Human Pac Man

erined writes ""Human Pac Man" is a project of the Mixed Reality Lab of the National University of Singapore. Players don back pack computers, VR gloves, and 'mixed reality' goggles which overlay virtual cookies--shown as floating spheres--on a first person view of the real world. Aided by a helper who can view the entire game board, players realize their pacman fantisies as they physically move around in a wide-area setting eating cookies and avoiding monsters."

Next game please!

[grub]

Human Pac Man is cool but I want Human Doom, Human Thief and Human System Shock. Looking up at a ~6m tall cyberdemon would cause instant soiling of the gitch. No idea how things like rope arrows would work in Thief... and the monkeys in SS2, scary stuff...

That would be leet.

Re:Next game please!

[copterdoc]

first things first.

Re:Next game please!

[Pxtl]

I know. I heard about this technology about 2 years back and that was the first thing I thought of.

Still, I'm really happy that they've gotten this far with the technology. When I last heard it was only done in small rooms.

The only thing is that you have to realize your limitations - you can do anything that doesn't alter the location of the player, or move the real-world walls around.

So, to do Doom and Quake, its fine - its just that the player has to walk to the respawn point to respawn (the mechanics of this would be tricky to make gameplay good).

IMHO, Unreal Tournament CTF would be the best. Interesting weapons, the game is designed for the slower pace of real-life, and its an all around solid FPS. No cloaking or X-Loc tho.

Re:Next game please!

[GigsVT]

How's it much different from paintball CTF then? :)

VR FPS & invisibility

[Baron_Yam]

Actually, if you did immersive VR instead of mere augmentation, you could simply 'erase' an invisible player from other players views of the arena.

You'd have to have a cutoff - like you become visible if you're within five feet or so to avoid running into 'invisible' people. I also imagine you'd want the VR walls to line up pretty closely with the real ones to avoid toe-stubbing.

Re:VR FPS & invisibility

[Frag Rind]

I disagree. In order to create the maximum realism, they would have to be always invisible. If it were real life, an invisible person might get run into. It is the job of the invisible person to make sure no one runs into him and finds him that way.

Re:VR FPS & invisibility

[Baron_Yam]

OK - now YOU try and pay the insurance premiums!!! :)

Re:VR FPS & invisibility

[Frag Rind]

Good point! But that can always be solved with a waiver(sp?) that the players sign before participating.

Re:VR FPS & invisibility

[wolrahnaes]

You're not familiar with the legal system (at least in the US) are you? You can have a seemingly bulletproof waiver and people will still find a way to sue.

People have been sued because someone slipped on ice while exiting a window after robbing their house.

There's always some poor idiot out there looking for some reason to call in their "if we don't win we won't charge a fee" lawyer.

Re:VR FPS & invisibility

[AvitarX]

In America it is a right to sue. A right that cannot be thrown away by any contract.

Sueing does not mean winning though. SCO is sueing IBM for example.

We can sue people because it is generaly understood that not every grievance is criminal.

If a waiver is bulletproof you will not win the case. It will be a matter of a paper that ypou signed saying you took responsibility for any harm coming to you and therefore the company owes you nothing.

Re:VR FPS & invisibility

[Drantin]

rather than make them visible when up close, place them all in seperate, identical, rooms and hook them up via wi-fi or some such technology. (and beware the guys in the trucks outside the buildings upgrading your opponents weapons >=) )

Re:VR FPS

[Baron_Yam]

I've been thinking about what you'd need to do this commercially:

• A BIG maze (square wall panels on a grid so you can reconfigure easily)
• VR goggles
• Body position sensors (head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, knees, & feet)
• Standard block weapons (for the VR to do overlays)
• Computers to generate the VR world
• Bandwidth for seperate stereo AV feeds to the players
• A VR world (duh)

I have no idea what it would cost, but it would blow LaserQuest away if you could actually get it to work for 20 players at a time

Re:Next game please!

[gl4ss]

well.. maybe just use it to enhance megazone, would seem the simplest way for vr doom.

Re:Next game please!

[Geek of Tech]

All right! Just have to wait on the release of Duke Nukem Forever VR Edition....

Re:Next game please!

[The Evil Couch]

instead of making VR arenas, what about having the player run on a giant trackball?

Better than ON

[freakmn]

How about running IN a call of some sort, as your favorite rodent pet does.

Problem with paintball:

[StarKruzr]

No "life meter." It is completely impractical to get hit and keep playing.

