Future of Games: Virtual Reality?
by Will Harrison · in General Discussion · 09/12/2004 (1:23 am) · 22 replies
I think Virtual or Augmented Reality is really all about HMDs (head-mounted displays) and, to a lesser extent, motion/orientation tracking technology.
Are HMDs the way of the future? Will it be a sort of panacea for display technology?
Are HMDs the way of the future? Will it be a sort of panacea for display technology?
#22
Pretty cool.
09/15/2004 (5:15 am)
Heh... That's just a few steps away from a 'holodeck.' Imagine if they could rig up a room the size of a gymnasium or hangar building. Then you could get quite a workout...plenty of room to run. And you could pull off various kinds of military maneuvers and such (urban assault?).Pretty cool.
Torque Owner Will Harrison
Running would definitely make it useful for excercising.
Research has been done on optically tracking your position in a room (or to be more specific, the position and orientation of your head). Similar to mocap, but different... instead of cameras looking at you and little reflective balls attached to your joints.... you are the camera (or rather, a camera is embeded in the HMD), and you look out at these tiny little white dots or stickers attached to the walls.... the computer can then determine where you are in the room and render a 3D world according to that view. I've seen videos of it working... and it looks promising.
Even without being able to run around... you could still get quite a workout and sweat... just by frequent jumping and crouching.... which probably isnt hard to detect... that combined with frantically looking around and attacking is enough to get your heart racing fast.