force fields held it up. What I don't understand is where it got its power supply... antimatter perhaps?
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0123.html/
> Is there really enough personal storage space on the Enterprise for such things?
They replicate things like that.
> I doubt the crew of your average aircraft carrier have room for sherlock holmes outfits to play dress-up in their downtime.
An aircraft carrier isn't built for decades-long deep-space exploration, either.
> Picard walking around when suddenly he gets hit by a snowball
Clearly crusher had used his l33t h@x0ring skills to disengage the saftey protocols, due to his penchant for extreme sports.
On that setting, the holodeck will use microreplication to produce as close as possible a real-world simulation of the effects of
whatever is being simulated. Or maybe it has to do with collinear inverse tachyon particles. Who knows?
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
IIRC, the objects on the holodeck that were created for interaction with the person were created with the same technology as the food replicators. It would actually create that object/substance, which could then be taken out of the holodeck.
Imagine "Data's Day"... Tap-dancing might be tap-tossing...
How useful is this tech for tap-dancing, or crawling?
This might be useful for replacing tires on obstacle courses. It might be possible to simulated "tap-dancing in a minefield" -- if the tiles can eject or launch the user. Then, someone needs to learn how to land after being launched.
And, a few of these around burglar's escape routes might keep them treading on thin ice until the cops show up. OTOH, superfast treadmills in reverse of their path might keep escaping burglars still.
Cat-scratch fever?
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Future story:
"The % of obese people ages 18-26 has decreased significantly with the simultaneous releases of GTA5:VRRiot and MallWalker1:ShoppingFury"
One step closer to a working holodeck.
It seems to me that the uses for this aren't confined simply to VR... I don't have anything specific in mind, but I'm picturing something along the lines of the scene from X-Men, (or was it X2) where Magneto is walking and the bridge builds itself in front of him. Except the bridge in front of you would be build with pieces of the bridge from behind you...
Why are all of you so negative? Nowhere in the online community is there such a group of negative people as in Slashdot.
HELLO!! Its a new, proprietary technology! All of you naysayers that nitpick at it seriously need to get a new hobby.
Those that are asking why don't they just make a treadmill: have you ever seen a treadmill that can simulate moving sideways as well as forwards? I sure haven't, and I can imagine it'd be incredibly hard to engineer.
Its so easy to sit in your throne in the comfort of your mom's basement and nitpick on other's creations, isn't it?
Personally, I think this is very cool.
If soldiers in training stop to eat their rations, would they have "Four squares and a meal"?
A really useful variation of this would be to put electric wires in them and use them for convict/incarceree conditioning. Just a mild shock. Hell, virtual prisons could be made. I can see it now, humans encased, wearing VR goggles,strapped in a tube, working on a virtual chain gang.
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
They do move!(admittedly hella slow). No dodging and rolling (or running or even walking at a normal pace) in this system, but it does look like a step in the right direction.
Um, no pun intended.
Researchers have come up with tiles that move in concert with a user's pace... in Japan!
Now I can make my own video, move over Jamiroquai . . .
Now we just need a VR bodysuit so I can have better virtual sex than I can get at fu-fme
I'd do it, but .. trapped by flu...... surrounded by tissues..... low on coffee
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
UK Company is doing this. I saw a presentation by one of the company at a meeting of the London Virtual Reality Group in 2001(?), in the Bartlett School of Architecture.
You can't literally walk somewhere that doesn't exist.
Finally, I have a simple off the shelf solution for rendering someone totally immobile. Juts slip these under their feet and bam, instant loss of traction, and then you could program the tiles to cart them off to a predetermined destination. Yeah, so not really, but it's fun to dream about floor tiles that kidnap people.
How did they handle this in the world of the Matrix?
Oh yeah, plug it into the brain directly and you can worry about simulating kinesthesia and proprioception at the root of the problem.
Once we do that we'll look back at this and think, boy what a silly circuitous solution.
...but it was rather half-baked. It was a passive system that involved a fixed array of spheres on some kind of (possibly low-friction) surface that a person would walk on. Fill up a shallow pan with a layer of marbles and you'll have an idea of what it would look like.
:)
I hadn't solved the problem of how to create the proper amount of resistance, so if it were implemented as designed, it probably would have been something like walking on ice. Also, I hadn't entirely worked out how to get data from the grid for feedback to the imaging components of the system.
Just one of those things you come up with when you're not paying attention in class.
How is this better than my idea... walking around on the top of a very large track ball? (With a harness to keep you from falling off, of course.) Seems to me these tiles can't predict sudden changes of direction.
