#Virtual Reality Machine
22 messages in this thread
I don't know if anyone caught this. I read about it in, I think, Byte or
Compute. A new arcade toy, Virtuality. A machine in which you don a
helpmet (helmet) and some controls and are transported into a virual
reality environment. You can battle another person on an adjacent machine
in a combat simulation or you can operate a jet fighter simulator. The
machine is powered by two Amiga computers (didn't say which ones). Will be
out in 1992 at the amazingly low price of $60,000. Look for it at your
favorite game arcade.
I saw few kinds of games on Virtuality on Japanes computer magazine & those
in Japan were generated by A3000. Yeeepppi!
– THANX R.SATOH ->via Whap!
Ah, then you've actually seen one of these machines? Amazing. The article
seemed to suggest they were new. Goes to show how up-to-date the press is.
There's a VR 'game' in Columbus, OH. Something like $2 a minute.
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
Michael,
Gee, that's almost as cheap as some of the 900 software help
lines!!! That's also a good contrast to the 900 "entertainment" numbers!!!
Which of those other two VRs do you think will get the most "action"?
hehe 🙂
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
Its a pretty neat looking device with helmet(monitor eye piece) and a glove
like NES power glove(<-I don't know if they use it for all application.)
and a plastic bucket seat. Other people could watch it on the optional
monitor on the side and I believe each game cost like $2.50. Currently
there is a Harrier flight simulator(or shooting game) & a stunt car racing
game or something… I also saw some more article of virtuality being
placed in a bars & clubs for entertainment in home ground England.
Can't wait to play the real one!
– THANX R.SATOH ->via Whap!
The "real" one what? Do you mean the real Virtuality or the real thing?!!!
Download AM-Report v1.19 for a nice article on Spectrum Holobyte's new
Virtuality line. (Lib 4 in Amiga User here on CIS). The simulators use
Amiga 3000s boosted with special TI graphics chips (one for each eye).
-Chas
Neat! There's a Virtual Reality game at a local arcade right now, that a
pal has been trying to get me out to for awhile. It uses a helmet and
data-gloves, and apparently the goal is to wander around in a castle or
something. $5.00 for 5 minutes, I heard. 🙂
I had a weird thought several mos ago… what if you took two Sony
Watchmans (the ones with the little 3" tv screens) apart for the monitors,
and put the monitors in a motorcycle helmet, and hooked up miniture
speakers in the helmet, and developed a way to measure the way the helmet
is positioned, and hooked it all up to two Amigas, syncronized? Seems to
me you could do budget VR for under $10,000 in that case? Whadjathink?
–jp–seattle–
John,
Ha! Just what we need. An inexpensive toy, to say the least.
Wonder if that would scare Nintendo? Now, if you could do that with CDTV
you'd really have something!! Well, I guess that piece I read was just a
little dated. They said it would be available next year, but apparently
that little 60 grand toy is out there right now. I don't think I would
like to play a game at $60 an hour, would you? Of course the scary thing
is that when I tell prospective clients I charge $75 an hour the phone goes
"click". But those same birds probably would pop $60 an hour to pretend
they were jet fighter pilots! Wouldn't you just know it.
Probably could be done via CDTV, if the imagery was line drawings, rather
than solid. I suspect it could be 'fast' enough. But how would you get
two video signals out of one amiga?
–jp–seattle–
John,
Don't ask me! I don't even know how to get one video signal out!!
I just watch video (ha!) You know I read InfoWorld and Byte regularly and
I'm always amazed at the mass of products for the PCs to make them faster,
multi-task, do video, etc. When you get done with one of those monsters it
will cost twice what an Amiga costs and not be half as good, yet both pubs
seem to be terrified of ever mentioning the word "Amiga" anywhere in the
magazine. What a trip to have something like this Virtuality machine being
run by two Amigas. Do you think Byte would ever mention it? I doubt it,
because they'd have to print the 'A' word (and Jerry P. would probably have
to write about it.)
John,
The most direct way to tell the helmet orientation is with an IMU – gyros
set at precise angles to each other that give angular accelerations and
linear acceleration measuerments. A processor then integrates those
accelerations to compute velocity and postition. Expensive technology that
requires constant calibration. (Unless you go with the HRG – Hemispherical
Resonating Gyro a sealed peice of wine glass shaped glass that is excited
and whose resonance pattern is monitored for acceleration effects – where
talking several hundred K per copy!)
wmc
Re determining the position and orientation of something (head, hand,
etc)….
