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Games Entertainment

The Future Playground 40

Posted by Zonk from the where-is-the-power-glove dept.
eldavojohn writes "The BBC has an article on the London Science Museum's exhibit 'The Future Playground' which showcases some new technologies that may transform gaming. You may recognize some of these technologies as 'old news' but it's the way they're being utilized for gaming that makes this interesting. The most interesting one is the inflatable display which the article describes: 'The Puffer Sphere is an inflatable ball on which images can be projected, said Oliver Collier — one of its creators. Mr Collier said the idea of using the inflatable as a display grew out of an undergraduate project at the University of Edinburgh to use it as the basis for an interactive art installation.'"
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The Future Playground More

The Future Playground

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  • ah (Score:2, Funny)

    by Swimport ( 1034164 )
    I remember when if you got hit in the head with a swing, you got a concussion. Now that was a playground.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And after you were hit by the swing, you were knocked to the ground where you'd skin your knees on gravel...

      I watched the elementary school playground down the street from me go from having gravel to wood chips to that rubbery playmat stuff made from old tires in the span of 10 years. And all of the wooden "castles" and whatnot were replaced with kid-sized habitrail tubes (you'd think they would've at least kept the wood chips for that).
    • I remember when if you got hit in the head with a swing, you got a concussion.

      Only concussion? Luxury...

      When I were a lad I broke my arm in two places falling from a slide, and had to spend a week in hospital. Of course, those were the days when hospitals had enough beds*.

      * in the UK

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
        Ha, you had a hospital, huh? Luxury.

        In my day, they'd just patch a broken arm up with some twine and sticks and send you back into the fields to work.

        -Eric

        • You had twine AND sticks?

          Pussy.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by silentounce ( 1004459 )
            You were lucky. In my day we didn't have arms. We just wallowed around in the mud content with our flagellum. And we LIKED it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eln ( 21727 )
      Yah, we had it easy. These days, sliding down a modern playground slide will generate enough static electricity to stop your heart if you touch a piece of metal or another person.

    • My fondest memory was using the Monkey Bars, Trapeze and Rings over a solid concrete surface. Of course, these all had perfectly polished rungs to ensure that only the most coordinated children could make it through without an injury.

  • Virtual Reality, where are you ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rastignac ( 1014569 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @10:07AM (#17299948)
    I remember when Sega showed to everyone the "Sega Virtual Reality Helmet for Sega Genesis". The poor machine was unable to perform good 3D rendering at all (see games like Hard Drivin'), but Sega vaporwared everyone by telling it was possible to render two smooth 3D pictures in real time. The helmet never came.

    Then there were Helmets for PC computers. Playing "Heretic 1" or "Descent 1" with them was possible, but the machines were not powerful enough to enjoy the games (because there were no 3D cards yet).

    Years later (today !), PC machines with more-than-powerful 3D cards are here, but the Helmets for Everyone are not here. Why ? Machines are powerful, 3D cards are powerful, LCD screens are cheap, so why no Helmets for Everyone ?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by rGauntlet ( 54921 )
      Because they weight too much, cause motion sickness, and generally just aren't worth the trouble.
    • Take a look at the "Virtual" Gameboy that Nintendo put out, that crashed and burned horribly. That, and all of the incidents you listed above, only go to prove that virtual reality is in fact a money pit - at least according to the history of such products.

      I agree with you - the desire and the marketing and the investments were all made way before their time. The time is now. You want a market for geeky gadgets, man, this is the time and place. We all can only hope Nintendo reads Slashdot and adapts some so

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bandman ( 86149 )
        I'm not going to disagree that virtual reality is a money pit, but giving the VirtualBoy as an example of why is misleading. The virtualboy was a steaming pile of poop.

        I'm betting on augmented reality as the way things will go.
    • because they arent designed for people with glasses and you know all us geeks where glasses so they would never sell. in an eye doctors office you may have seen a device that actually can guess your perscription and then adjusts its image so it is clear to you. if a headset were made with this adjustment tech in it--that you could program your perscrition into it and not need glasses when you use it. then we will be talking about something that might sell.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xtracto ( 837672 )
        I think you are talking about the Autorefractor [wikipedia.org]. I believe it is not really needed as long as you have space to put your glasses like with the IMAX 3D glasses which give you space to put them.

        Oh, and there is some people like me whose prescription can not be measured with those things. I remember the first time I tried to get my shortsightedness measured by one of these things the optometrist got really angry because the machine could not "focus" before I blinked (only with my right eye, my left eye passed

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gravos ( 912628 )
      For around 30 bucks you can get a pair of 3d glasses that works great with Nvidia's stereo software and an old CRT display to produce true 3d images from most compatible games. I have a pair and they are pretty interesting. The problem? For most people, the real 3d effect is disturbing and causes headache. I think the theory goes that the effect is too good for the poor brain, which now expects the sensation of physical motion to be coming along with the visual image. Of course, you feel no sensation just

      • The problem? For most people, the real 3d effect is disturbing and causes headache. I think the theory goes that the effect is too good for the poor brain, which now expects the sensation of physical motion to be coming along with the visual image.

