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Games Entertainment

Virtual Reality With Unreal Tournament 165

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-kinda-anyway dept.
thegrommit writes: "It seems someone has been hacking the UT OpenGL driver to produce a relatively cheap VR environment. " It's really just another Cave thing, but it's still something to lust after. Imagine using a treadmill instead of pushing the up arrow. If only I was attached to my general pear-like shape.
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Virtual Reality With Unreal Tournament More

Virtual Reality With Unreal Tournament

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  • Get in shape! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ARColeslaw ( 66892 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:17PM (#2529727)
    All of those FPS addicts would finally get a decent workout (not just their wrists) if they had to use a treadmill. Nice concept!

  • Pear Shape (Score:1, Redundant)

    by ScumBiker ( 64143 )
    I've been wondering about that. I'm starting to become pear shaped also. Yet I excercise a lot. Like hiking the Wisconsin River bluffs around here. Push starting junky old sportsters. Moving the mouse around. Chasing (or running from) crazy bastards with rocket launchers. I've decided to eat less. Being round is no way to go through life, son.
  • As small lcd screens with capable resolutions become cheaper and cheaper isn't it time for a new generation of "VR" equipment ?

    I for one would like to get this kind of equipment, both for gaming and for experimenting with OpenGL modelling etc..

  • Waste of Time (Score:5, Funny)

    by Murdock037 ( 469526 ) <tristranthorn.hotmail@com> on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:22PM (#2529754)
    This isn't going to be particularly interesting until somebody figures out how to stick themselves into a game of Leisure Suit Larry...

  • real FPShooter simulation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:23PM (#2529758) Homepage
    VR can only take you so far.

    I am curious about extending 'laser tag' like games to include splash damage capabilities, wide beam fire .. basically, to facilitate all the features of modern FPS games into a laser tag like game, including a visor that projects a 3d world exacly the same as your physical 'arena'.

    I'd imagine your walls, floors, etc would have to be set up to instruct your base computer when and where they were hit, and then distribute damage if players are within a blast radius set for the 'weapon' being used by the shooter ... but can anyone divine whether this is technically feasible? Or has anyone attempted something like this?

    I know it sounds like laser tag deluxe, but I'm thinking deluxe deluxe deluxe ... laser tag taken to its utter extreme technological limits. I think that would be cool. Ideas? Comments? Anyone wanna work with me on just laying what this would require, technically, by catalog surfing or whathaveyou?
    • d00d, I've had this idea for YEARS. Too bad I can't prove prior art. Email me and We'll talk.
    • I think you'd have to look at some of the stuff the U.S. Army's been working on for training. It's probably partially hype, but some infatrymen came out of the Gulf War claiming that the training was more difficult than actual combat. Of course, the training probably assumed competent leadership on both sides of the conflict.

      Anyway, my point (I did have a point when I started this post, I think) is that since most modern casualties are caused by "splash" damage from arty and whatnot, the Army's training program has probably worked out some of what you're after. The rest of it might come from some of the "smart" infantry weapons they've been working on, since they incorporate some VR and heads-up tech. I don't think any of that stuff is production grade yet. At any rate, it will be used to really kill people a long time before you and I can use it to play games.

      • ...some infatrymen came out of the Gulf War claiming that the training was more difficult than actual combat.


        Sure was. They didn't have B-52's carpet-bombing the training camp before each exercise.

      • I can't say for sure, but I don't think the Army uses much VR for real training (as opposed to showing neat-o stuff to congressmen). Most soldiers and generals alike would rather see that money spent on weaponry (or salary).

        When I was in the Navy, most of our training involved imagination, silly props (wave a blanket around for smoke, etc.), and referees. It was plenty real enough to teach the proper procedures.

      • It's probably partially hype, but some infatrymen came out of the Gulf War claiming that the training was more difficult than actual combat
        As the Roman Legions used to say, Training should be bloodless battles and battles should be bloody training. For example, the Roman 'practice sword' was made of wood, and weight twice as much as an actual Gladius. Thus, during combat, the actual sword seemed light as a feather....

