Journal perfessor multigeek's Journal: I want proper VR gaming. 11
I was pretty into video games as a kid. Spent many, many hours on Galaga, Battle Zone, and about two dozen others. But the UI just got too limiting once I started doing more stuff in the real world.
Riding a bicycle along the uphill side of a mountain highway for a few miles, breaking the law completely as I struggle in the updraft from passing eighteen-wheelers, in a tiny little space between the edge of the road and the concrete wall stretching up on my right.
Real risk of immmenent death. Serious adrenaline.
Kinda made playing Dungeons of Doom on my nine-inch, black and white Mac Plus a waste of time.
So I've never gone back. I've played the occasional FPS hour on a Wintel box, just to see if it appealled enough to get me back. I've wasted a few hours now and again in Rogue-type games and stuff like Hitchhikers.
But the bottom line is that for me, as for millions of people, I just don't have it in me to sacrifice hours of my time for something that is completely fantasy.
I need real fatigue. I need at least a little real risk.
So what I'm asking of the many gamers here is, what would it take (if the software were available) to build a home system that:
1.) took less then three hours and no more skill to set up then the average $1,000 home theatre
2.) tracked my movements (let's say twenty-five points of articulation, including three data points for head orientation)
3.) included dual 1024x768 stereo goggles (wireless) and surround sound
4.) had the processing power to handle 60 frame per sec. redraw as I moved my head and body (so my viewpoint would change with my movements seamlessly enough to feel comfortable)
5.) image quality about three years behind current X-Box (because perception will treat a lower-res image as real enough if context and motion is good)
6.) keep the game running in sync with my motion, even for things like martial arts games
7.) could accept add-ons like guns and controllers that cost under fifty bucks to make
Give me a system like that, where I actually I hold the gun in my hands, where I have to really turn and duck, where an hour of gaming leaves me out of breath and where using a martial arts game would genuinely help me work on my hitting and blocking speed, and I'ld find a way to buy it.
Seems to me, from my back of the envelope calculations, that such a system would cost about thirty-five hundred bucks, maybe five thou, including CPU, if mass produced.
Am I missing something?
From what I've read, even some serious science-fiction-seeming tech, like limited smell simulation, is now possible. Add *that* and a five cell by five cell DDR-type pad with active feedback (walk into the ruins and the smell of smoke rises while the floor begins to vibrate) and I'ld become a fanatical gamer again. Hell, I'ld pick up writing code just to help do add-ons for the son of a bitch.
Why aren't companies like iD writing software for this? I know that most of the parts can now be bought at CompUSA or Circuit City.
What's the deal?
Rustin
Riding a bicycle along the uphill side of a mountain highway for a few miles, breaking the law completely as I struggle in the updraft from passing eighteen-wheelers, in a tiny little space between the edge of the road and the concrete wall stretching up on my right.
Real risk of immmenent death. Serious adrenaline.
Kinda made playing Dungeons of Doom on my nine-inch, black and white Mac Plus a waste of time.
So I've never gone back. I've played the occasional FPS hour on a Wintel box, just to see if it appealled enough to get me back. I've wasted a few hours now and again in Rogue-type games and stuff like Hitchhikers.
But the bottom line is that for me, as for millions of people, I just don't have it in me to sacrifice hours of my time for something that is completely fantasy.
I need real fatigue. I need at least a little real risk.
So what I'm asking of the many gamers here is, what would it take (if the software were available) to build a home system that:
1.) took less then three hours and no more skill to set up then the average $1,000 home theatre
2.) tracked my movements (let's say twenty-five points of articulation, including three data points for head orientation)
3.) included dual 1024x768 stereo goggles (wireless) and surround sound
4.) had the processing power to handle 60 frame per sec. redraw as I moved my head and body (so my viewpoint would change with my movements seamlessly enough to feel comfortable)
5.) image quality about three years behind current X-Box (because perception will treat a lower-res image as real enough if context and motion is good)
6.) keep the game running in sync with my motion, even for things like martial arts games
7.) could accept add-ons like guns and controllers that cost under fifty bucks to make
Give me a system like that, where I actually I hold the gun in my hands, where I have to really turn and duck, where an hour of gaming leaves me out of breath and where using a martial arts game would genuinely help me work on my hitting and blocking speed, and I'ld find a way to buy it.
