WHOAguitarninja
Member
First off I'm really not sure if this should be posted in this forum or the offtopic, but it seems game-relevant so I'll put it here.
A friend of my family is a member of the faculty of Iowa State university and is recruiting students for his graduate program on human computer interactions. Among their projects are things called "caves" and some true force feedback mechanisms. I got to play with both.
Caves - Caves are a somewhat different form of virtual reality that seems to be in many ways far more practical than the typical enormous glasses that we're used to seeing. Typical VR has a headset with mounted monitors for each eye that track head movements and use that to tell what sort of data should be sent to your eyes. Caves are simply a small room that you stand in with images projected on all the walls around you. The images are projected (in this case) at 96hz, being offset a bit every 1/96th of a second. This works with glasses that shudder out light at the same rate, but alternate eyes. These are small and lightweight, being about twice the size of a normal pair of sunglasses, and not much heavier. The result is that each eye only sees images intended for it.
The transformation when you put the glasses on is quite striking. In one instant, before the glasses are put on, you see blurry pictures on all sides of you on the walls. Then the glasses go on, and suddenly the walls seem to dissapear. It really is quite striking as I would stand in the room and litterally could not find the walls without walking into them. Imagine the scene in FFVII in REDXIII's homeland with the planets swirling all around and you'll have a fairly accurate idea. Important to note, however, is that it seems to work far far better from the center of the room then anywhere else. It kindof kills the illusion otherwise as perspectives get wrong.
They were in the process of upgrading their system, as what they had was about 5 years old. What I saw was fairly basic, with one computer outputting the data for all 6 screens, and everything running at 96hz, you can imagine the graphics being fairly antiquated and they were, looking somewhere between a super fx and first generation playstation game. They were in the process of a 3 million dollar upgrade to what he said were essentially videogame pc's, complete with new nvidia graphics cards. They would also be tiling the screens, so that one screen would actually be done by multiple computers. They were all quite excited as they said they expected about 10x the resolution, 100x the geometry, plus of course all the latest pixel shaders.
It also had a motion sensing device used to control it which used EM fields in a manner I didn't get a chance to ask about. They didn't seem to keen on the device though as they said it would be changed out for another system after the upgrade was done.
I also saw a mini cave(3 screens infront of you), being done on much more recent hardware, putting out graphics that looked about like an early ps2 game. This was a military tool in development that essentially looked like a real time strategy game, designed to allow for remote control of entire squads of planes. Pretty cool stuff.
Force Feedback - The real kicker, however, was the force feedback stuff they had. They had a pen like device attached to a machine that looked sortof like a feeble desk lamp, only the pen was where the light would be. The following is kindof hard to describe, so I'll try my best to draw a picture.
/ monitor, upside down, facing down
---- peice of glass to reflect the monitor
\ pen thing
The monitor projected an image down onto the glass, which was semi transparent for various reasons. The pen was under the glass, and you held it like a normal pen. The interesting thing was the way the pen delivered force feedback. He had described the machine to me earlier, saying it would replicate the feel of things displayed on the monitor (which I should mention also used the same glasses to show the objects in 3d.) I wasn't expecting just HOW real it felt, though. I got to try two demo's, one of which was just a virtual cell phone that you used the pen to press the buttons on. The buttons felt and behaved completely like rubber cell phone buttons, the type on the non flip phones of yesteryear. The feeling was really really convincing. The next demo was even more impressive, however. It was 3 objects, a toy bike horn, a rubber pincushion, and another object I can't recall. The pin cushion and horn behaved EXACTLY like the real things would. I depressed then pin cushion and tried to drag the pointer across, and was met with the initial friction, and the skipping feeling of it jumping as it gained and lost traction. It was absolutely uncanny how real it felt. I should also mention that the apparatus the pen was mounted on, despite being plastic and looking fairly rigid, offered no noticeable resistance other than the force it was trying to exert. It didn't feel like a pen hooked up to a big plastic thing as much as a normal pen.
The range of things they were using these machines for was quite large, but both of these could obviously be used extensively in videogames. There has been much talk of revolution incorporating gyroscopic controls, and while I was initially hesitant to see it as anything other than annoying, I now think if it could be done half as cool as this stuff, it could really be a real revolution.
I'm getting tired of typing so I'll stop here. I'm sure some people here probably knew about this stuff already, and have seen it and played with it before. However I'm sure most are probably like myself and haven't seen these things before, so for them, hopefully I've piqued their interest and provided a somewhat intersting read.