What you really need is a whole bunch of smaller tiles. That way, the gaps would be gone and they would be able to cover a larger area (i.e. have them spread out initially, and then come together under you before you hit the ground) For some Reason I keep thinking of smart wheels in Snow Crash
Still Rampant, Wowbagger
Um, as a middle-aged adult, I haven't thought about having a small rodent as a pet for 30+ years. When I was a kid, they ran on *wheels*, not *balls*. Has the pet industry added another dimension to the rodent experience?
Can anyone tell me why you can't just use a zillion little trackballs? That's what was used in the "Angel" program in the awful movie (but OK book) Disclosure. I'd imagine that would be a bit easier...?
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
VR Doom3 is easy. Close your eyes and have someone else jump up behind you and say boo.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I, for one, welcome our new holodeck-using overlords.
It would be very interesting to see if accelerations are dealt with properly with these things. In walking, not only do we have the "push-off" force which gets us going in some direction (push back -- with one's foot/leg -- to move forward, push left to go right, etc.) but we also have "stopping" forces (put one's foot down in front to decelerate the body's forward movement, etc.).
Presumably, with some sort of feedback algorithms, it'll be relatively easy to hold these things in place when one wants to move forward, etc. However, how are the tiles to know that you want to _stop_ "moving" (or seem like you want to)? Normally, if you stop walking, you definitely get a tactile feeling to it -- your body decelerates, your feet want to slip forward, etc. But on tiles, where your body may not have actually moved in the first place, simulating this stopping would require accelerating you in the direction opposite to the original (presumed by the tiles) movement. Might one simply get used to this sort of "movement without consequences"?
Surface that pivots on two axes to simulate slope. You'd just have to make sure the tiles aren't too slippery.
It could be like that floor in the fight scene in Flash Gordon except without the spike popping up through the floor.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
Why not use a mat of spheres instead? With some form of tether to keep you in place.
If each was imbedded with a magnet then a network of wires/sensors underneath could determine your direction of travel and speed. Would take up little space and not require having to figure out where the person is going to step next. Only problem is the bumpy surface but that can be fixed with hard soled shoes.
For those who haven't seen. The video is very impressive. somewhat unreal. An interesting thing to note though is that the guy is taking extremely small steps (less than 3 inches), and the blocks are getting there in front of him in the nick of time.
Would be a parent's dream!
Just hope your kids like you and don't enjoy the company of ravenous lions! :D
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While this is an interesting excercise in engineering/software development/physics application, is it really needed? Virtual reality is a visual representation of data, but nothing says that all your physical activites need to be directly mapped in a literal fashion.
3D shoote-em-up games are virtual reality environments, and you certainly don't see people in quake3 having problems moving around in the worlds.
Moreover, by mapping movement to walking, aren't you limiting the input to the speed that someone can actually walk? Sure you could include a speed scaling factor control, but why not map movement to something else entirely?
This may solve the problem of vertigo that some people experience, but wouldn't it be better to figure out why only some people are affected? In addition, people with phyisical disabilies might not really appreciate this 'development' very much.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
i actually read the "holodeck" part of the science behind star trek book and they pretty much described it working this way. tiles. the only problem i have is that in a recent episode of voyager, one of the crew did a holodeck flying thing where they were lying down and floating. I don't think tiles can make you float. :(
geeks are cats who dig a certain kind of cool
30th century technology- perhaps it was a Stargate Atlantis style ZPT (vaccuum energy).
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http://www.virtusphere.com/Virtusphere has been around for awhile, but the guys doing it are in Russia somewhere I think.
It always puzzled me as to the solution here... I thought of a conveyor belt mechanism, but obviously that would only work for forward and back movement.
Then there's the giant spheres you walk in (like a hamster ball), but obviously, walking on the inside of a big sphere isn't naturaly (or easy!).
Cool.
There are fundamental problems with all of these types of devices-- they 1) don't let the body handle momentum naturally and 2) don't stimulate the vestibular system in a way that is consistent with the visual or proprioceptive (the body's sense of where its limbs are) cues.
1) Momentum: On a 2-D treadmill, the omni-directional treadmill is supposedly fast enough that it allows for running. But when you are running and then change direction quickly, your body will lean into the turn to counter its momentum. Doing this on the treadmill will make you fall over. Someone once described it as "running on a slippery ice cube".