Aren't there several ways of locating things via distance accurately? ie.
autofocus cameras, etc? If so, Then couldn't you use four of those
(positioned at pyramid points), to determine the *position* of something
accurately? For instance, re hand positions…. an idea I had a couple
years ago: a hand operated 3D object editing system. The idea would be
that you would put a 'cage' of these four devices around the computer, and
the user would move their hand (wearing a 'power glove') around in space,
grabbing and moving points. There would be a Haitek 3D display on the
monitor showing you what was going on. The power glove would recongnize
when you grabbed, moved, etc points.
I don't know how one would determine the orientation accurately? One
though I had was to build a wire 'halo' around the head. The helmet would
have a guide wire running to the 'halo'. As the guide wire moved on the
halo, one would be able to measure resistance or something, so that one
could determine orientation in 3d as well. Weird, I know.
Radio or gyro would obviously be better, etc…. but as you say, more
expensive!
–jp–seattle–
John, most of the autofocus things you mention are either I/R or sonic
based. Their sampling frequency is low (to keep cost down) and you
sometimes fake them out with motion. Response times are usually measured
in terms of seconds.
Your idea is great. But it also has significant technical challanges. Your
X-Specs wearer will undoubtedly move his head. Therefore, tracking the
head to hand distance/position is critical with a complex or dense object
(i.e lots o points). I'm sure there must be some other way to do it, but
on all the systems I've worked on, there were either gyros and
accelerometers to get angular and linear acceleration readings that are
double integrated and filtered along the way to get accurate and timely
(like 20 – 40 msec) position updates. Admittedly these systems had stricter
requirements (trying to put something the size of a house at a position +/-
20 meters of an exact postion in space 300 miles above the earth) but the
problem is not terribly different. It is more complicated since your hand
will be undergoing unknown trajectories to unknown positions instead of
flying a predetrmined path to a predetermined point. Basically you problem
is star wars – trying to knock out multiple warheads undergoing evasive
manuevers using a launcher that is not stationary. It's a non-trivial
progblem.
However, you may want to approach NASA with it. It would have a great
application for earth-bound training for zero-G construction, etc. They
might be willing to put some grant money out to study the problem and come
up with some possible design approaches. Course they'd probably opt for
some holographic display instead of a monitor!!
wmc
Oh well. It sounds like you know what you're talking about 🙂
What about some sort of rangefinder via radio or something? There must be
something used to detect motion that is 1) fast, 2) unobtrusive, 3) usable
on the amiga, 4) cheap! 🙂
I can think of two items that will detect 3-D motion, and are in use
on PC's now (or soon will be).
First is the Nintendo Power glove, that uses radio triangulation to
do its thing. There was an article in Byte a while ago that
explained how to adapt it for the PC.
Second, Logitech is coming out with a 3-D "mouse" that appears to
work along the same lines as the Power Glove. Either one would be
ideal. I'd be willing to bet that there will be an InPort version
(bus mouse)… couple that with the article in the Jan. Amazing that
explains how to use those things on the Amiga, and….
The Nintendo Power glove does not use "radio triangulation", but uses
UltraSonic Sound triangulation. There is a big difference – radio
waves go at the speed of light, while ultrasonic waves go at the
speed of sound. Radio triangulation isn't practicle for such close
ranges. I saw a nintendo power glove going for about $38.CDN on the
canadian shopping channel during their boxing day sale.
Kelly–
I stand corrected on the Power Glove…I don't mess around with Nintendo
hardware that much…:)
Jonathan
– via Whap!
Jonathan, thanks (and to Kelly too, for his further info on the
PowerGlove)…. given the small distances involved (inside a room at
max) I would think that sound triangulation would be fast enough? I
guess it would depend on how fast the reciever did the calculation of
the actual time?
Appreciate the reminder on the artical in Amazing about using the
PowerGlove. I'll look through my old mags for it.
You dont even need to tear apart a watchman. There are small color video
LCD systems available as add-on viewfinders for camcorders. I also saw a
bunch of lcd televisions when I was in Japan last december. Some had
detached displays with receiver in a sperate box (all smaller than a
cigarette box!)
For 3D, you could spend mega-bucks for the VPL glove/sensors or a few bucks
for the NES powerglove and maybe the Logitech 3D mouse. One problem with VR
is the lack of tactile feedback when you grab something. A Pasadena
company, Simgraphics, sells a 3d Mouse (was originally called Das
Fledermouse, or the Bat) that has a tactile option. It is a little point,
like the end of a pen, in the button on the mouse. They can raise and lower
them to let you know when you 'contact' a virtual object.
Jerry Isdale