If anyone wants any more info, their website is www.vrac.iastate.edu
Any thoughts or questions on what I saw I'd be happy to answer.
A friend of my family is a member of the faculty of Iowa State university and is recruiting students for his graduate program on human computer interactions. Among their projects are things called "caves" and some true force feedback mechanisms. I got to play with both.
Caves - Caves are a somewhat different form of virtual reality that seems to be in many ways far more practical than the typical enormous glasses that we're used to seeing. Typical VR has a headset with mounted monitors for each eye that track head movements and use that to tell what sort of data should be sent to your eyes. Caves are simply a small room that you stand in with images projected on all the walls around you. The images are projected (in this case) at 96hz, being offset a bit every 1/96th of a second. This works with glasses that shudder out light at the same rate, but alternate eyes. These are small and lightweight, being about twice the size of a normal pair of sunglasses, and not much heavier. The result is that each eye only sees images intended for it.
The transformation when you put the glasses on is quite striking. In one instant, before the glasses are put on, you see blurry pictures on all sides of you on the walls. Then the glasses go on, and suddenly the walls seem to dissapear. It really is quite striking as I would stand in the room and litterally could not find the walls without walking into them. Imagine the scene in FFVII in REDXIII's homeland with the planets swirling all around and you'll have a fairly accurate idea. Important to note, however, is that it seems to work far far better from the center of the room then anywhere else. It kindof kills the illusion otherwise as perspectives get wrong.
They were in the process of upgrading their system, as what they had was about 5 years old. What I saw was fairly basic, with one computer outputting the data for all 6 screens, and everything running at 96hz, you can imagine the graphics being fairly antiquated and they were, looking somewhere between a super fx and first generation playstation game. They were in the process of a 3 million dollar upgrade to what he said were essentially videogame pc's, complete with new nvidia graphics cards. They would also be tiling the screens, so that one screen would actually be done by multiple computers. They were all quite excited as they said they expected about 10x the resolution, 100x the geometry, plus of course all the latest pixel shaders.
It also had a motion sensing device used to control it which used EM fields in a manner I didn't get a chance to ask about. They didn't seem to keen on the device though as they said it would be changed out for another system after the upgrade was done.
I also saw a mini cave(3 screens infront of you), being done on much more recent hardware, putting out graphics that looked about like an early ps2 game. This was a military tool in development that essentially looked like a real time strategy game, designed to allow for remote control of entire squads of planes. Pretty cool stuff.
Force Feedback - The real kicker, however, was the force feedback stuff they had. They had a pen like device attached to a machine that looked sortof like a feeble desk lamp, only the pen was where the light would be. The following is kindof hard to describe, so I'll try my best to draw a picture.
/ monitor, upside down, facing down
---- peice of glass to reflect the monitor
\ pen thing
The monitor projected an image down onto the glass, which was semi transparent for various reasons. The pen was under the glass, and you held it like a normal pen. The interesting thing was the way the pen delivered force feedback. He had described the machine to me earlier, saying it would replicate the feel of things displayed on the monitor (which I should mention also used the same glasses to show the objects in 3d.) I wasn't expecting just HOW real it felt, though. I got to try two demo's, one of which was just a virtual cell phone that you used the pen to press the buttons on. The buttons felt and behaved completely like rubber cell phone buttons, the type on the non flip phones of yesteryear. The feeling was really really convincing. The next demo was even more impressive, however. It was 3 objects, a toy bike horn, a rubber pincushion, and another object I can't recall. The pin cushion and horn behaved EXACTLY like the real things would. I depressed then pin cushion and tried to drag the pointer across, and was met with the initial friction, and the skipping feeling of it jumping as it gained and lost traction. It was absolutely uncanny how real it felt. I should also mention that the apparatus the pen was mounted on, despite being plastic and looking fairly rigid, offered no noticeable resistance other than the force it was trying to exert. It didn't feel like a pen hooked up to a big plastic thing as much as a normal pen.
The range of things they were using these machines for was quite large, but both of these could obviously be used extensively in videogames. There has been much talk of revolution incorporating gyroscopic controls, and while I was initially hesitant to see it as anything other than annoying, I now think if it could be done half as cool as this stuff, it could really be a real revolution.
I'm getting tired of typing so I'll stop here. I'm sure some people here probably knew about this stuff already, and have seen it and played with it before. However I'm sure most are probably like myself and haven't seen these things before, so for them, hopefully I've piqued their interest and provided a somewhat intersting read.
If anyone wants any more info, their website is www.vrac.iastate.edu
Any thoughts or questions on what I saw I'd be happy to answer.
