The Future Playground

eldavojohn writes "The BBC has an article on the London Science Museum's exhibit 'The Future Playground' which showcases some new technologies that may transform gaming. You may recognize some of these technologies as 'old news' but it's the way they're being utilized for gaming that makes this interesting. The most interesting one is the inflatable display which the article describes: 'The Puffer Sphere is an inflatable ball on which images can be projected, said Oliver Collier — one of its creators. Mr Collier said the idea of using the inflatable as a display grew out of an undergraduate project at the University of Edinburgh to use it as the basis for an interactive art installation.'"

Comments

ah

[Swimport]

I remember when if you got hit in the head with a swing, you got a concussion. Now that was a playground.

Re:ah

[Anonymous Coward]

And after you were hit by the swing, you were knocked to the ground where you'd skin your knees on gravel...

I watched the elementary school playground down the street from me go from having gravel to wood chips to that rubbery playmat stuff made from old tires in the span of 10 years. And all of the wooden "castles" and whatnot were replaced with kid-sized habitrail tubes (you'd think they would've at least kept the wood chips for that).

Re:ah

[pubjames]

I remember when if you got hit in the head with a swing, you got a concussion.

Only concussion? Luxury...

When I were a lad I broke my arm in two places falling from a slide, and had to spend a week in hospital. Of course, those were the days when hospitals had enough beds*.

* in the UK

Re:ah

[eln]

Yah, we had it easy. These days, sliding down a modern playground slide will generate enough static electricity to stop your heart if you touch a piece of metal or another person.

Re:ah

[elrous0]

Ha, you had a hospital, huh? Luxury.

In my day, they'd just patch a broken arm up with some twine and sticks and send you back into the fields to work.

-Eric

Re:ah

[Lord_Slepnir]

My fondest memory was using the Monkey Bars, Trapeze and Rings over a solid concrete surface. Of course, these all had perfectly polished rungs to ensure that only the most coordinated children could make it through without an injury.

Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[Rastignac]

I remember when Sega showed to everyone the "Sega Virtual Reality Helmet for Sega Genesis". The poor machine was unable to perform good 3D rendering at all (see games like Hard Drivin'), but Sega vaporwared everyone by telling it was possible to render two smooth 3D pictures in real time. The helmet never came.

Then there were Helmets for PC computers. Playing "Heretic 1" or "Descent 1" with them was possible, but the machines were not powerful enough to enjoy the games (because there were no 3D cards yet).

Years later (today !), PC machines with more-than-powerful 3D cards are here, but the Helmets for Everyone are not here. Why ? Machines are powerful, 3D cards are powerful, LCD screens are cheap, so why no Helmets for Everyone ?

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[rGauntlet]

Because they weight too much, cause motion sickness, and generally just aren't worth the trouble.

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[ClassicComposer]

because they arent designed for people with glasses and you know all us geeks where glasses so they would never sell. in an eye doctors office you may have seen a device that actually can guess your perscription and then adjusts its image so it is clear to you. if a headset were made with this adjustment tech in it--that you could program your perscrition into it and not need glasses when you use it. then we will be talking about something that might sell.

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[gravos]

For around 30 bucks you can get a pair of 3d glasses that works great with Nvidia's stereo software and an old CRT display to produce true 3d images from most compatible games. I have a pair and they are pretty interesting. The problem? For most people, the real 3d effect is disturbing and causes headache. I think the theory goes that the effect is too good for the poor brain, which now expects the sensation of physical motion to be coming along with the visual image. Of course, you feel no sensation just sitting in your chair playing an FPS, so the brain is confused and hurts itself. Or something. (It's also a pain in the ass to get simple things like hud reticules working right, surprisingly) Spend the $30, try it for yourself, see why it (mostly) sucks.

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[Chris Burke]

Then there were Helmets for PC computers. Playing "Heretic 1" or "Descent 1" with them was possible, but the machines were not powerful enough to enjoy the games (because there were no 3D cards yet).

I don't know... I played Descent 1 with a VR helmet and while sure it wasn't great looking at 320x200 that was all you got with a normal display anyway so it was "state of the art", and frankly I thought it was awesome. Doom/Heretic not so much, especially because the sprite-based monsters looked ridiculous in 3D. Descent, though, with it's true 3D environments and 3D robots looked incredible with the helmet, and was much more immersive than what the best 3D cards are rendering today on a single screen.

Though, I should add that it merely looked awesome but was in fact unplayable. This was more a factor of this particular helmet whose name I don't recall, which only functioned if you also used the build-in motion-sensing hockey puck. That thing was a true travesty of an input device. Imagine cupping a hockey puck in your hand with your hand turned sideways so that the faces are pointing right/left. Now tilt the hockey puck forward in order to move forward. Yeah, lots of wrist pain, minimal precision. Oh, and it only had two axes, so you really couldn't play descent with it in the first place.

Anyway, I have no idea why there aren't more helmets today. Personally I wouldn't think a pair of 640x480 LCD screens would be that expensive or heavy, and that would be a high enough resolution for me to enjoy the goodies modern graphics cards provide. There are those shutter glasses, but those things are terrible.