2) Vestibular cues: Our body can sense motion even without visuals or body movements. This is why some flight simulators have motion platforms [://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/vms/motionb.html]. One post above said that the treadmill should reduce motion sickness because it provides body motions as well as visuals. But a treadmill doesn't cue the vestibular system. One theory of motion sickness is that it results from a mismatch of visual and vestibular cues. In the back seat of a car, your visual cues say you are still (relative to the inside of the car) but the vestibular system says you are moving. Similarly in a IMAX theater or while playing an FPS on a big screen, your visuals say you are moving but your vestibular system says you are still. Knowing how you are moving is critical for maintain balance and even surviving. The mismatch in visual and vestibular cues interferes with your ability to balance, and that's why dizziness results.
Luckily, one can fool the vestibular system, much as we can fool the visual system. Techniques include "wash-out" on motion platforms, electrical stimulation, and Redirection. Wash-out is where the motion platform moves the user to simulate the virtual motion, but then sneaks her back to the center of the room at an acceleration that is below what her vestibular system can detect. The shifting tiles look like a fabulous idea, and I wonder if one could implement a form of wash-out on those tiles.
Links
Sphere http://www.vr-systems.ndtilda.co.uk/sphere1.htm2-D treadmills
Omni directional treadmill http://www.movesinstitute.org/darken/publications/ ODT-UIST97.pdf
Torus treadmill (great video) http://intron.kz.tsukuba.ac.jp/vrlab_web/torustrea dmill/torustreadmill_e.html
Redirection http://www.cs.unc.edu/~eve/rdw/
One more thing, the problem with, as one post suggested, implementing VR in a huge wide open space (like a desert) is tracking. The computer needs to know where your head is and in which direction you are looking, very accurately and quickly, so it can draw the virtual scene from your perspective. By accurately, I mean with millimeter precision, and by quickly I mean it must update the images within tens of milliseconds of your head moving. If you focus your eyes on your figure at arms length, then rotate your head right and left, the reflex that moves your eyes to keep them locked on your finger is called the VOR (vestibular ocular reflex). It can react to head movements in 10 milliseconds.
There's a mod for D3 to "duct tape" your flashlight to SOME of your weapons. From the dude's site:
Under the crazy presumption that a roll of duct tape has to exist somewhere on the Mars facility, the Duct Tape mod sticks flashlights to your machinegun and shotgun. In order to preserve the atmosphere, these new lights are much narrower (and a little brighter) than the standard flashlight, and are only available on the basic weapons. The pistol is not equipped with a flashlight, so as not to spoil the early sections of the game.
ducttape.gelnmurphy.com
two words: Hot. Chicks. Room.
For me, I recently pulled out my old Doom WADs when the Doomsday (aka jDoom) engine was ported to Linux. And after about 20 minutes of insane play, I had to go outside and recover from severe nausea.
Now, the original Wolfenstein used to give me major problems but Doom wasn't an issue. So I poked around the options and discovered a setting to change the field-of-view from 95 degrees down to 90 degrees. And lo and behold, no more chunder rumbles.
Now it might just be that the frame rate changed because the amount of geometry being rendered was slightly reduced, but my money would be that because I sit far back from the screen with the keyboard out in front of me, my view onto the virtual world beyond the screen needs a narrower field of view than someone who is sitting with their eyeballs an inch from the monitor. The perceived world through the screen should reasonably match the expectations given the viewers position if it is to be believable and I wonder whether that nausea is caused by a mismatch between the perceived world when rotating the camera.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
They have physical movement within a virtual world... in japan!
LET ME OFF!
I'm guessing you're referring to running on pavement. *shudder* Man's feet really are not built for running on that kind of unyielding surface. I much prefer running over dirt and grass. More yielding to the ankles and, in my uneducated opinion, gives you more variety of movement because you have to deal with the ground not being perfectly even. I only have the anecdotal evidence, but I've had friends who tried running to lose weight (Obviously they weren't that bad off if they started off with running rather than walking without difficulty) and they lost weight more readily when they started doing so on uneven ground rather than pounding the pavement.
More on subject for the topic, this unevenness of ground is not likely to be replicated, but that's probably all for the best. *wry grin* Could you imagine the lawsuits over sprained and broken ankles if they started tilting these floorboards? I do agree that motion-sickness could be a problem although thankfully, I'm one of those people who don't get motion sick. (Well, except for the first time I played Doom, but I think that was partly the fluidly swaying crotch-height weapons...)
That said, I always kind of like the look of the giant trackballs. Were those ever used outside of a movie? I seem to remember seeing examples in Ghost in the Machine and in some low-budget movie about a toy robot (built as a mobile adversary for "cops and robbers) who started accessing its earlier homicidal programming (seems the programmer used to work for the Army developing Killbots and re-used code).
