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Virtual Reality Cocoon Being Designed
gurps_npc writes "CNN reports that a company called 'NAU' is working on an Immersion Cocoon that seems inspired by ST:TNG's Holodeck. The images are only 2D, and you can't touch them. But it is 360-degree video and sound, with light sensors to detect your hand movements and floor sensors to detect foot movements. They hope to have a prototype by October 2009."
My proof:
NAU hopes to complete its prototype Cocoon by October 2009, with models commercially available by 2014. Initially, it's intended to be used in public spaces or to be leased by companies, until the technology becomes cheap enough for the consumer market. But where NAU are creating an escape from the real world, others are working on ways of merging virtual information with the real world.
So this is the second 'article' with no substance.
It's a consumer-grade version of this, with an added motion-sensor for walking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Automatic_Virtual_Environment
Yes, this "cocoon" doesn't require the shutter glasses, but that's because it doesn't even try for 3-D. Lame.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
This is interesting technology, but I'm not sure the examples in the article were thought through all that well.
Imagine Amazon.com being fully 3D. We could walk through a 3D space where you have all the books lined up, and you could walk right up to a book.
That might make sense if you were just browsing, although there are a lot of ways to sift through books which don't map well to inanimate shelves. What if you know which book you want, though? Do you look up the title, author, publisher, etc. in a digital representation of a manual card catalog, and then spend at least a couple minutes walking over to the indicated location? (Just how many books does Amazon sell, anyway? How many miles of shelves would it take to hold them all?) That seems like a lot more work than using the much-derided keyboard & screen we have already.
Virtual shoppers might be able to take books off their shelves and read a sample, or even ask other virtual customers for recommendations.
You can already read samples on a regular screen, and most of the people I know who don't care to read off a 2D computer screen wouldn't be much happier with the immersive 3D equivalent; they want to actually experience the book's weight, texture, and smell. Recommendations, in turn, are more valuable when you can correlate what everyone has said about the item whether or not they happen to be hanging around at that exact moment. In a purely interactive system there probably wouldn't be anyone around to ask most of the time.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I'd b impressed if they could just come up with a floor where I could walk/run in any direction and it would keep me in place. Do that, and then we're talking about something.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The Immersive Cocoon could revolutionize the way we interact with computers.
Unfortunately, it wont.
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