VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality

mhzse writes "VirtuSphere provides a mechanical basis for truly immersive virtual reality environments, permitting the user to move about in virtual space by simply walking. The device consists of a large hollow sphere which is mounted on a specially designed platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely as the user walks in any direction. The user wears a head-mounted display, which provides the virtual environment.

Comments

Anyone else

[Liquorman]

think of hamsters?

Re:Anyone else

[advocate_one]

contender ready.....

Re:Anyone else

[jatemack]

Wait a sec, Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate. You just said ass....
(just messing with you)

You're a good man...I call a truce.

Moo

[Chacham]

Behold the room of circle square,
Wherever it be, no matter where,
For when we enter it hollow space,
The real is gone, without a trace.

Oh, to enter that seductive wheel
Virtual entities are so surreal,
The actual, but, imperfections corrected,
We can blindly forget that they are projected.

And where the triangles are a bit too outright,
We'll turn a blind eye, enjoying the site,
And when the framerate and just doesn't make it,
We'll cry for a bit, but then mitigate it.

The call of the future, the holodeck cometh!
The hail of technology, there's no hiding from it.
As the real is so useless, it reeks with banality,
We don't want it at all, we want virtual reality.

I've always wondered how the holodeck worked.

[Silverlancer]

You know, how they could move an unlimited distance in any direction in a room under 10 meters wide. While they don't seem to have explained it in Star Trek, I guess now they've found a solution.

Re:I've always wondered how the holodeck worked.

[OverlordQ]

IIRC in one of the Technical Manuals or a book of sorts, it uses tractor beams (or their equiv) to keep people from hitting the walls and using some serious cpu power and force fields in able to refract the light to make people/objects appear the correct distances/sizes/etc.

Re:I've always wondered how the holodeck worked.

[Drachemorder]

And heaven help people who dare to eat anything while spending significant time in a holodeck.

Imagine eating a large quantity of holographic food, digesting it,then walking out of the holodeck with the holographic substances integrated into your body...

On the other hand, that could be a really effective weight-loss plan.

Re:I've always wondered how the holodeck worked.

[kcb93x]

Actually, the holodeck was a combination of light tricks and tractor beams, AND replicators - physical items would actually be replicated, whereas "living" things weren't quite so "physical" IIRC.

Re:I've always wondered how the holodeck worked.

[Stagemonkey]

Ensign: "Excuse me Captain, I think I have to go take a holo-dook" Picard: "Ensign, you know just as well as I do that 3-d Realms hasn't released that game yet."

Bon Scott Tribute Karma Burn

[alephnull42]

Let me be the first to say.... ...Balls!

Not great for VR Gaming

[Kainaw]

I've tried this setup twice in the past. It always feels like you are walking up an incline. To make it feel flat, the sphere has to be huge. As it is, the weight of the sphere is difficult to start moving and difficult to stop moving. What is required for a real-life VR environment is a flexible sphere that allows a flat surface for the user to walk on and power-assisted rotation to make it start and stop easily.

Re:Not great for VR Gaming

[Peldor]

But it's perfect for reliving the 'old' days when you had to walk uphill both ways to everything!

Re:Not great for VR Gaming

[XXIstCenturyBoy]

Its been a while, but when I was younger (like 20, i'm 29 now ;)) I pondered on a "real life Doom" technique. The way I saw it, after countless hours of Doom level editing, is to make it just the way Doom made it. With heightmaps.

I know it would be hard and probably not pratical but... You take a big warehouse, rig the floor and ceiling with 6' high wooden or plastic rod. Each rod is controlled by pneumatic (or whatever) to raise (in the case of the floor rod) or lower (for the ceiling one) and they meet in the middle (assuming a 12' space between the rods)

Anyone that made Doom levels will know how that would work. One could create any kind of levels, provided you keep the stairs to a minimum. But you can have Doom like doors (that open like in the game), window, walls and stairs.

Mix that with a VR helmet so that the user can see a gun, textured walls and ennemies instead of rods, and you have yourself a real life Doom. Reflective patches on the rod coupled with IR on the helmet could even be used to track if the player crouch or jump (god forbid)

It would not work for space infinite levels, but it would be great for hi-tech paintballs games. You'd have infinite maze for the players to play into.