Seems to me, from my back of the envelope calculations, that such a system would cost about thirty-five hundred bucks, maybe five thou, including CPU, if mass produced.
Am I missing something?
From what I've read, even some serious science-fiction-seeming tech, like limited smell simulation, is now possible. Add *that* and a five cell by five cell DDR-type pad with active feedback (walk into the ruins and the smell of smoke rises while the floor begins to vibrate) and I'ld become a fanatical gamer again. Hell, I'ld pick up writing code just to help do add-ons for the son of a bitch.
Why aren't companies like iD writing software for this? I know that most of the parts can now be bought at CompUSA or Circuit City.
What's the deal?
Rustin
What I think you're missing (Score:2)
Tacttile (sic) feedback.
When I go out and hit something, I want to feel that I'm hitting something. If I'm going to wear a getup that requires me to stand up and act like I'm in the game, I want to feel the wall next to me, the wind rushing past my face, and the touch of whatever avatar, object, or weapon I'm interacting with.
It doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to be _something._
I don't know if you caught it, but back in the late 80s Nintendo tried selling an "action pad"
Tactile feedback (Score:2)
Some kind of force feedback was certainly in my mind but I had assumed that it was too far beyond my hypothetical budget.
I wonder if all this stuff with piezo and with "electromuscle" that so many folks are working on could ever develop into something useful.
Of course, being me, I'ld want at least a little in the way of heat, cold, and pain.
I see the biggest problem is not to figure out what is possible [slashdot.org], but what is close to being a realistic component of a home system.
Now, from what you've wri
Cost and Size (Score:1)
The other trick is cost. A DDR arcade machine is a couple (4-5+) grand. They get abused. Hard. I think the Isle of Manx TT game cost about $10,000 used. (That's high o
Cost and Size: Problems and options (Score:2)
I just keep suspecting that gamers would develop a slightly stylized form of motion, just as we do now with mouse pads.
A skilled geek can get across ten or fifteen "screens" of real estate mighty quick without having the mouse ever cross the edges of the pad. Seems to me that there is probably some sort of 3D equivalent.
Beyond that, I do see your point that this would be unsalable in most asian countries, not to mentio
The Deal (Score:2)
That's why this thing isn't available at Fry's.
Now, what you want to do is possible to build, but you'll also have to consider space. No, not the vast vacuum-filled (ha!) expanse of coolness that surrounds us, but the kind of space needed for you to be able to run around and dodge bullets for an hour. Would you want to wind up on a p
Great link! (Score:2)
Of course, as of the not-recently-updated page, those same systems now go used for about 15K USD.
I find it interesting that, when looking at the index of VR systems on the Atlantis site, nothing went into development later then '93 and about half a dozen of them looked promising.
This leads me to suspect that the biggest reason that we haven't seen good VR is that the internet boom dried up all the money.
I remember well the scuttlebutt by '96 that if a project was too h
Re:Great link! (Score:2)
Re:Great link! (Score:1)
Excellent concept, but it just was never developed.
The graphics were awful, you paid entirely too much for too short of a time. Just completely mismanaged all around.
VR Isn't Necessary for Immersion (Score:2)
I also think that it may be more difficult than you think to produce the software for a game like this. Both from a techni
Need one thing and it will exist (Score:1)
Then you can simulate ANYTHING once you know how, record and playback(ala Strange Days), et cetera.
I'd say about 5 years after that we'll be able to do the same thing with electrodes and no surgery.
Some Chinatown Arcade. (Score:1)
Anyway, we played the hell and our (in my case, non-existant) wallets on some new motion sensative, police QCB game.
Hi, ya'll been busy will write a journal entry soon...promise...uh, really..I have been busy.