Re:Next game please!

[jimand]

Holy smokes, this is the second Thief reference I've seen in two days here on /.; is there a new version coming out for Christmas?? Thief is far and away my favourite FPSneaker.

Re:Next game please!

[grub]

Thief 3 isn't due until next year sometime but it looks amazing. I agree with you there about it being a favourite. It hasn't left my hard discs since I installed Thief 1 "back in the day". If you like fan missions, check out ThiefMissions.com [thiefmissions.com] for loads of missions. It'll keep you playing..

Re:Next game please!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kinda sad that it's stuck with 'flat' 2D games. I mean Pitfall and Hunchbaack would give it some problems, although if you found a building site, I bet Chuckie Egg would be a helluva laugh...

Centipede would have the potential to scare the crap out of you though; imagine a giant centipede snaking down the street towards you as you fire manically...

how 'bout human quake

[bottlerockets]

check out ARQuake - http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www / [unisa.edu.au]

Re:Next game please!

[nautical9]

It's been mentioned on /. many times before, but the Cave Quake II [uiuc.edu] game is about as close as you can get, albeit still in a small room. If you've never seen it before, you must watch the movies [uiuc.edu].

The movies have been updated since I last looked, and I didn't immediately see one of my favorites where an inexperienced player dons the headset, walks close to an in-game ledge, and literally falls down when his character does. Quite immersive, apparently. :)

Grand Theft Auto

[kaan]

A human version of GTA would make even more money than the console version - weapons, fighting, stealing, driving, stunt jumping, motorcycles, helicopters, prostitutes... what more would we need? I'd personally rather have all of that than Virtual Doom where I'm just killing monsters again and again, but ymmv.

Re:Next game please!

[kaoshin]

Ah, praise.. system shock 2 owns! The only game that made me actually pee my pants.

Video Games Don't Affect Kids

[numbski]

If video games affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, chomping on magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.

Oh wait...

Re:Next game please!

[Goldfinger7400]

No game yet but some folks are working on a Quake 3 map viewer [uiuc.edu] for The Cube () at the Beckman Institute. The cube is a six sided room that closes in upon entry, while 3D images are projected on all sides. With about 400 square feet to move around in, and active 3D glasses this is about the most convincing holodeck I have seen.

Re:Next game please!

[fikx]

How about this: http://www.tinmith.net/arquake.htm It's a site for Augmented Reality Quake, which is exactly what you're talking about

Wait a minute

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

Now all of those nerds, who never had contact will now actually get to EAT some Pink(y)

Re:Next game please! [ARQUAKE]

[FrenZon]

Human Pac Man is cool but I want Human Doom, [...]

I think you want ARQuake [unisa.edu.au], which was mentioned on slashdot a few years ago, and is still being worked on by various students.

Re:Next game please!

[Tongo]

Dude, the human version of the sims is real life for gods sake. Set down the mouse, back away from the keyboard, and GO OUTSIDE :o)

Hmm.....

[exhilaration]

players realize their Pacman fantasies

Is this before or after the men in white coats take them away?

Re:Hmm.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I'm still waiting to realize my Ms. Pacman fantasies.

Re:Hmm.....

[pentalive]

In one of the places I worked long ago, one of the workers would always be saying "walka walka walka" as they walked
around the cube farm. I asked them later what was that about and they said "Packman" :^)

Re:Hmm.....

[Frag Rind]

Do you mean... You don't dream about wandering around in thos dark hallways, eating little pellets, and avoiding ghosts. I do...every day!

virtual light

[gl4ss]

by gibson..

has a pair of glasses that show information on real world things floating above them, quite cool and maybe something we'll see someday as well(for everyday use).

though.. imagine huge virtual ads blocking your glasses, i just hope they run some system that would allow custom code to block them.

Re:virtual light

[__aafutm5472]

Weird...I'm reading that book right now. Like, literally, right now. I brought it to work because, honestly, I'm at work on the Friday after Thanksgiving and there is nothing happening.

It's a good book.

Re:virtual light

[cjustus]

I spend a fair bit of time thinking about this... Imagine being able to see the names of people at a party hovering over them ... Or some high-level info about them, plus your own notes... Have the glasses record everything as well... add face recognition... Allows you to replay / view all interactions with someone just by looking at them... All part of ubiquitous computing...

OT: There ought to be a law...