Whoa.

[CorruptMayor]

This makes Nintendo Revolution look like a toy... Oh wait.

5 bucks...

[omnispace]

says this will be the controller for the next Nintendo console.

Sgi Cave

[delirium of disorder]

Hasn't similar technology been available for years? Like this:
http://www.sgi.com/products/appsdirectory.dir/irix /products/c/957266.html

Re:Sgi Cave

[Digital_Quartz]

You can't walk around in the cave. In fact, you'd have to sit in exactly the right spot in the cave, or else the perspective would be out-of-whack at the edges of each of the screens.

First it was the mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

First we had the mouse.. Then we had the track ball.. Then we had pressure sensitive balls. Now we get to find out what it's like to be be the mouse. Good thing I like cheese.. *squeek!*

Re:First it was the mouse

[Rude Turnip]

"Then we had pressure sensitive balls."

Ah, forget it...this one's way too easy.

something similar but cooler in my opinion

[tont0r]

http://graphics.cs.ucf.edu/MAR-Sumant/index.php
mixed reality is something that allows people to actually interact with an environment in the real and virtual world. they use it for a lot of military simulators as well as a wide variety of other applications. plus it doesnt require the ball from American Gladiators.

Coralize! (Let no else's cache evade your eyes!)

[adavies42]

Already down--use http://www.technovelgy.com.nyud.net:8090/ct/Scienc e-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=462.

Blocked, linked, and comparison.

[unsupported]

Looks like they all ready blocked referals from Slashdot. Have to copy and paste that URL.

And speaking of URLS, here is the link to the manufactures website.

This thing reminds me of a human version of a hamster ball.

Wireless?

[Digital_Quartz]

I wonder how they're getting the video signal to the HMD? Any decent resolution is going to require a fair ammount of bandwidth. It's obviously not going to be a cabled connection (where would the cables go?).

Re:1992 Called...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus begins the saga of Zero Horse!

In A.D. 1301, the Siege was beginning...
King: What happen?
Lookout: Someone set up us a trebuchet.
Lookout: We get hail.
King: What?
King: Tell me the message.
King: It's Eric von Bunghole!
Eric von Bunghole: How art thee good gentlemen?
Eric von Bunghole: All thy castle art belong to my court.
Eric von Bunghole: Thou art on the way to plunder.
King: What he say?
Eric von Bunghole: Thou hast no chance to survive make thy days.
Eric von Bunghole: Ha ha ha ha!
King: Move Horse!
King: For Great Feudalism!

What are the specs on the "special manipulator"

[Safe Sex Goddess]

"Users can even ineract with objects in virtual space using a special manipulator."

This sounds like it could be fun, depending on how big the special manipulator is.

Re:Cool, but useful?

[tyroneking]

On the contrary, it is very revolutionary;)

Hmm...

[MaestroSartori]

...kinda cool I suppose. Does limit the sorts of thing you can walk on - pretty difficult to simulate stairs, for example.

I always though that some sort of moving tile system with lots of small, tilting variable height tiles would work pretty well for simulating walking on undulating terrain, as well as being able to cover stairs etc.

Maybe a large spherical room with walls covered in shifting variable tiles of this sort, that way you could have overhangs etc as well. Go rock climbing up a virtual Eiger, with only a few feet to fall if you slip :)

Sure, it's fun...until the air runs out

[elrous0]

Unless your "virtual ground" has some holes in it, of course.

-Eric

I thought...

[ImaLamer]

...computers were made so we could walk *less*

Holodeck fun...

[ImaLamer]

Put on a Star Trek uniform and walk around the local renaissance festival. When people look at you funny or ask you what the heck you are doing tell them that you are in the holodeck and that none of them are real...

Re:Holodeck fun...

[LightningBolt!]

Or, put on a Star Trek uniform and bring a baseball bat to a major league game. Between batters, jump out of the stands and step up to the plate. When the police drag you out kicking and screaming, be sure to repeatedly shout "End simulation!" loud enough so the crowd can hear you.

Innovation Without Star Trek

[Prototerm]

I find it interesting that a lot of the focus at the end of the article is on creating some sort of Holodeck, ala Star Trek. It's a sad state of affairs when the latest tech "innovation" comes from the previous week's episode of Star Trek.