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Billy Jean is not my lov-ah!
Now what was always funny to me were the animals in the wheels who would bring the wheel to high speed, then grip the floor so that they spin around a couple times.
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There's a lot of discussion in this topic about the dangers of sensing the motion with your inner ear and having conflicts with the visual perception that you're moving. I remember about 5 years ago, there was mention in a video games magazine of a device that hooked to your forehead and transmitted vibrations that fooled your inner ear into believing you were moving. Did that ever go anywhere? Is it like Smell-O-Vision, just never caught on? Or were there too many testers with jellied brains?
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The later 2000 series (still being made and sold) had much light HMDs (LCDs with 640x480 resolution), large FOV, polhemus tracking (I managed to recently pick up one of these HMDs and a joystick, plus a portion of the tracker - for around $300.00 on eBay). I played the game "Zone Hunter" on this system at an arcade once (long time ago) - much better display, much light, much easier to use than the old 1000 series. The current series of Visette HMDs being made supposedly has 800x600 resolution, with the same large FOV of the 2000 HMD (60 degrees H x 45 degrees V)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The floor moves in the opposite direction from the user so that the motion of each step is canceled and the user's position remains fixed in the real world.
This won't work when you do the dive-roll-shoot maneuver. *yawn*
... a new game has been released called "Sim Fall On Your Face And Break Your Nose". Where you try to walk, lean like you do when naturally walking, and fall on your face because you're not actually moving! Company spokesman John Doe is quoted as saying, "Bell, thiz game iz a lot like ben you try walkig on ize, excep you fall dowm bore often. We're exbectig a lot of beople who habe neber been on ize to buy our broduct do zee what it iz like."
Seriously, it's counterintuitive to not lean when you start walking, but it's relatively easy to learn how to do it. I used to talk on water cooler bottles when I was little, I even got the the point where I could kick them to make them turn. I could go into rooms and down hallways and around corners and everything.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
This technology is just Dance Dance Revolution in reverse. Maybe it is the Soviet Russian version of DDR?!
(Sarcasm Begin.) Unless you use force fields like Star Trek! The force fields could cancel the artifacts! F=ma. Or put the whole thing in a spaceship in outer space and have your spaceship accelerate/decelerate to compensate for the artifacts!(Sarcasm End.)
Mathematics is not a crime.
I've wondered for quite some time now if it's possible to acheive the heights of VR without hacking into our nervous systems. How can one possibly acheive dynamic programmed texture, temperature, and 3d-shape/location?
This tiles approach is the first I've seen in a while that doesn't take a glove/bodysuit angle. Suits are a dead-end, for physics demand a person leaning on a virtual wall falls over, no matter how hard the suit he's wearing pushes against his hand. I don't see how moving tiles could ever be extrapolated into a truly dynamic environment either, though floors and walls are a fun start.
One thing's for sure, sex will be the #1 driving force behind true VR's eventual existence, and I, for one, welcome my playboy mansion matrix.
you HAVE TO have the flash plugin... how else can you keep up with strong bad's emails!?
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I agree that VR is lacking without allowing for movement but I don't think having a device that will allow all range of motion you want in a game to take place in a stationary postion. Things like climbing ladders, jumping gaps, and swimming. Things like collision detection would be virtually impossible and if you did hit a wall in VR your vision would stop but you could more than likely continue to walk in that direction. I think all these things would be more feasible in a matrix/eXistenZ style setup... Although I don't see that happening for quite some time.
Eric
This would work for straightline-movement only, though. For things like spinning you would need to either control the balls individually, or at least in groups significantly smaller than the whole surface. (Or spin the whole base.)
The feedback for the motors then can be maintained by optical tracking of the movements of the person, or by torsion sensors in the axes.
Well, if you're in Linux, it doesn't work quite so well. By the end of a usual SB email, the audio is completely out of sync with the video. Any suggestions for a fix?
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
whoever modded that as informative deserves some sort of prize.
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> Wow. Add in robot jailers, and you've got a great idea. Hell, it'd make a pretty good movie too.
Wow. Add in a chat client and robot jailers, and you've got... a nastygram from Sony Online Entertainment for infringing on the treadmill that is Star Wars Galaxies?
A video of the circulafoor in action is Here. It's a torrent and we'll need seeders.
