What ever happened to Virtual Reality

[anephric]

For VR to work you do need a fixed frame of reference, i.e. a Cockpit or Dashboard. I mean seriously a real car sim, with full viewing, mirrors, and the like. Obviously a game involving a trip to a supermarket wouldn't exactly rock, but a NASCAR car-athon would be smashing, in small bursts.

According to David Cronenberg and eXistenZ, we should all be looking forward to horrible VR Chinese restaurants and working in a mingy mutant fish factory ad nauseum. Oh, and AI that can't deal with more than two set responses a la a text adventure from 1983.

He's obviously played a lot of games...

[Concept]

I think he intended eXistenZ to be another Videodrome, although it's nowhere near as clever or as well thought out. It's quite clearly an outside observer's wet dream as to how videogames of the near future are going to be. The type of view that Sony loves to randy up with their traditional bull**** pre-release console hype.

[Ady]

...yeah, and people still fall for it. Some of them even work in the industry...

[the shape]

Virtual Reality, what happened to it.

What do you mean? You're in virtual reality right now! We are using your real body as teh battery!!!

Sorry.

[jassi singh]

http://sonix.sdv.fr:8080/ramgen/arte...3/immersion.rm

Surely that cant be real a real tech demo.

[the shape]

For the love of god! That looks like the best technology that was ever invented ever ever! And they're using my little Philips webcam for it!

That is genuinely stunning.

Kind of makes EyeToy look a bit pap.

EDIT: copying jassi singh's link over for new page:
Linky link.

[roobarb]

sorry I just can't believe that's as good as it looks !

no way could their software build a 3D representation of all the items on your desk using a single standard cam - that's what would be needed to jump the RC car over the notepad, and make it disappear behind the model castle

have to say it looks amazing, although there must be some other tricks/devices involved in the making of this demo

[Commander Marklar]

Hmm... me thinks it is nowhere near as simply as it looks, heh.

I wanna see what it does when it can 'see' itself, like them inifinite mirror reflections

[Tom Salter]

sorry I just can't believe that's as good as it looks !

no way could their software build a 3D representation of all the items on your desk using a single standard cam - that's what would be needed to jump the RC car over the notepad, and make it disappear behind the model castle

have to say it looks amazing, although there must be some other tricks/devices involved in the making of this demo

All you need is the distance of each object from the camera. It definately won't be a standard camera.

Obtain the distance of each object from the camera, then you can form a Z-buffer of the scene. Then you can work out if the objects are in front, or behind things in the scene, and you can also work out how the objects will react to the scene.

[Commander Marklar]

you make it sounds so easy how about an explanation of the door closing; how did the software know to 'block' the car, then let it pass through?

[roobarb]

also it seems that the software was aware of the contours found on the surface of the models - it couldn't know this with just the distance of the model from the camera

We are to believe that it can build a proper 3D (e.g. polygon) representation of the model using the camera image.... hmmm right

[Ish]

We are to believe that it can build a proper 3D (e.g. polygon) representation of the model using the camera image.... hmmm right

Well they can do it in Star Trek so it must be true.