[uberdave]

Advertising should be outlawed on specific media: Telephone, fax, email, pop-ups, etc. Basically, any communication channel where the end user pays should be free from ads, or at most, opt-in. Advertisers need to be put down, and put down hard, for their intrusive behaviour.

This post brought to you, in part, by ADCO Advertising Agency. "Bringing Your Ideas to the World." (tm)

Re:OT: There ought to be a law...

[ShieldWolf]

Speaking of advertising: don't forget today is buy nothing day :D

http://adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd/

Re:OT: There ought to be a law...

[JoeBaldwin]

'Tis tomorrow in Blighty. See here [buynothingday.co.uk].

Ah, adbusters...nicely odd.

Re:OT: There ought to be a law...

[nacturation]

Speaking of advertising: don't forget today is buy nothing day :D

http://adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd/

Oh great... and I went out and bought a whole crapload of stuff because I never heard about this. Maybe they need to advertise buy nothing day a whole lot more. Billboards, TV commercials, radio...

Re:OT: There ought to be a law...

[MrAngryForNoReason]

Not just telephone and e-mail, make television ad-free. I pay money for cable tv why should I pay again by watching ads on every channel, and then pay again if I buy a TiVo to skip them!

Re:virtual light

[Coryoth]

though.. imagine huge virtual ads blocking your glasses, i just hope they run some system that would allow custom code to block them.

Better yet, imagine a nice system that blocked real world ads - through the glasses you just get nice black empty billboards.

Of course, how you'd manage that is up for questioning - you have to identify ads somehow (fine, have an image database and some bayesian system to predict similar ads), and then you have to be able to tell an add when you look at it from a variety of

Re:virtual light

[tiled_rainbows]

nice black empty billboards.

Or even better have your glasses replace the advert with the picture of your choice.

Imagine hanging out on Picadilly Circus / Times Square, viewing your favourite jpegs on the huge billboards.

Re:virtual light

[Saeger]

imagine a nice system that blocked real world ads

I have. Many times. Peaceful bliss... :)

In order for it to work seemlessly, the "image proxy for the eye(s)" would have to see exactly what the eye sees, which probably means that a camera external to the eye - such as on your glasses rims - wouldn't be accurate enough. It would also have to be combined with another eye-tracking camera that looks back at your eyeball to figure out in which direction you were looking in. Jitter and overlay alignment proble

also Snowcrash

[FACEMILK]

by Stephenson...

Contextual data via the metaverse for anything or anyone in view is displayed in a hud.

I think the addicts of this tech were called "ghouls".

Re:virtual light

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do sci-fi authors get credit for stuff they didn't invent?

I dunno. Maybe to equal out all the times that SF authors invented stuff and didn't get credit for it.

Blue screen technology, like your local weatherman uses -- say thank you to Murray Leinster.
He got screwed on that one.

X Person

[Malicious]

VR gloves, and 'mixed reality' goggles which overlay virtual cookies--shown as floating spheres--on a first person view of the real world

It would be kind of weird playing 3rd person in VR no?

Re:X Person

[Degrees]

Dance, puppet, dance! Hey, what's with these cables tugging on my arms????

As the saying goes

[SkArcher]

If Computer Games had any effect on childrens behaviour we would be running around a darkened room, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

Oh, hang on...

Re:As the saying goes

[whizzzo]

and the origin of that joke is... [marcusbrigstocke.com]

Re:As the saying goes

[BiggerIsBetter]

Many of us don't need VR to do that! Hurrah for the weekend!

First steps

[Space cowboy]

.. to immersive games. I'd guess the next ones up will be commando (doom) like, but that's probably a ways away. You'll need force feedback for the rail gun :-)

Simon

Re:First steps

[floydigus]

Do railguns have recoil?

Re:First steps

[Zocalo]

Yes, in accordance with Newton's third law (conservation of momentum), they do. In fact, they have a hell of a lot of it, which is why the prototypes tend to be securely bolted to such stable structures as the ground. Apparently, because photons have momentum, even lasers have a tiny amount of recoil.

Of course, it's much easier to harmlessly disperse the energy from a recoil than from the impact.

Re:First steps

[Threni]

> I'd guess the next ones up will be commando (doom) like

People who work in American post offices have been recreating Commando at work. However, they've not felt the need for nerdy goggles.

Leisure Suit Larry

[Suit_N_Tie]

I want a Human version of Leisure Suit Larry...