    • Re:real FPShooter simulation (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bhsx ( 458600 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:45PM (#2529905)
      One of my first jobs, when I was sixteen, was working at the first lazer arena(in the midwest anyway), Lazer Zone. It was fun and the owner built all the equipment himself; they had reset machines that were really just electric magnets that created a 'circuit' of sorts when you placed the gun between them, generating a point for the other team. There were light sensors on the front of the gun, a small one on the battery pack (which you wore on your hip), and a ton of sensors on your little electro-yamaka... which had no functionallity besides being a good target. Of course, the die hard players had all the cheats/hacks just like today, only then it took some imagination.

      They would come in with pen-lights, electric tape to cover the sensors, and the best team (their name now escapes me, it was a long time ago... oh wait, Team Wild) even came in with speaker magnets to reset their guns(which went dead after you got shot, until you hit aforementioned reset booth) and a hacked electric key to restart the timed battery packs.

      Having it be a sole-proprietorship was great for him too, it gave him the ability to do whatever he wanted. It was all black-lit with flourescent tape around the edges of the 'shields' and ramps, with white lite projected as the 'laser.' By the time we closed the place down we had nerf footballs hacked into flash grenades and huge burst cannons on the ramps for each team. He had some really good ideas, and testing/implementing them was always fun. That was 1987 or so, but what the hell, the impetus to shoot people hasn't left me, count me in... :)
      • The grenades sound cool. The problem I always had with lasertag-like games was that, since the shots didn't actually hurt, there was too little incentive to avoid being hit. Paintball on the other hand >:-)
    • laser tag taken to its utter extreme technological limits

      Wouldn't that be when you just go buy a few real guns and head into the woods with your buddies?

      Anyone wanna work with me on just laying what this would require, technically, by catalog surfing or whathaveyou?

      For sure. All those hundreds of Laser Tag / Photon centers that went bankrupt, must have gone under because they didn't spend enough money to make 'em "utter extreme"! This is sure to be a success!

    • I'm afraid I haven't got a link on this, but a Japanese firm is working on an impressive system that is classified as "augmented reality". The VR goggles are transparent, but can display images over the real ones, so it could be used to display non-existant sprites and characters in the real world. With a good model of the environment it is being done in, they can cas shadows and use realistic lightsourcing. It currently requires some very expensive hardware, has some bad lag, and is ludicrously expensive, but the tech's there. On of the first demonstration was an FPS where they shot at little flying sharks.

      Now, imagine UT's weapon spread used with equipment like that in your favourite lasertag hangout.

      Why stop there? Think gameshows.
      • Oh yeah? Well, an American company (Microvision) has been working on something even more impressive than standard LCD VR goggles: retinal displays. [mvis.com]

        I expect these babies to be a must-have when they're ready for the mass market in a few years; especially since the #1 "augmented reality" app is likely to be naked 3D babes "on" your real bed. :)

    • the X-files episode where Mulder goes to check out some VR video game and when he gets into the arena the server crashes and they find out that Mulder is just gone...I wonder if that could happen here?
    • I have thought about this as well. When I was at Intel - I was thinking it would be great to have levels that are designed exactly as the physical environ that you are in - and that you view it from a visor so that you can see all the effect etc, plus have the walls have much more awesome detail.

      but there are a couple of problems:

      1. death. when you die in Qx - you return to a spawn spot, but if you get fragged in a meat-space-quake - you would still be standing in the same physical loc that you perished in. So you would have to have your visor turned off for 5 seconds or so so that you cant see the play field - and you would disappear from other peoples display so taht they knew that you were fragged - but this brings us to problem 2.

      2. COLLISION DETECTION! you would have to wear a helmet and football pads to play this - as you get fragged and disappear off the playfield for a short time, somebody might run into you - and hard. The other thing is that all players would be used to the fact that you can run through other players - and may forget that in this version you cannot. Maybe when a char gets fragged the system would place a false wall around them - that all other players would see - and try to avoid running into?