One word: Immersion
The idea of being able to completely fool all of your senses so it seems like you really are somewhere else is very appealing to many people.
id suggest something but it would probably promote a flame war ;)
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You have a 6'x6' platform covered with 1000 small balls. Picture a gird of 3/4" balls mounted trackball style. They would each have to have 2-axis motor control, but would allow a much faster response time and smaller footprint that a human hamster ball or shifting tiles. With smaller balls you greatly reduce the inertia issue. Allowing for much quicker acceleration and deceleration. You wouldn't have to wait for a sliding tile to move it to position and how it guesses the right place quick enough. And would allow for faster direction changes Drawback would be cost.
No, it's the East German version: Deutsche Demokratische Republik
most fps'ers have very flat steel floors, or at worst, steps.
i would just love to rollerblade around in those virtual places. the day i can put on rollerblades and rollerblade around a virtual enviroment, is the day i will say VR is mature.
What about extremem movements in Fast Shooters, or games like Max Payne? What if you suddenly want to jump to the left/right? Don't think those tiles will be able to handle that :D
:D
Or if you do a role on the ground... Wouldn't work either I guess.
I think all this could be worked out, if the field would be about 6x6m, or something like that, huge.
But not everybody is able to put such a huge field in his flat
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Ha Ha
that would be quite a bit of fun. everyone dressed up in theme clothing.
with it so dark, most of the action would be close range; and that could get quite painful if you dont have any armor on.
At some point do they see each other as holo-elements, sized correctly for the holo-distance involved?
Well, that and holo-dirt, holo-water, etc.
They're pretty cool but not there yet. You can walk in any direction, but the tiles are small and take some time to get into place. Effectively, they only work with baby steps and if you aren't weraring a facesucker. Even so limited, they take quite a lot of floor space.
How about a large, lightweight, hollow ball on rollers? You'd actually get inside the ball, and external projectors would display images through the matte finish. You'd need a pretty big ball to eliminate the feeling that you're constantly walking uphill, and a headband with a locator and a camera, so the game can detect when you're crouching, dodging, and looking to the side (or maybe it doesn't need to care where you're looking). And unlike a controller-based game, there'd be no odd trickery involved in looking one way, walking another, and shooting in yet a third. Weapon control could be simplified as well -- the weapon changes based on how you hold it. Hold it to your shoulder and it's a rifle, hold it outstretched in your hand and it's a pistol, hold it on your shoulder and it's a rocket launcher.
:)
A system like this would be neither cheap nor small, but it should fit into a trailer with a relatively modest amount of tearing down. The ball will probably have to break into many segments, or be double-walled and inflatable. Imagine a large, thin Zorb for some idea what might work. I bet they'd sell to carnies, and be safer than just about any other carnival thrill ride ever made.
If it's inflatable, even falling down shouldn't hurt too much. You'd be able to walk in any direction without having to worry about whether or not there will be something there to catch your foot. You'll notice hamsters never seem to have that problem.
Obviously there would need to be a way to get in and out of the sphere quickly (zipper perhaps, or even just a crack that seals upon full inflation -- let some air out and it re-opens), and it would need to be easily hoseable for the inevitable spew, sweat, and maybe blood. Some klutz is going to fall down and catch the weapon right in the nose, you just know it.
If concerns about ventilation and visual flaws prove too much, you go back to the cumbersome headset I guess, since you could then use a heavily perforated ball and nobody would care.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I can just see the ads!
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That was pretty impressive, even though it's clearly in the early stages...wouldn't it be easier to put the tiles on a base of some kind as opposed to having them run loose around the floor?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
OMFG!
You mean to tell me that not even bracelets could cure your ailment?
My god, man, you must really be ill.
My sympathies to you, sir. I am praying for your recovery.
That reminds me of the fellow the other day who referred to a new method being different from "traditional cloning".
I remember when creating traditional cloning was an ages old problem.
But for the opposite use: Stand on a tile and it carries you to a real world location. Or for Seven League Boots: Tile moves as you step on another moving tile, so your walking speed is increased.
Unlike doing this on an escalator, you could do it in any horizontal direction. Which would also mean the tile system should be involved in helping everyone avoid collisions.
You might also not need a shopping cart. Just place a basket on a leash on a tile. Avoiding snap-the-whip motions would be interesting. Might be easier to just have loaded tiles follow an individual, although the tiles would have to know whether they are carrying a person or merely an unstable load.
You can't make the statement that "This was tried around 15 years ago by Virtuality", because the technology in question isn't VR...it's a moving floor. Virtuality did indeed create a fairly complete VR system, but this did not...repeat did not include a moving floor. The dais that the user stood on did include position sensors though (one on the helmet and one around your waist), so perhaps that is where the confusion comes in.
-JT