Slashdot Mirror
Ready for a CyberWalk?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Even with recent improvements in virtual reality technology, it's still almost impossible to physically walk through virtual environments. Now, European researchers have started a project named CyberWalk and they'll demonstrate next week their omni-directional treadmill, named CyberCarpet. According to ICT Results, the researchers 'had to address five key issues: providing a surface to walk on, controlling the surface in a way that minimized forces on the user, developing a non-intrusive tracking system, displaying a high-quality visualization, and ensuring a natural human perception of the virtual environment.' The researchers think that their new virtual environments would be used by architects and the gaming industry." Additional details are also available via the project website.
I'm interested in their omni-directional treadmill, CyberCarpet. I've tried to design something like this, but I inevitably wind up with a ten-foot (three meter, for our foreign friends) sphere that the user walks upon/within.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
We have a CAVE at our work, and the company that does the maintenance told me about and showed pictures of a 6 meter omnidirectional rolling carpet with VR display they built for the U.S. military. They were even trying to get wind and dust in the environment, but it would gunk up the works. It was probably a one-off though, whereas this new stuff seems to be going towards "commodity" vr.
Actually I'm pretty sure there's no way for this to convince someone it's real. You know that the ground is moving under you when you take a step so you'll always know you're not really going anywhere. Plus, people can sense acceleration.
... gettin' there ...
Which is mostly done in the inner ear: Three "rate gyros" per ear (the semicircular canals) plus three linear accelleration sensors ditto (nerve cells with calcified masses on the ends).
But it turns out these can be fooled by elecrtostimulus from varying magnetic fields generated by coils mounted on a headpiece near them.
There has been at least one slashdot article on these - including adding them to a headpiece to mimic the head acceleration that would match a moving screen image to reduce "barfogenisis" and improve simulation game experience. Adding them to a 3-D VR simulation would be the next logical step.
With wall screens and projection onto the moving floor you could create the necessary visual illusion.
Gettin' there
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
http://www.virtusphere.com/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qTnnJR-hS7k
~ roscivs
Unless it can simulate smell, I think your dog will find the VR world quite lacking.
Somehow I didn't expect a link to a treadmill to be so quickly slashdotted. O.o
The minds at Nintendo will quickly pick this up and expand on their Wii. People thought that the Wii was far away and would cost thousands of dollars. I'm sure we're on a pathway to playing ruining our fancy new plasma televisions by running into them! How will we create a safety strap for this one?
Please visit http://www.mederbil.com/ i7, GTX 275, 4 1TB Caviar Green in RAID 0+1 array, EVGA X58 3X SLI Board, Silver
Since the video is "Coming Soon", does anyone know if this is a carpet of small spheres then?
That also works, and would explain why the hard part was keeping track of which way you were walking.
A12A.713 is the root of ASC('evil')
And how do you plan to set up a virtual tree for the dog to do doggie business?
The article seems to have undergone the /. effect, so I can't tell if this treadmill will do things for elevation change. Steps might be too much at this point, but what about hills?
Anyway, while going through a virtual world as if I were really there sounds cool, especially in the realm of video games, I think virtualization technology better fits the office, though it might see harder adoption.
How many people need to be in an office building for a meeting? (Nevermind how useful the meeting actually is.) How many people travel thousands of miles to give one presentation, then fly back?
Why not move phone conferencing to the virtual age? Obviously, having everyone represented by an avatar would make the meeting a bit ludicrous for those not used to it. So, why not take a page from the movie industry and go blue screen?
The way I see it is that at various locations around the globe, there is a building full of meeting rooms. Large tables, nice chairs, but no decoration and it's all one color (say, blue). When people enter, they don a set of VR goggles. Cameras in both their goggles and around the room record people and project that real world scenario into this virtual world, then seen through the VR goggles. Then, whoever is "hosting" the meeting can set up or choose from various themes to decorate the virtual rooms. Various tools allow people to project into this virtual world, to get up and walk around, hell even virtual notes.
Obviously, something would need to be done about the goggles such that either they were more like sunglasses or they were somehow removed in the digital projection. And it would take some serious hardware to do a good projection as well as including real-time video. But I believe that this kind of thing would be a big boon for international visits- now you only have to worry about time zones, not planes, hotels, and car rides. Fuel savings, cost savings (once the tech gets there), time savings. If done well enough, there would be no difference than if you were in person. Handshake aside, do you often make physical contact with the people you meet with? No dinner afterwards, unfortunately.
You could have a meeting with potential clients in Japan and be home in an hour.
I've been waiting for one with full human field of view (or as near as possible) with good resolution for the last 20 years. I still can't go to the shops and buy one. Even the ones that cost $20,000 are not that great in terms of Field of view. We have the computer power for some very impressive virtual environments yet the visual hardware is completely lacking. I only hope the popularity of mobile video spurs the development of better video glasses technology. Immersive (at least visually) virtual reality is long overdue now.
There are videos of prototypes in youtube:
Omni-Directional Treadmill, June 28, 2007 (not sure if it is from the same project)
Cyberwalk Project, December 20, 2007