      3. terrain: sadly most geeks cant run for more than 10 feet at top speed - and let alone the jumping factor that was already mentioned.... so the levels might end up being rather bland. No falling into lava pits, hyper jumping between platforms suspended in nothing etc...

      4. you would want some sort of feedback - so maybe paintballs would be the best method - so that you *knew* when you got hit... but you would have to wear a vest that was able to sense each hit and deduct the damage from your overall health. which relates to 5.

      5. ammo - if you had to use paintball etc... then you would be required to physically reload the weapons. unless they were like 500 shots only - and when you ran out of ammo - you had to drop it off at an ammo station and pick up a new one - and there would be a gun-monkey behind the wall reloading the guns for everyone?

      anyway - it would still be fun no matter what - but until we have direct synaptic interfaces, we will have to address the challenges of getting meat space fragging on par with what Q3 can offer. Or maybe we just have to drop the whole comparison altogether - and accept that they are two separate stimuli.
    • I kinda like the idea of flash suits that freeze the appendage that has been hit. I don't know what could do that though...maybe some fluid between two membranes that solidifies in an electric field? Of course, motion feedback would be even better.

    • VR = R? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Arkhan ( 240130 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @05:25PM (#2530084)
      So, not to be a smart-ass, but...

      "a visor that projects a 3d world exactly the same as your physical arena".

      If it's exactly the same as your physical arena, what are you gaining? And how do you know when it's broken?
  • what ever happened to the infrared motion detection systems that were coming out? You know the ones designed for fighting games where a punch would register a punch, a kick a kick etc. I always thought this would be a great tool for training fighters with a vr helmet but I never saw them hit the market.

    Anyone know what happened to these things or if there were any good hacks of them?
    • That would indeed be a good trainer if they could program opponents to have the characteristics of their real-life counterparts. It would be the sparring-partner equivalent of the Abner pitching machine [fastballinc.com].
    • Gameworks has a version of Tekken (I think) here in Florida that works on this system. There's no helmet, and the responsiveness really sucks. I'ts really not worth it until we get more precise motion detection technology.You can click here [gameworks.com] and find absolutely no useful information about the company.
      • Just what I needed... an excuse to get out of my cave and go to gameworks :)

        I thank you for the suggestion and will have to go hit gameworks this weekend to check this out.
        • It really really sucks. Don't go looking for it with high hopes.

          I played it at the GameWorks in Las Vegas a year ago. The moves you make don't really translate to moves on the screen except in a very generic way (high moves make the guy punch, low ones make him kick) to do special moves you need to kick and punch simultanously, which pretty much makes you look like a complete ass. The motion detection is extremely sketchy.
    • I had one as a kid.

      It was called Sega Activator. It was a plastic ring that you put together (about 4 foot or so in diameter) that shot infrared beams up out of it (would have been cool if you coulds see them - but then it wouldn't have been infrared huh?)

      You connected it to your Sega Genesis just like a normal controller. It was made to be played with fighting games. You had a "beam break" and a "low beam break" that you could do in all 8 directions (N,S,E,W,NE,NW,SE,SW)

      Each one did something a little bit different in the game.

      Let me tell you - playing Mortal Kombat on this thing was quite the workout! To do special moves you had to do all kinds of crazy things - you would very quickly workup a sweat.

      Unfortunately the thing stopped working after just a little while of having it (about 4 months or so) - so I no longer have it :-(

      It was a cool idea though and I would buy another one if someone marketed it.

      Derek
      • Yeah. That's the one I was talking about. I would love to see this type of input device get developed into something usefull. I work a good portion of my life teaching Kenpo to people of all ages and sizes and I could think of lots of ways to make great use of this type of system. Not just for gaming but for training; teaching techniques, monitering movement, forms, basics etc. This would be an ideal tool for people who want to train but have constraints on them like time or distance from their instructors.

  • Sketchy VR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Angry Black Man ( 533969 ) <vverysmartman@@@hotmail...com> on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:25PM (#2529776) Homepage
    While it is "Virtual Reality" none the less the design is very sketchy. To get CaveUT working right you have to do a LOT of tweaking. You will want to have the view rotations and axis in the exact right place. I've seen this in action and it really is not worth the trouble it took to get it working. To tell you the truth it is cool to look at for a little bit but not all that much more fun to play with.

