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  • Thu 24 Jul 2008

    Virtual Walk Game Controller

    Published at 15:07   Category VR Devices  

    Hum look at that :

    It doesn’t really seem to qualify as “natural walking”. Ok neither does the Virtusphere, and I can’t comment on the ODT since I’ve never tried it but as they want to study natural walking, it better be.

    But this does look a lot less impressive and as a result you look even more silly. With expensive systems you at least have the Wow effect before realizing you look silly =)

    Why do I mention how this makes you look like? Because I’m pretty sure that this has a huge impact on the acceptance factor of such devices for mass market.

    Anyway I’d have to test it to get a better feeling..

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    Wed 23 Jul 2008

    Laval Virtual 2008 - Videos

    Published at 15:29   Category Virtual Reality  

    Back at Laval Virtual, David did a lot of videos for internal DS communication of applications made with Virtools VR Pack. They have now released the videos on Youtube here!

    Warning, it’s a bit corporate ;)

    I’ve also added some of those to the State of VR .

    Here are some :

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    Thu 10 Jul 2008

    What is (not) VR ?

    Published at 16:38   Category Metaverse, Perso, Virtual Reality  

    Updates

    Sorry about the lack of updates, I have lots of excuses for that =)

    First it seems nothing much exciting or very new is happening these days (or I’m missing it). Then we’ve been working quite hard (as usual of course) to get you a brand new release of 3DVia MP, Virtools big brother. I have revamped the device manager  so that it’s much more powerful and will provide better support for VR devices in the future ;)

    We also received a nice big screen for stereoscopic projection and 6 NaturalPoint Optitrack cameras for tracking, but we’re still waiting for the projectors :-/ I’ll make a review of the cameras quite soon.

    Virtual Reality ?

    Back to the topic : Google is launching “Lively“, another 3d personnal space, and everyone is calling it Virtual Reality (resulting in pollution of my VR GoogleAlerts).

    I think I need to clarify what VR is for me and I think for the majority of the VR scientific and industrial community. I’ve been wanting to do that for quite some time, so what better place than here, what better time than now? (c) “Rage against the machine”.

    I’m not going to give a full definition of VR, just quickly what makes “my” VR different than the “marketing” VR.

    Executive summary: Quicktime VR, Second Life and Google Lively are not VR.

    Executive summary of the conclusion: maybe “my” VR should change its name. Check the last paragraph for a suggestion.

    I’m allowing myself to call it “my” VR since it’s such a big part of my life ;) Here are examples of “my” VR.

     Distinctions

    The term VR was invented when computer dinosaurs still walked the earth and Jaron Lanier  created a dataglove to manipulate a 3D World.

    As often described by professionals, “my” VR involves  3 important points : realtime rendering, interaction, immersion.

    - Realtime rendering :  you get the idea, a movie can’t be VR (even though one day maybe…)

    - Interaction : you must be able to interact with the virtual environment. This rules out Quicktime VR and any kind of panoramic virtual tour as being part of “my” VR. Ok you can move the point of view, but it still doesn’t has the next point.

    - Immersion : that’s a tough point. Lots of people would argue that you could get immersed in SL or WoW, but that’s degree zero of immersion. If you’ve ever been in a Cave and felt the way I felt, it’s like comparing a kiss to the kamasutra!

    I think I’ll add a fourth point because I feel its another important and distinctive feature :

    - Natural interaction, body interaction : remember what it was when you first touched a keyboard or a mouse (or watch your parents now); that’s not natural. Natural interaction enforces immersion, and with “my” VR, moving an object is as simple as grabbing it and moving it with my hand, as you would for a real object. Zero learning because you’re using what you’ve learned in the real life! Your whole body is acting, and that’s why you’re interacting naturally, why you’re feeling immersed. Your body is not engaged when using SL, Livery or Quicktime VR!

    Common features

    All the people calling their application Virtual Reality are trying to represent an alternate reality, and I can’t take that away from them. If you take the term in a broad sense, they’re totally entitled to do so since there is no reason it should be restricted to the use of a group. They’re also trying to use the hype that VR generally generates among mortals. Fair enough.

    So we’re all doing VR!

    Immersive Virtuality ?

    It seems we won’t be able to prevent people from using this term, so maybe we should try to evolve and choose a new name for our field.

    David Nahon, the Dassault Systèmes VR boss (and my boss) suggests using Immersive Virtuality, which does a good job at explaining the difference with “my” VR and the “marketing” VR. We could at least add Immersive to VR, making it Immersive Virtual Reality and not losing the VR letters..

    So, what do you think ?

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    Thu 19 Jun 2008

    Consumer markerless tracking

    Published at 14:07   Category VR Devices  

    Yesterday I attended the Dassault Systèmes Developer Conference (Devcon 2008), and had a good time playing with Softkinetic technology of markerless body tracking. They use a special camera that gives you a depth map and from that they can get blobs corresponding to voxels of objects in the field of view of the camera (correct me if I’m wrong Gilles ;). They can also analyze those information and get you human skeletons to work with.

    And they have really funny games!

    - Stéphanie from our Marketing team taking a sportive break -

    - Eric and yours truly playing coop -

    The advantage of this technology is that people don’t have to “make the first step” like putting trackers, markers or anything. As soon as they are in front of the screen, they’re in the game! And the interaction is plain natural, no learning curve.

    Here’s the human tetris, virtual style :

    Following the same idea, CamSpace by Cam-Trax technologies is using really basic markers that can simply be everyday objects, like a bottle of water. It seems the marker simply has to be of a uniform color to be initialized. I don’t have much info about the techno, what kind of data they can get from that, but I’d gess you can have the 2d position of the object, an estimation of its depth, and an orientation along the camera optical axis.