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[tttonyyy]

The problem? For most people, the real 3d effect is disturbing and causes headache. I think the theory goes that the effect is too good for the poor brain, which now expects the sensation of physical motion to be coming along with the visual image. Also there's no focal depth, unlike real life. Every pixel is in focus regardless of whether its close or far in the 3D scene.
And even if areas of image could be made out of focus depending on where the eye looks, there would be no parallax effects.

In addition (as anyone with binoculars knows), even with just one flat plane its difficult to get the focal depth right for each eye, not to mention matching the x,y positions exactly so that the eyes don't have to look apart/together/one-up-one-down more than they normally would.

With prescription glasses, a new pair takes a little getting used to; even when each lens is very closely matched to the eye it is rarely perfect and the differences are uncomfortable until the brain and eyes adjust. And that's just a small imperfection in the focal depth (no x,y misalignment).

So there is waaaay more to VR than just "slap a couple of LCDs in front of your face with a different picture on each one".

I think it'll be a very long time before it is possible to do all of the above with cheap consumer hardware.

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[xtracto]

I think you are talking about the Autorefractor. I believe it is not really needed as long as you have space to put your glasses like with the IMAX 3D glasses which give you space to put them.

Oh, and there is some people like me whose prescription can not be measured with those things. I remember the first time I tried to get my shortsightedness measured by one of these things the optometrist got really angry because the machine could not "focus" before I blinked (only with my right eye, my left eye passed the test fine). The problem is that after more than 40 seconds the stupid machine could not find a proper focus point becuase of the problem in my right eye.

So, although the technology is fine, it is 1. Not mature enough for common use and 2. Quite very expensive.Even tough, I want to believe that there is going to be some kind of 3D device for the Wii, I bought mine some days ago and I cant think of a more appropiate INPUT device for 3D gaming (A year ago or so I saw a presentation by an ex- VR researcher stating that the reason VR development came to a halt was the input, as someone else stated the DISPLAY technology is great but aside of that, there is not enough technology to emulate the other aspects of "Reality" [smell, touch, space, etc] to make them Virtual).

One nice idea would be playing with dreams manipulation with something like dream signal injection (of course we are decades away from the possibility of having that kind of understaing of the human brain).

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[Chibi Merrow]

Well, a standard, middle of the road Head Mounted Display will run you about $16k (at least, that's what we just paid for the VR1280 we just bought). You can find a cheap, light, LCD based set of goggles with a really mediocre head tracker on em for about $700, though... I played with a set at GDC last year. They were kinda nice but they used time multiplexed stereo instead of the more traditional way of using two seperate video signals... That's about as cheap as you're going to get right now, though, for a system that's even remotely usable. And then there's the usual problems of motion sickness, eye strain, etc. which will probably never be solved. (Our current endurance record holder in the lab is a Geologist who's spent over three hours in the HMD looking at his data... Most anyone else can't last more than an hour.)

Re:Virtual Reality, where are you ?

[p0ss]

Well there are HUD's and projector glasses, but headsets seem to have gone out of fashion.

you are right tho, with two high powered video cards in SLI, providing sufficient data to two small lcd's should not be too hard.
Realistically, with the size of those headsets, you should be able to fit a couple of GPU's and some software in the unit itself, allowing it to render any output signal in 3D.
non-native 3D sources would not look AS good, but still not shocking, just like old 3D movies.
I guess the problemwith 3D viewers in general is not the hardware, it is the software. Yes it is popssible to render slightly different images from the same engine, but the overall quality of each image has to be sacrificed, It is kind of like running two instances of the game at once.
It is really a catch 22, until we have good games designed for 3D, we wont have mass uptake of 3D goggles. until we have mass adoption of 3D goggles, we won't have the financial insentive to create native stereoscopic video output.
But with nintendo sacrificing graphics for fun, perhaps the time is right for a new breed of lower quality graphics games that can output two visual signals simeltaneously.

alright but...

[erbbysam]

sorta reminds me about the house of the future from the 60's which can clean it's own tables and make you dinner...

The playground of the future...

[Demona]

...will be one piece, and constructed entirely of soft rubber. However, children will still be issued mandatory helmets before being allowed on the premises.

Re:The playground of the future...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the liability waiver; signed, in triplicate, by child and parent. Maybe a credit check too-- to make sure you can actually pay the medical bills for any injuries sustained.

Re:The playground of the future...

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

In the future children will be kept in a VR-enviroment with all pretty colors and singing animals, all living peacefully next to each other. A world where there is no hunger, pain or fear. A place without the possibility of violence. A true heaven. And when they turn 18 they'll be perfectly prepared to live in the real world. I don't see how this could possibly go wrong.

Well

[antifoidulus]

I do enjoy playing with something inflatable but it's a bit different shape and you play with it in a different fashion and well....I've already said too much :P

Re:Well

[tttonyyy]

I do enjoy playing with something inflatable but it's a bit different shape and you play with it in a different fashion and well....I've already said too much :P Put down that bicycle pump - they have drugs to help with "inflation" issues these days. And I don't even want to know what you've got projected onto it - you're not fooling me with that "come see my art project" line again!

immersion

[the dark hero]

i really like the singing "drama." It's kind of like a training session which determines the succes of the opera singer on screen. I know they have a karaoke revolution already out, but you'd need to know how to sing to play that well and that may not be fun for everyone. similar to the wii's input, via the wii-remote, you feel a sense of accomplishment being the helping hand to the action on screen.