    The mouse/keyboard is really not a good setup for such an immersive environment. Real VR can map the movement of the head to look around and control movement etc with some other mechanism (usually either a handheld device or foot controls). CaveUT doesn't have real time head tracking. To get a real VR experience out of UT would be cool but it would not be cheap and that would defeat the whole purpose of this project (keep in mind it is developed to be an interesting alternative to real virtual reality gaming). The VR games out there now are pretty lame and I admit it would be very cool if they got games like UT and Quake III working very well in VR.

    None the less, the OpenGL code is made for MS Windows only. However it would not be difficult for it to be recompiled for Linux and there is still no version of the driver for the Mac.
    • I agree with you. I think it will be sometime before virtual reality is cheap and good enough to be practical for all but the biggest of VR geeks. I remember in the early 90's when VR was supposed to be the biggest damn thing in the world. You were supposed to be able to tour a house, a landscape, or box with your friend all with VR. It hasn't really panned out yet, and I don't see it happening for some time. It seems that most people are content with pictures and non-VR games for the time being. Of course, this is probably because as of right now, VR is not "it". It's an idea that is destined to be in our future. And it will be very cool.
    • Real VR can map the movement of the head to look around

      Umm... Not necessarily. VR doesn't have to be helmet-based; it can also project the scene around you so that head tracking isn't needed. Unless you mean to say that the holodeck isn't VR...

      (I do agree with you, though, about mouse/keyboard and VR being a bad mix. It seems that a lot more progress has been made on VR output devices than on VR input methods.)

    • Care to help, instead of gripe? CaveUT's open source code is just sitting there for some dissatisfied person to come along and give it real time head tracking, stereo, a better control interface and so on. BTW, any device that can drive UT can drive CaveUT. This includes 3D control devices, like the Gravis gamepad and the PCally AirStick. They are much better than keyboard and mouse, but not nearly good enough.

    • Re:Sketchy VR (Score:2, Informative)

      by Elazro ( 532810 )
      Actually, we have a couple of versions of CAVE Quake running at NCSA, with full head and wand(gun) tracking. I believe that the QIII game engine is limited to scenery, but it is being worked on. QII is pretty fully functional.

      I'm sorry that I can't post the link - we are all getting ready for SuperComputing '01, and I don't want to /. his machine. If someone else posts the link, please be considerate - we are on a very tight schedule and I don't know the capacity of the machine serving the page.

      There is no treadmill (currently) hooked up, but since you are head tracked, dodging, stepping out behind corners, etc works. To get into some spaces you actually have to duck down. Jumping is a bit of a chore though. Really. :)

  • To the left is a pic of Zimmy standing in front of two screens of the BNAVE with CTF-Face (a virtual world that comes prepackaged with UT) displayed in the background



    Is it me or does that look like CTF-Lava to you?

  • i-Glasses!!! (Score:3, Informative)

    by dazedNconfuzed ( 154242 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:26PM (#2529782)
    Virtual I-O's "i-Glasses" have stereo vision and head tracking - why haven't any first-person games been tweaked to support this???

    • hehe...

      player: "he's behind me!" *crack*
      scientist: "grr..there goes another one...maybe we should make the range of rotation of the head a bit less relistic..."
    • Virtual I-O's "i-Glasses" have stereo vision and head tracking - why haven't any first-person games been tweaked to support this???

      You mean like these [mindflux.com.au]?
    • Rise of the Triad did. Nobody cared. Hence, noone bothers. I believe a little-known game called Locus uses head tracking for turret control in a sort of tank-soccer game.

    • Descent (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dbowden ( 249149 )
      I have a pair of the original i-glasses!, and the only game I ever enjoyed playing with them was Descent. The resolution (320x200) pretty much bites, and the head tracking is useless for aiming.

