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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."
Didn't Magneto do something like this either end of X-Men 1 or the beginning X-Men United? :)
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
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. =====
Can someone explain or theorize about why they use tiles instead of a uniform treadmill-like surface that can scroll on two axes?
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.
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 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
I have no idea if this would work, but what came to mind for me would be having the VR floor consist of a treadmill on a turntable. Since the treadmill can only go in one direction, the treadmill belt would be embedded with spheres.
As you walked, the treadmill would walk with you to leave you close to the center. If you changed directions, the treadmill would rotate to compensate for your directions, and the spheres would allow the treadmill to be rotated without turning your orientation. I think it would help if the spheres could somehow be locked (perhaps magnetically) so that you wouldn't lose traction.
I think if the room was big enough, the treadmill could be rotated slowly enough to not be noticable yet still compensate for more erratic movements and changes in direction.
Are you convinced that the floor tiles are 100% automated, and not remotely controlled by an operator?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
This won't happen. There is a reason video gamers have a stereotype of fat and lazy non-athletes. Once athletic skill is required for a game, don't expect that game to do well on the shelves. The reason will simbly be that it's no fun to lose, which is why the stereotypical gamer is regarded as shunning athletics in the first place. I know there are people who are athletic and gamers, but for the purpose of the stereotype you presented in your post, I think this is accurate.
The other reason is that there is no way to ensure the reliability of the controller for cheating purposes, yet have dissimilar movements by players. Either every player has a equal maximum speed regardless of physical ability, or someone somewhere will increase the signal gain on their walking device, or rebuild it from lighter parts, or something to move faster than Carl Lewis. How are you going to police that? You can't, really...
- Sig
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.
Would be a parent's dream!
Just hope your kids like you and don't enjoy the company of ravenous lions! :D
A sphere you walk on top of would probably be easier to construct, but unfortunately, either way has the same problem, because you're wrong about one thing.
m l, here's what I came up:
.0125, which is the sine of the triangle.
Cosine(arcsine(short/hypotenuse))=0.94 inches.
It would have to be quite large to seem flat.
Thanks to a helpful page on chords at http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57832.ht
Assume a 30 inch step.
That makes the short side of the triangle 15 inches.
Start off with a sphere 10 feet in radius (20 feet in diameter).
15/120 =
A 1 inch height difference would certainly be noticed by me.
Assuming a 0.1 inch difference as small enough to be ignored, your sphere would have to be about 94 feet in radius. (And remember, that's radius. It's almost 200 feet in diameter.
Considering that's what would be required for each person in the game, I think what they've got is definite improvement.
I'm not impressed by the photo, though. It doesn't look like you could (safely) take a step forward, unless those blocks are really fast.
To anyone who complains that I should have done that in metric:
A) I'm a Merkin. (See alt.fan.pratchett on Usenet) We're allowed.
B) I'm at work and trying to be reasonably honest with my employer's time...
(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.
While we are looking at other alternatives: If we are already using remotely controlled wheels that stay under your feet, why don't we just attach the wheels to the shoes. Basically, multi-directional roller skates with controlled wheels should be able to do the same thing, with a lot less complexity
I am a sig. I wish I were a more creative sig, but I am not. I guess everyone has something to strive for.
There is a reason video gamers have a stereotype of fat and lazy non-athletes. Once athletic skill is required for a game, don't expect that game to do well on the shelves.
As an avid player of DDR, who has managed to get quite a few of my other gamer friends addicted to DDR, as well as know others with similar stories, I call shenanigans. DDR is fun, requires (sometimes Herculean) effort, and has the addictive quality of trying to "beat it" by getting to higher levels. Once you get past the stigma of looking like a tard, you'd be surprised how active a formerly sedentary person will become.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
You've never played Dance Dance Revolution? Or any of the new PS2 EyeToy games? Or just go back to old school Ninetendo with the Power Pad.
True that these aren't FPS's though... Hmmm... How about Police 911, as found in your nearest arcade? A FPS in the truest sense of the word. For those who aren't familiar, it is a shooting game with IR sensors positioned around you so you literally dive for cover
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.