    Ah I really hope we’ll soon get markerless, wireless, full body, precise, cheap, small, <insert your wishlist here>, lightweight, undestructible, 6dof tracking with haptics…

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    Wed 4 Jun 2008

    Quebec Cyberpsychology Cave

    Published at 16:54   Category VR Applications, VR Displays  

    Here’s a nice video (in french sorry) about a 6 faces CAVE used for therapy in Quebec.

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    Tue 3 Jun 2008

    Your 3D application on the biggest VR screen

    Published at 13:45   Category VR Applications  

    Dassault Systèmes (who owns Virtools who I work for) is running a challenge called “VR Experience” to produce content for La Geode, the biggest VR screen!

    You could win a BARCO stereoscopic projector worth 75,000 euros and 3DVIA Virtools licenses

    The application has to be made with Virtools, with some guidelines to have it run both on the web and on VR screens.

    The deadline for submission of projects registration (ie not the application) is September 12 2008.

    That’s a great way to get recognition of your work and have lots of fun !!

    Topics

    Original, fun and/or educational with a strong interactive dimension, the projects can deal with any of the
    following topics:

    - History and civilization: A concept based around TROY or the Palace of Versailles is encouraged
    - Science and technology: Open
    - Human adventure: Open
    - Anticipation: Open
    - Nature: Open
    - Great discovery: Open

    Schedule

    From the competition rules :

    Phase 1
    May 22 to September 12, 2008 - Creation of the team

    Project write-up / Storyboard / Technical specification / Submission of application pack

    Preselection of 10 projects that will receive 3DVIA Virtool licenses, 1,500 euros
    per project and, in order to complete 3D tests, access to La Géode as well as to the virtual reality projection rooms of Dassault Systèmes (France) and BARCO (Belgium).

    Phase 2
    For the 10 preselected projects - October 1 to March 2009

    Creation of a pilot using 3DVIA Virtools for broadcast online and in a virtual reality environment.
    Presentation of the pilots in front of the jury in March 2009.
    Award of prizes to the 3 winners
    (provision of software, equipment, bursary, with an overall budget of about 75,000 euros) at Laval Virtual 2009.

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    Thu 22 May 2008

    Virtusphere review

    Published at 13:40   Category Product Review, VR Devices  

    A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to test the Virtusphere for two days and could since watch several beginners try this device.

    The Virtusphere is a 2.6m sphere of 120kg made of ABS plastic, lying on wheels, with an incredibly sophisticated movement detection device below (a mouse!), used as a virtual reality locomotion device.

    You enter the sphere by a small hatch, and are instructed to take small steps first. So a small step you make, and the sphere starts to roll, and you make another step to keep balance, and .. you’re walking! During the first session you might even be able to run, and a lot of people did! Especially girls who generally perform better than guys.

    Ray Latypov, the inventor behind the Virtusphere along with his brother, started programming games 15 years ago in Russia. He made enough money out of his games to finance the first prototypes of the Virtusphere.

    Ray Latypov and the Virtusphere

    But why build a sphere?

    “Once you know the task, walking, the device is easy to create!”, Ray says.

    The Virtusphere doesn’t have any active part, there is no motor. The sphere movement only comes from the steps of the user. The sphere lies on wheels :

    Ray says this is an advantage over the treadmills because the motors induce some latency.. This is a point I’d like to verify myself.

    But this advantage has a drawback: as the sphere has a bit of inertia, you have to learn to start the movement correctly, and more importantly, learn of to stop the movement. This is not completely natural and induces instability that has to be managed by the user. This is particularly a problem for tall people ( >= 1.80m ) that are much less at ease.

    Moreover, due to the size of the sphere, the walking area is not really planar; this forces you to slightly modify the way you walk. A bigger type of sphere with 3m diameter exists that would reduce this issue.

    This inertia and the not so flat ground makes it an unnatural walking, this is why you may not want to use the sphere for studies on real-life walking. The CyberWalk project built an omni-directional treadmill to study the natural walking.

    You would think that you’d get claustrophobic, but thanks to the design you can see outside quite well provided that the ball has a minimum speed.


    This is also an advantage when you wear and HMD. As the lateral vision plays an important role in balance, seeing the real world “horizon” helps a lot in staying on your feet. When you wear an HMD in the sphere your balance is affected, meaning you have more chances of falling.

     

    For the moment only the head orientation is tracked. We believe that tracking the head position (not just orientation) accurately will greatly improve balance.

    By the end of the two days, we had a nice virtual environment running, and a stereo wall just next to the sphere displaying the view of the user.

    Conclusion

    It’s a fun locomotion device, that really catches the eye as a futuristic VR device. It may not be a natural walking, but the military are using it as a training device where the user can jump and roll, so choosing between this and an omni-directional treadmill (ODT) mainly depends on your application … and your budget; the Virtusphere is around 50′000$, whereas the ODT is 20 times more for now.

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    Fri 16 May 2008

    Some AR fun

    Published at 9:00   Category Augmented Reality  

    Some people at Total Immersion have made a fun application that could change the way we do magic tricks, inspired by Portal :

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    Tue 6 May 2008

    Nintendo Virtual Boy video

    Published at 8:40   Category VR Displays  

    Here’s the original TV ad for the Nintendo’s Virtual Boy.

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    Mon 5 May 2008

    How to make your own multitouch surface

    Published at 12:35   Category VR Devices  

    .. with a sheet of paper, some glass and a webcam! The NuiGroup shares this great video :

    I’ll have to take a look at this Touchlib, based on OpenCV which already has lots of multitouch functions.

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