      It was always fun letting friends use the system though, because anyone who wears the glasses while playing a game inevitably ends up looking like Stevie Wonder, turning their heads around at wildly exaggerated angles, trying to control the game.

      I used to have to stop and reorient myself every so often or I'd end up with my head between my legs staring at the ground, or straining to try and turn my head around backwards, just to go straight ahead.

  • To get the perspective correction right, we subverted the OpenGL code in the open-source portion of UT's C++ code. [epicgames.com]

    this is why Open Source is so cool. this doesn't hurt sales of Unreal Tournament in any way, and hackers can still build cool things with it. incidentally, they have open-sourced CaveUT [pitt.edu].

    way to go, guys!
  • How damn hard would it REALLY be to hook a cheap exercise bike to something like an optical mouse? I'd love to try it if I ever got the time. I always thought the only thing missing in 3D shooters was the stabbing lung and heart pain from running around at like 25MPH. I sorta miss it after playing sports in "real life".
    • Many moons ago, when I was a grad student at UNC [unc.edu] we had some demos with a treadmill and with an exercise bike. You'd use the treadmill to walk around the build. For the bike you'd pedal around a simple terrain.

      I remember seeing an old guy (maybe 75 years old) trying to walk around on the treadmill. I swear that he was going to have a heart attack.

      I'm always amazed that given all the VR demos we did, I never saw anyone lose their lunch. People would get dizzy, but no one actually blew chunks.

      dave
      • One constant factor at least I have seen when people get motion sick for games is that the FPS is too low. As long as you are 30+ most people are fine. (There are some that still get motion sickness. But that's mostly with very "motion sick" games like Descent.)
    • Ripping apart an old keyboard should do the job.
    • There's an arcade game called "sky cycle" that works that way. Pedal faster to climb, slower to descend. I want something like that at the gym, tied into an aerial combat simulator.

      For a while, the gym I go to had NetPulse, which provided web browsing (with extra ads) on exercise machines. The machines were popular, but NetPulse went bankrupt.

  • Hmmmm, However cool I think this is, it just doesn't seem to me that VR will really realize its' potential until we can wire the system directly to the brain.

    I know, I can already hear a whole bunch of Neuromancer groans, but some goggles and a treadmill really doesn't cut it.

    Full on, full imersion reality will happen sooner or later. Anyone researching holodeck tech? :-)
    • I dunno about hardwiring to the brain yet :) but I DO WANT more immersion in games.

      I sick and tired of playing finger twister on the keyboard (which isnt a Kanji one btw :) ) for the games we have today. We can use natural gestures for controlling (as in Black and White).

      We have the hardware to do it TODAY.

      Bring on the immersive games.
      (And no more Terridactyle Nightmare on the migi's :))
    • You can have this in your own home :)

      http://www.panoramtech.com/

      Imagine this as a laptop version :)
      *Unfold unfold unfold, twist, open, unfold, FRAG!*

    • No thanks to that sort of wiring. I would rather see LARGE warehouses partitioned off appropriately, with multiple floors and neutral covers on a lot of moveable and unmoveable objects and barriers. These would serve only for basic tactile effect tools. Players would wear googles through which they see projected into real space, and appropriate to the current layout of a given warehouse, a virtual scene and "augmented" other players and even computer-generated players.


      After a while, the interior would be remodeled and the game world modified to fit properly with the new layout and go on from there. Multiple HUGE rooms, multiple floors, real objects visually altered via the goggles, fully virtual objects and creatures that fit into the real/virtual world. You get full movement and a decent virtual world to play in.

    • I cant remember where I saw it, but there's a guy on the web that designed a mod for Quake III to shock the player every time they got hit. (Zzzzap!)

      that's a closer step to immersion... actual pain in sync with the virtual pain.
  • Reading through that I noticed one important thing. This will only run under Windows and not under IRIX as a lot of the CAVE systems have SGI's hooked to them. The system is "BNAVE a PC-based CAVE-like display". I got all excited when I saw this posting. I'll have to stick to CaveQuake [uiuc.edu] for the moment I guess. Still though it is very nice to see.

    bbh

  • VR experience (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Man of E ( 531031 )
    When I was in Korea some time ago, I ran across a multiplayer Unreal Tournament VR setup in an arcade. Basically, we would wear goggles and hold gun-shaped gamepads while standing in little pods. I played "Fractal" deathmatch against three other guys, and ended up incredibly dizzy five minutes later. The only VR feature that was really available was aiming by head-movements - jumping, running, firing, etc, were all controlled from the game pad.