So, where are these brilliant ideas going to come from now that there *is* no more Trek?

txt_vr

[MoreNoiseThanSignal]

You are in a giant plastic sphere. Obvious exits are: none. >_

The funny thing is...

[Chibi Merrow]

Klingons are a staple at many Southern Ren Faires, like the Texas Renaissance Festival...

I didn't find them as funny as when I ran into Ash, however, complete with chain-saw hand and "boomstick" strapped to his back...

HAHA yeah right.

[oGMo]

They had one of these at PAX. Plastic sphere, fairly heavy construction, on some wheels and sensors that allow fairly free rotation. You wore a head-mounted display and had a "gun" peripheral that you could point and shoot. Play time was about 5 minutes and lines were about an hour long.

Guess what? It sucked. Everyone who has considered how to make an immersive VR environment has, at one time, considered sticking someone in a sphere so they can walk around like this. Within 5 minutes, they've also come up with a number of problems with this setup: inertia keeps the sphere going, walking isn't really "flat", you can't run cords into it, and it's expensive and bulky.

I stood in line, figuring they'd come up with solutions to some, or most, of these problems, making it actually usable. They didn't. Stopping and turning was terrible, walking normally took serious focus, and and to top it off, the demo game was unplayably bad: PSX graphics at best, the "which direction is up" calibration was constantly off, it didn't track motion very well, and things just seemed to pop up randomly. And the actual view window was really small. "Immersive" my ass.

This technology isn't worth further investigation until they can prove the above problems are fixable.

Re:Sphere construction how-to suggestions?

[cr0sh]

Unless you have a large room for this, I wouldn't suggest going this route - constructing a 3DOF mechanical gimbal system is not an easy thing to do. It isn't impossible, but it will be difficult, expensive, and big. Furthermore, battery power will not cut it - even if you eliminate the PC powersupply and wire batteries directly, you will be lucky to get an hour or so of running time, if that - which may be OK, but remember - in between sessions you have to wait a long time to charge them back up. These reasons (and others) are why you never see such a system made by large aircraft simulator companies.

These companies instead utilize simpler hydraulic-actuated motion platform systems, which are basically a platform held up by multiple hydraulic cylinders, and upon this platform is mounted the simulator cockpit (sometimes installed inside a large back-projected sphere, as well). For a homebrew system, you will probably not want to mess around with hydraulics. They tend to be messy and corrosive, not something I would want in my house. I would instead look into using larger pneumatic cylinders. These have a drawback in that they tend to be "springy", but they should work out OK. You will also need to set up a position feedback system to these cylinders (and oscillation dampening, etc) so that the platform moves exactly how/where you want it to move.

If you want to find out how to do all of this, there are a few people out there who have done exactly what you are aiming to do - interfacing and building a full flight simulator with motion using a PC - on the internet. Most of them have pictures and details of their system on their websites. You might also look into how various real-world simulators look and work - the history behind aircraft simulation is fascinating, to say the least - it is the birthplace of modern simulation and VR.

Another interesting bit of kit is something called the Rock and Ride - it is basically a two-axis (roll and pitch) gaming chair that you sit in and mount your monitor on. Something like this could be built very cheaply (way cheaper than various asking prices I have seen - plus, I don't think the company that made it is in business anymore).

Also check out Omniscience Futureneering's Joyrider simulator - basically a very homebrew version of the "Rock and Ride".

Before you complain that none of these systems allow full spherical movement, remember that these type systems are similar to what is used commercially. Commercial developers (I am thinking corporations like Honeywell, Rockwell and McDonald-Douglas) decided on motion platform systems not only because of the engineering reasons, but also because they found through testing that full spherical movement wasn't necessary - in a simulation, if you get the physical movement right and in time with the movement of the display, your brain fills in the rest - tilt the cockpit back steeply while performing a loop, and it will feel like a loop! Of course, keep in mind that just like any other simulation, simulator sickness is a very real thing. If you add in a motion platform of any kind, it becomes even more acute of a problem. If your motion doesn't match what is being seen on screen (or in an HMD) - prepare to BARF!!!

Good luck on your project, it is a very ambitious one, certainly!