Re:Leisure Suit Larry

[Pope]

She may be much of a looker, but think of the muscles in that leg!

Re:Leisure Suit Larry

[Vladimus]

Hmm... Leisure Suit Larry walks around figuring out obscure puzzles, ogling hot chicks, and doesn't get any.

Sounds like I'm already living it.

Some PacMan fantisies (sic) ...

[BabyDave]

... are best left unrealised [penny-arcade.com]

Re:Some PacMan fantisies (sic) ...

[grub]

The person behind Pac Man looks nothing at all like Michael Jackson.

Re:Some PacMan fantisies (sic) ...

[fireboy1919]

I don't know...my Pac Man fantasy is always that when you beat Pac Man it opens up a door to another world filled with millions of unbelievably attractive women whose destiny it is to serve the one who beat the game.

Does that happen at the end?

Rush Limbaugh == Pac-Man

[GuyMannDude]

In light of Rush's public problems, someone with a bit too much time on his hands decided to create his own version of human Pac-Man. It features Rush as the enternally-gobbling big-mouth trying to swallow pills (shaped like Oxycontin, of course), and being chased by bug-eyed Donovan McNabbs!

Go to this site [ejectbush.com] and press enter to start. Send the link to your friends!

Before I get modded down by all the conservatives out there, let me give you a little advice: quit trying to defend Rush and let him fry for h

maybe we need a better game for this

[undernourished]

Aided by a helper who can view the entire game board

"operator"

"I need a tunnel out of here, quick, and not to the other side of the board"

Re:maybe we need a better game for this

[garrulous]

It seems like a fit for first person bullet time too. Fun stuff, can't wait.

I see dead people...

[timsmells]

Do they include disembodied spirits chasing after you and trying to eat your very soul? Because if they do, sign me up.

Re:I see dead people...

[the real darkskye]

No, those are the men in white coats bringing your very own FPS PacMan Jacket in a nice shade of white, complete with leather straps and arms that fasten behind your back ...

john candy

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the Human Pac-man is that the human body can only consume about 6lbs of food per sitting. If you would recall "The Great Outdoors" with John Candy. The ol' 96er + a few desserts is all he could handle.

Re:john candy

[RetroGeek]

So you are making a scientific statement, then backing it up by citing a comedy movie?

Re:john candy

[RupW]

The problem with the Human Pac-man is that the human body can only consume about 6lbs of food per sitting.

Robert "Kryten" Llewellyn investigated this in the BBC's Hollywood Science [open2.net]:

"In The Great Outdoors John Candy eats a 96-ounce steak. Well, we made the equivalent weight in hamburgers - 26 massive burgers. I ate two and half pounds (40 ounces) of the stuff . The first two were quite nice but after that ... my jaw ached for days from all the chewing ..."

I can't really remember the show but I think they

Re:john candy

[gowen]

They did, but it wasn't as grim as the model they made of Paul Newman's stomach [open2.net] to prove that there's no way he could eat fifty hard boiled eggs. [imdb.com]

Re:john candy

[Tackhead]

> The problem with the Human Pac-man is that the human body can only consume about 6lbs of food per sitting. If you would recall "The Great Outdoors" with John Candy. The ol' 96er + a few desserts is all he could handle.

Yeah, I just finished playing Human Pac-Man. Didn't need no VR either. Just run around a table with four turkeys, four bowls of garlic mashed potatoes, two bowls cranberries, and pack in 240 bread crumbs! w00t!

(I almost got the 1600-point turkey, but instead it defeated me. Now I know why Pac-Man shrivels up and withers away like that. Tryptophan coma, dude.)

I'm betting that...

[WIAKywbfatw]

...they don't date much.

How about getting too close to reality?

[CrypticSpawn]

LOL, what about a VR suit, I wanna feel the bullets rip into my flesh during quake. Kind of makes you wonder what happened to all the other projects out there related to VR, like VRML etc.

Re:How about getting too close to reality?

[odyrithm]

your American right?

Re:How about getting too close to reality?

[SamSim]

I wanna feel the bullets rip into my flesh during quake.

Personally I try to AVOID that when I'm playing Quake.

Hmmm...

[aftk2]

Wonder where they got that idea...? [ign.com]

(Albeit on a somewhat larger scale...)

Re:Hmmm...

[tricops]

Actually, I think this concept, or one like it, has been around for a while.