    This cave system would be a cool improvement, since it would probably be much less dizzying than wearing goggles. Running and jumping might be fun as well, but your range and of movement in real life would be much restricted compared to the things that can be done with a gamepad. I'd like to see it though.

    • I find the head-tracking to be often the worst flaw - the gun should be used for aiming, the head for looking. Otherwise you keep thinking you have eye-beams. This is why the best VR FPS is still that dumb-old "Dactyl Terror" game where you fight a pteridactyl - you have a hand-held gun you aim with. No eye-beams.
  • That's not CTF-Face, it's CTF-LavaGiant.

    If they can't get that right, do you really want them writing your Unreal drivers? :)

    Damn...I need a cave
  • In reality you cannot play UT in the cave. The lag is too large. The rendering is dim and slow. Also it makes you get motion sickness. But if the engine can be ported such that you can make your own maps and entities and put it in the CAVE then that would be cool. Because it would be like a million times better than programming with the CAVELib (it is like programming X with Xlib).
    Nice project though.
    • The rendering is as bright and accurate as you get with a single PC driving a projector. With the new video cards, you can get a $2000 PC that is almost as fast as SGI's biggest box at $75,000. Also, CaveQuake is an excellent tool. It's actually what inspired us to make CaveUT. Anyone who has an existing SGI-based cave should use it.
  • erm Physical objects ie., WALLS. :)

    Gotta hurt :)

    How about making it into a Hampster ball that u can run or walk in with the image superimposed on the walls of the ball.

    Fun without the fear of running into walls :)

    • That would be about the best option, though expensive. Full movement in all directions...but momentum would be a problem without expensive correction. You start moving (in your hamster ball) in one direction and then suddenly stop...but the ball's momentum carries on and you end up face-planted on the floor.


      More expense: use computer control and drive motors to work with you. You stop suddenly and the controller actively brakes the ball to match your movement.


      The ball would have to be reasonably large, I would think, to reduce what would otherwise be REALLY substantial spherical error and distortion.

      • Yeah and secure. Imagine if it gets loose :)

        Woohaaaa, it ends up bouncing down the stairs (maybe a spiral one :) and onto the street.

        Yup. He has been playing UT again :)

        UT New Zealand style (http://www.newzealandnz.co.nz/activities/zorbing. html)
        :)
      • Low-mass ball floating in a viscous liquid. Low mass = low inertia, viscous liquid = significant drag. Cheap and it will stop the ball very quickly when you stop, plus I would expect it to feel more realistic to have to push off against the ground with every step instead of letting the ball spin freely.

        I'd argue for a smaller ball, to keep the mass down (as well as making it easier to find a place to put one). The spherical error and distortion could be corrected for fairly easily in the control software, provided that it has a way to track the location of your head, such as with a head-mounted transmitter or a sonar system.
      • What about if the user wasn't inside the "hamster ball", but on it? Or on many of them?

        What about a platform beneath the user consisting of a grid of very closely spaced rolling spheres (like trackballs) set into sockets? Most of the spheres would be for simple support, some could be used to vibrate or brake, and some would track the motion and speed of the user's feet. A combination of wheels and spheres could also be used.

        Simulating walls would still be difficult as you wouldn't really want your users slamming into your projection screens.

        If you're not using projection screens, but instead using goggles, you could put the user in a harness tethered at multiple points. If the user slammed into a wall in the virtual world, all balls on the platform could lock and not move in the direction of the wall, the user would get traction and physically move forward until stopped by the harness.