It's about the money.

[Knight Thrasher]

Take a look at the "Virtual" Gameboy that Nintendo put out, that crashed and burned horribly. That, and all of the incidents you listed above, only go to prove that virtual reality is in fact a money pit - at least according to the history of such products.

I agree with you - the desire and the marketing and the investments were all made way before their time. The time is now. You want a market for geeky gadgets, man, this is the time and place. We all can only hope Nintendo reads Slashdot and adapts some sort of device to this effect. I imagine it wouldn't take too much to take the technology from a motion sensing Wiimote / Nunchuck, add in a little headset, and take a lesson from Microsofts XBox live. You can imagine how excellent a product like that, (properly developed and supported of course) would be.

Alas, if there was just a way to convince major console players like Nintendo that the development costs were worth the risk. Or hey, if Sony is quick about it, maybe they'll find a way to sell me on the PS3 finally, and come out with this sort of thing, it's really the only thing that might convince me the console is worth it.

Re:It's about the money.

[Bandman]

I'm not going to disagree that virtual reality is a money pit, but giving the VirtualBoy as an example of why is misleading. The virtualboy was a steaming pile of poop.

I'm betting on augmented reality as the way things will go.

Inflatable Display?

[rujholla]

That sounds like something that should get laptop manufacturers drooling. If you could get a small laptop with a 21" display. Course the sphere they have in the article is nothing like that but...sounds like it could be reworked maybe??

windows version

[theMerovingian]

Here is a pic of the Puffer Sphere running Windows

twine AND sticks?

[93,000]

You had twine AND sticks?

Pussy.

Re:twine AND sticks?

[silentounce]

You were lucky. In my day we didn't have arms. We just wallowed around in the mud content with our flagellum. And we LIKED it.

Re:twine AND sticks?

[exspecto]

Mud?! Spoiled bastard. We used to swim around in the primordial goo and just reproduce asexually. Sure beats the dating scene...

Re:twine AND sticks?

[DrugCheese]

Michael Palin:
        You were lucky! We lived for three months in a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank! We used to have to go up every morning, at six o'clock and clean the newspaper, go to work down the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for six pence a week, and when we got home, our dad would slash us to sleep with his belt!

Graham Chapman:
        Luxury! We used to have to get up out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot grubble, work twenty hours a day at mill, for two pence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

Terry Jones:
        Well, of course, we had it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night, and lick the road clean with our tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing cold grubble, work twenty-four hours a day at mill for four pence every six years, and when we got home, our dad would slice us in two with a breadknife!

Eric Idle:
        Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and pay millowner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!

Re:twine AND sticks?

[Merusdraconis]

And if you try and tell kids these days how good they have it, they won't believe you.

Ehh...This is what I have to say about futurism

[Kim Jong Ill]

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/n_rand_home_ computer.htm

Inflatable?

[Corporate Troll]

Quick, call Dr. Schlock!

Oh please

[Ty]

Who needs all this newfangled stuff when you can have AWESOME cold-war era Russian playgrounds!

Re:Oh please

[Swimport]

Man. thats the scariest playground I've ever seen. I'm going to have trouble sleeping tonight.

It's hard to sell a product that makes people puke

[AmazingRuss]

...and vr helmets, well, make people puke.

It's hard to sell a product that makes people puke

[AdamThor]

see: alchohol

eMagin Z800

[Chibi Merrow]

I finally found the bugger after I submitted my last comment. The one I played with at GDC 2006 was an eMagin Z800 3DVisor. They're selling em for $549.00 with Blazing Angels as a pack-in. You also need an nVidia graphics card for it to work, as it depends on the nVidia stereo drivers...

Because VR is a solitary experience.

[ghastlygray]

If the technology is ripe, why aren't there virtual reality helmets for everyone?

Mainly: because wearing a helmet makes gaming a SOLITARY experience. Contrast this with Nintendo's recent Wii, which is all the rage because it makes gaming a SOCIAL experience. The social aspect of gaming, which a helmet would destroy -- isn't just playing party games with the Wii; it's even more rudimentary than that. It's being able to call your girlfriend over and have her watch over your shoulder as you play a particularly cool scene, etc.

Moreover, with a helmet you can't look at the keyboard, you can't have a snack or pop a soda, you can't take a quick look at the clock to see what time is it, you can't answer your cell phone quickly, etc. The helmet expects you to cease being a human being while you play.

Perhaps the momentous failure of the VR helmets is a sign that we've misunderstood how the perception of games works, psychologically as well as "phenomenologically". Perhaps it's not about simplistic "immersion" in a virtual (visual & auditory) world; perhaps it's more like the old fashioned kind of immersion you get when you read a book.

Re:It's hard to sell a product that makes people p

[PhoenixOne]

"vr helmets, well, make people puke."

So does Paris Hilton, but they still market the crap out of her.