I seem to recall a game called "Midi maze" back in the days of the Atari STs and Amigas. It was some type of multiplayer PacMan clone played through their linked midi ports.

Hrm..

[Jediman1138]

VR Pac Man, eh?

Well, just one more step towards making totally immersive VR game play...Doom and Half Life would be so l33t..Hell, just running around shooting headcrabs and soldiers would be fun enough..

Another cool thing would be, though extremely far off, VR lives...Just imagine: The Sims VR, or There VR....Schweet...

Re:Hrm..

[MagicDude]

They already have a 3D version of The Sims. It's called GO OUTSIDE AND TALK TO PEOPLE!!!! :)

Re:Hrm..

[hysma]

Oh... there are people out there? I thought they were all just on big screen TVs throughout the house.

The sound of ./

[SoftwareTechie]

Actual audio footage of a website being slashdotted [3dcafe.com]

Beancounter PacMan?

[sharkey]

Sounds like something the BOFH would do to the accounting deptartment, involving power outages and 3-phase wiring stripped of its insulation.

hmm

[David_Bloom]

Reminds me of a Computer Stew episode [mchsi.com].

They've been doing this since the 80's.

[ebbomega]

They're called "Raves".

I tried this out last summer.

[quakeslut]

Very cool. Only cost me $15 for LSD microdots. Monsters were very believable!

Human Pac-Man? They've done this at Burning Man

[Vulpine]

Although it was nowhere near as high-tech, a human immersive pac-man has been brought to Burning Man at least one or two years. They set up a huge maze with pink PVC piping. The players would don head pieces that represented the characters in the game -- pac-man, the ghosts, or even the bonus fruit. Pac-Man ran around in the maze popping balloons which represented the dots. A DJ at an elevated station synchronized the sounds of the actual video game with actions in the maze. It was great! I camped down the

Eat dots in 1st person perspective view...

[Rick Richardson]

A friend and I wrote a 1st person perspective view Pacman-like game back in 1982-1983.

While the Human PacMan site is slashdotted, you can sate your appetite for dots by playing 3-Demon [dosgamesarchive.com]. -Rick

Human Leisure Suit Larry

[jmerelo]

From 1 to 7 [mobygames.com]. With huge pixels, please.

Oblig Simpsons...

[da3dAlus]

Mmmmm...virtual cookies...ahgggggg

This has already existed...

[Goldfinger7400]

Pac-Man VR [red-gallery.com] is an actual game, not too disimilar from what is being discussed. It was made in the late 1990s.

But people already have this!

[JohnnyBigodes]

'[...] players realize their pacman fantisies as they physically move around in a wide-area setting eating cookies and avoiding monsters.".

How is this different from any modern electro-dance setting? People already eat lots of power-cookes (ecstasy pills) while avoiding the monsters (the big fat guys that can't seem to take a step without slamming into someone) :)

Yes but the real question is....

[The Tithe]

Do they get to eat power pellets, and then chase after (and eat) those ghosts!

Solitaire

[GordoSlasher]

Imagine seeing before you 3D representations of the solitaire cards. You pick them up, feel the razor-thin edge, turn them over to see the artwork on the back. Shuffle them and they make a satisfying ripple sound. Play any of hundreds of varieties of solitaire, or ignore the rules and build a house of cards. Just how far will gaming technology take you?

"eating cookies and avoiding monsters"

[kwazy]

Sounds like my three year old son's current reality...

Re:i'd like to see

[selfabuse]

Sounds like you need to visit Virtual World [virtualworld.com] They used to have one in Walnut Creek, CA, when I lived up there, but now they seem to have shifted to selling pods to arcades and stuff. It was great when they had thier own buildings though. Everything was battletech themed, there was a big mech arm hanging from the cieling, and a bar where you could order drinks that were mentioned in the battletech books.

Re:mod poor AC up

[Anonymous Coward]

to get modded up:
1. Say that it's actually Google cache of the original article.
2. Make it a link. [216.239.37.104]

Re:gotta be said

[odyrithm]

Dont you hate when people judge you? thats why I never post to /.

Re:Umm...slashdotted with only 18 comments, wot?

[odyrithm]

this whole /. effect kinda reminds me of a swarm of vultures.. with wifi activiated pda's and pocket protectors.. no wait.. thats the beer effect kicking in... woohoo its friday!

Re:Umm...slashdotted with only 18 comments, wot?

[odyrithm]

I knew 2pints ago.. I think.