        Also there's no focal depth, unlike real life. Every pixel is in focus regardless of whether its close or far in the 3D scene.
        And even if areas of image could be made out of focus depending on where the eye looks, there would be no parallax effects.

        In addition (as anyone with binoculars knows), even with just one flat plane its difficult to get the focal depth right for each eye, not to mention matching the x,y positions exactly so that the eyes don't have to look apart/together/one-up-one-down more than

    • Then there were Helmets for PC computers. Playing "Heretic 1" or "Descent 1" with them was possible, but the machines were not powerful enough to enjoy the games (because there were no 3D cards yet).

      I don't know... I played Descent 1 with a VR helmet and while sure it wasn't great looking at 320x200 that was all you got with a normal display anyway so it was "state of the art", and frankly I thought it was awesome. Doom/Heretic not so much, especially because the sprite-based monsters looked ridiculous in
    • ...and vr helmets, well, make people puke.
    • Well, a standard, middle of the road Head Mounted Display will run you about $16k (at least, that's what we just paid for the VR1280 we just bought). You can find a cheap, light, LCD based set of goggles with a really mediocre head tracker on em for about $700, though... I played with a set at GDC last year. They were kinda nice but they used time multiplexed stereo instead of the more traditional way of using two seperate video signals... That's about as cheap as you're going to get right now, though, for
      • I finally found the bugger after I submitted my last comment. The one I played with at GDC 2006 was an eMagin Z800 3DVisor. They're selling em for $549.00 with Blazing Angels as a pack-in. You also need an nVidia graphics card for it to work, as it depends on the nVidia stereo drivers...
    • If the technology is ripe, why aren't there virtual reality helmets for everyone?

      Mainly: because wearing a helmet makes gaming a SOLITARY experience. Contrast this with Nintendo's recent Wii, which is all the rage because it makes gaming a SOCIAL experience. The social aspect of gaming, which a helmet would destroy -- isn't just playing party games with the Wii; it's even more rudimentary than that. It's being able to call your girlfriend over and have her watch over your shoulder as you play a particula

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by p0ss ( 998301 )
      Well there are HUD's and projector glasses, but headsets seem to have gone out of fashion.

      you are right tho, with two high powered video cards in SLI, providing sufficient data to two small lcd's should not be too hard.
      Realistically, with the size of those headsets, you should be able to fit a couple of GPU's and some software in the unit itself, allowing it to render any output signal in 3D.
      non-native 3D sources would not look AS good, but still not shocking, just like old 3D movies.
      I guess the pr
  • sorta reminds me about the house of the future from the 60's which can clean it's own tables and make you dinner...

  • The playground of the future... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Demona ( 7994 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @10:11AM (#17299994) Homepage
    ...will be one piece, and constructed entirely of soft rubber. However, children will still be issued mandatory helmets before being allowed on the premises.
    • In the future children will be kept in a VR-enviroment with all pretty colors and singing animals, all living peacefully next to each other. A world where there is no hunger, pain or fear. A place without the possibility of violence. A true heaven. And when they turn 18 they'll be perfectly prepared to live in the real world. I don't see how this could possibly go wrong.
  • I do enjoy playing with something inflatable but it's a bit different shape and you play with it in a different fashion and well....I've already said too much :P

    • I do enjoy playing with something inflatable but it's a bit different shape and you play with it in a different fashion and well....I've already said too much :P
      Put down that bicycle pump - they have drugs to help with "inflation" issues these days. And I don't even want to know what you've got projected onto it - you're not fooling me with that "come see my art project" line again!
  • i really like the singing "drama." It's kind of like a training session which determines the succes of the opera singer on screen. I know they have a karaoke revolution already out, but you'd need to know how to sing to play that well and that may not be fun for everyone. similar to the wii's input, via the wii-remote, you feel a sense of accomplishment being the helping hand to the action on screen.
  • That sounds like something that should get laptop manufacturers drooling. If you could get a small laptop with a 21" display. Course the sphere they have in the article is nothing like that but...sounds like it could be reworked maybe??

  • windows version (Score:3, Funny)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @10:38AM (#17300248) Journal

    Here is a pic of the Puffer Sphere running Windows [break.com]

  • Quick, call Dr. Schlock!

  • Oh please (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ty ( 15982 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2006 @11:28AM (#17300806)
    Who needs all this newfangled stuff when you can have AWESOME cold-war era Russian playgrounds! [englishrussia.com]

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