        The leads on the harness might also be attached in some kind of mounts that could be controlled, so that a waist-high obstacle could be simulated by disallowing forward motion to the feet, legs and hips, but allowing forward motion to the chest, arms, and head. The user might also be able to climb over the obstacle with some creative use of the vertical parts of the harness (physically lowering the user when his back foot leaves the ground at the same rate he is virtually traveling "up", so that he physically contacts the motion platform at the same time as he virtually contacts the top of the obstacle).

        The harnesses might be somewhat similar to the flight harnesses used for the Rhinemadens in the Seattle Opera's production of Das Rheingold (pictures are unavailable right now, as the Seattle Opera has just redone their site -- they allowed full motion in all directions).

        Hm. Even if the motion sensing part of it didn't work as expected, anything that involves a full body suspension harness and VR has got to draw at least a few fans.

  • We've got something sorta similar... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikeage ( 119105 ) <slashdot@NOspam.mikeage.net> on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:42PM (#2529885) Homepage
    well... not quite. Using WireGL from stanford, we've had great success running UT on 12 computers at a resolution of 4096x2304 (16:9 widescreen), with a physical screen that's over 13 feet wide, and 7.5 feet tall (15+ feet diagonal), which is something like 100 square feet of violent blood and guts. Quite cool to see. No UT hacking required. The only bad part is that the game assumes you're just using a monitor, which takes up maybe 15-30 degrees of your view, so when it becomes a full 90 degree view, it gets a little overwhelming, but hey, that's half the fun. Anyone ever in the princeton plasma physics lab, stop in to the high res wall and check out quake3 or our VR walkthrough using UT.

  • This is cool... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @04:45PM (#2529903) Homepage
    But way out of reach for the average /.'er - these kinds of mods seem to be the only thing happening anymore in "homebrew" VR (and I use the term "homebrew" here in a very loose sense - there is nothing "home" nor "brew" about this mod, other than tweaking the UT software - everything else is closer to the high-end "commercial" realm of things).

    Which is very sad, considering today's "state-of-the-art"...

    The site I run (see my URL) has a ton of links and info on homebrew VR - but I receive little comment on it. I would love to hear about someone homebrewing a CAVE of their own using a few 100 inch TV projectors, a set of SEGA stereo glasses (or similar), and a PowerGlove. I know it can be done - but nobody is tackling it. If I could ever find the time, I would tackle it myself - but I already have too many projects on back burners (which is why the site hasn't been updated in so long).

    Hey, /.'ers! You see this stuff, drool over it, and want it for yourself? BUILD IT! PLEASE! It can be done, and cheaply - hell, a cheesy TORUS-style screen CAVE could be done using all off-the-shelf equipment for under $2500 (including projector!) - it could be done cheaper using homebrew projectors. Or, if your want an HMD, hack a StuntMaster or VFX-1 off Ebay, or build one yourself using cheap LCD TVs from Frys.

    For a long time, I have expected an "explosion" in homebrew VR - a lot of people "oohhh and ahhh" over it whenever demos like this are shown, but everyone seems to think it is impossible to play with anymore - that you have to have big $$$ to do anything - UNTRUE! REND386 and AVRIL were born out of this falacy, and used modest and cheap hardware of the time to do a whole heck of a bunch - PCVR (the magazine) was born, and for a while, it seemed like VR was the next "thing" - then the bottom seemed to fall out, the internet became "big" and VR has been nearly forgotten...

    Sad...
    • One of the big problems I see with using a VR helmet for a FPS is that your head can't spin 360 degrees in a tenth of a second. I suppose you could use some sort of accelerator, but that would mean that you aren't looking at where your head is pointed, which is kind of the point of using the glasses in the first place. Body vests that allow body movement as well as helmets for head movement would be cool, though - but then you're getting back into the money realm, and you've have to hack the engine to have 2 discrete POV rotation points.
      • If everyone playing was using a similar setup, we would have a virtual form of paintball, in a way. That, and if nobody would cheat (something I hate about online and network play - it seems like everyone and their brother uses cheats and bots, rather than relying on true skill - and to make things worse, those with true skill invariably get accused of cheating! Why not a little honesty, for f--k's sake?)...

