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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."
Obviously this is the replacement for the Wii, but what will Nintendo call this one?
So from now on half of the episodes of our lives will take place in one of these pods?
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.
Does this mean we're now one step closer to virtual reality fps games? So i can take on my friends in Halo, and actually have to run around to do anything instead of just sit on my couch and move my thumbs? rock on! sign me up. i _want_ one...
Will it have a porn, I mean, privacy mode?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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
You can't see it on the picture but it has a little opening on the side where the food comes from.
I also heard it's designed to project war videos and play Beethoven.
And yes, it will run the new HP Linux.
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
So, not at all like the Holodeck, then?
Don't put advice in your sig.
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.
So they built a fancy CAVE in a shiny plastic sphere. I've wanted to build something like this since it became attainable without a research budget. Just network a few PCs and hook them up to five or six heavily diffused projectors pointed at the outside of a translucent cube. The ultimate innovation would be to let the user walk around on the surface of a giant trackball...
There is a company with headquarters in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (just down the road from RIM in one of the few buildings in the area that RIM doesn't own) that has been doing this for many years now.
Check out the public docs at
http://www.christiedigital.com/AMEN/Markets/AdvancedVisualization/
Did you see the opening or closing ceremonies of the Olympics? All of that projection was done with Christie equipment. And their 3D submersive stuff is crazy. They have intentionally stayed away from more consumer stuff, so not many people have heard of them. But anyone in the industry has.
Full disclosure: I'm doing some contract work there right now. But what they are doing is really amazing.
The Immersive Cocoon could revolutionize the way we interact with computers.
Unfortunately, it wont.
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/TECH/09/11/immersive.cocoon/art.cocoon1.jpg
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2894960128/tt0091064
> being able to completely fudge your 360 degree view screen with a wonderful "Guess what you just won!" tagline.
It's worse than that. Imagine...
360-degree full-immersion goatse.cx.