        But FPS's are one thing - and even if it were done, it would be nice to see it done homebrew style, even if it didn't help, and perhaps hindered (due to the reasons you specify). I would just simply love to see a complete homebrew VR CAVE setup, or similar (heh, it would be fun to see a homebrew version of Dactyl Nightmare, using PCs, hacked powergloves, hacked stuntmasters, etc - man, what I would give to play that game again)...

        Anyhow, that is how I see it - there are a lot of applications for VR, and not much has been explored in the homebrew arena...
        • While on the train this morning (:P) I realized that a REALLY great game for this sort of application would be Black & White - all the interaction is already done via a single "hand" and gestures anyway. Other 3-D, RTS games like Populous or Sacrifice would work, too, but they rely more on keyboard shortcuts.


    • cheap LCD TVs from Frys.

      I must give you credit for maintaining a site about vr technology. But when I read this line, I noticed some pretty ferocious clipping occuring within the VR world you live in and are trying to project. "cheap LCD TVs from Frys" is as unrealistic as you can possibly get.

      But I didn't want to just criticize. I do agree with you that it doesn't take a LOT to get some homebrew VR stuff going.

      As a matter of fact, I think one of these UTcave systems could be cobbled together from projectors like they always use at work to show powerpoint presentations. The tricky stuff is that trigonometry that the guy who built this was talking about on his page....
      • What I was meaning by cheap LCD TV's, are the portable ones, you know - like the small 1 and 2 inch Casio and Sony portables - it used to cost (back in the PCVR days) around $200.00 for one of these things - something that would then need to be taken apart, and good luck if you screwed up.

        Today, such TV's can be had for well under $100.00 - I saw at Fry's one day a whole end-cap full being sold for $80.00 each - much more cost effective.

        Now, personally, I don't really like Fry's - they screwed with me one too many times. But, to each his own - I mentioned them because a lot of /.'ers know about them, and have one close by. If it was me, I would look into portable TVs online or something.

        You are right about the geometry aspect of a CAVE - I wasn't trying to invalidate this individual's work or anything - I was just bemoaning the fact that people look at this, and think wow! I want that - but then never realize that it is possible to do something like it on the cheap - it is almost like the early 90's never happened (in regard to homebrew VR, REND386, and the like).
  • in XFree 4.0.3
  • A few years back I ran a 3 PC - 3 screen lan version of FS98. I had it set up for forward view and 45 degree views left and right. Good speakers and a force-feedback stick completed the rig. Great fun, but the giant stack of hardware really took over my 10 by 10 computer room.
  • Not that I'd exactly knock Cave or anything. The one thing I don't understand, however, is why all Cave environments are automatically assumed to be gateways for video game production. The Digital Worlds Institute [ufl.edu] at the University of Florida [ufl.edu] is working on a Nave (Non-expensive Automatic Virtual Environment) [ufl.edu]. I loathe it whenever I hear someone come in and say, "Oh, this would be so cool if you could play Counterstrike" on it. This is Computer Science, not Computer Entertainment. Sheesh...

  • hey guys, (Score:4, Funny)

    by cosmo7 ( 325616 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @05:30PM (#2530107) Homepage
    haven't these people ever watched sci-fi movies? obviously, anyone who gets killed in a virtual reality game will be killed in real life. messing around with this stuff is suicide.

  • Another idea... (Score:4, Funny)

    by neema ( 170845 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @05:55PM (#2530244) Homepage
    Keep the treadmill moving fast, so if someone decides to stand still to spawn camp, they get thrown to the floor.

  • Inexpensive Cave UT (Score:3, Funny)

    by InferiorFloater ( 34347 ) on Wednesday November 07, 2001 @03:46AM (#2531707)
    "or, if you want a dirt cheap Cave setup, simply get 3 PCs, two LCD projectors, and an empty white corner"

    Come on, man! What kind of UT fanatic has these kind of resources? I mean, a blank corner?

    My low budget suggestion? Take your laptop to a real cave, play UT, and have your buddy throw a rock at your head every time you get fragged.

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