15:39 
Product Review, VR Displays
Marc Bernatchez, from VResources, has an interesting article about comparing HMDs. He compares angular resolution, field of view, stereo overlapping, and the relevance of all these factors when compared to human visual abilities.
For example, here’s the summary of the angular resolution analysis :
13:10 Product Review, VR Displays
I wrote an extensive review of the eMagin Z800 HMD for VResources.org. Go read it now to know everything you want to know about this HMD 
20:57 Game, Product Review
By now you should all have had access to a Wii and been able to test it.
I got mine one week ago, and I have to say I’m really impressed. Okay, after seeing games like Doom3 and Gears of Wars, the look of the games may look less realistic.
But the Wii demonstrates quite powerfully that you don’t need pretty graphics to have a hell lot of fun and to really feel immersed.
Thanks to the Wiimote, gesture gives you an whole new world of immersion. Moreover, you start the Wii discovery by creating your avatar, a Mii, that will be used in all of the Wii Play and Wii Sports games, which is really nice. You can even share your Miis through the internet connection or store it on your Wiimote to use it on another Wii. This feels very.. romantic, in the poetic sense. It awakes the child inside me, just like when I’m watching a Miyazaki movie.
All of my friends, even the skeptics ones, enjoyed it instantly. I could see a childish smile on their face the first time they had to move they arm to hit a tennis ball.
A funny fact is that the non-gamers understood how to play generally faster than gamers. A girl literally crushed her boyfriend at tennis, although he made fun of her because she couldn’t play a FPS on GameCube. The same girl was so immersed in the fighting game that standing in a 1m perimeter around her was a real danger for your safety!
Another interesting feature is that it’s also really enjoyable for the spectators, especially the faces of the players, and their gestures in the air. That way you don’t have to wait for your turn to have fun.
The tennis is really good. The gameplay works for beginners as well as for ‘advanced’ players. At first you just have to get the ball on the other side, but when you get used to it, you can aim more or less where you want, and when you get the ball out, you almost always know that it’s because of your faulty movement.
The Rayman game is really fun. It has lots of funny games and interesting gameplays, making very different and original use of the Wiimotes. I’d say it’s a must-have, we had really good laughs and were impressed by atmosphere of the game. Nice graphics, lots of cool musics, and the rabbits are really.. dumb =)
I’ve only played the NES version of Zelda, so I’m really impressed by the gameplay. It’s very different from the games I’ve played; you have much more freedom of action and movement. I sometimes got stuck for a moment because I didn’t think such action could be performed. It really forces me to rethink my way of playing.
But I think it could have used the wiimote better. It feels like the wiimote features were added afterwards, which is certainly the case since the game was planned for the GameCube first.
Conclusion
I can’t wait to see what new interactions game developpers will create. I hope they’ll be creative, because the potential is really huge as Rayman demonstrates.
Anyway, the door is opened: let’s get 3d interaction for all !!
14:29 Product Review, VR Displays
I’ve had the chance to test the famous Sensics piSight yesterday. I could only test it for 5 mins, and I think more time would be needed for a better review. Particularly, I’d like to have more time to compare it with a CAVE. Anyway, here’s what I have to say for the moment. I’ll try to compare it to other HMDs and CAVEs.
The piSight is a panoramic HMD, involving 12 (4×3) 800×600 LCDs per eye. So it’s 24 LCDs you have to feed. You can find detailed specifications here. It was running Virtools VRPack demos.
<insert here legal rant about how these are my own personnal opinions and not my employer’s etc..>
- Here’s how I look with it -
- The global design -
- You can see the different lenses here -
On the plus side :
On the negative side :
So what’s the conclusion? The panoramic view is really interesting, but the calibration is too imprecise and the slightest movement of the HMD from your head can untune the settings. It didn’t impress me as much as a CAVE or a SASCube. They are still my favorites. This is a gut feeling, not a reasonned one =) I’m in love with CAVEs lol. There are lots of applications when you would use such a HMD. For example I know some scientists are working on movement ancticipation and need the user to physically walk for several meters. This is not possible in a CAVE where most of the movements are made with a joystick. But given an unlimited budget/room space and no good reason to favor a HMD, I’d still use a CAVE.
But as Philippe David once stated in a presentation, and I tend to agree with him, HMDs are the way to go. Or direct retinal display, or hack the optical nerve or whatever. CAVEs are just a hack while waiting for this to come. But there’s still a lot of work to get a perfect HMD, whereas I’m completely in love with the immersion in CAVEs right now.
So we need companies like Sensics to push the HMD forward! Moreover they’re thinking about having mass market HMDs one day! In the meantime I hope they’ll get a better calibration procedure and that they’ll resolve their small optics side-effects. Maybe by using OLED displays they could get rid of the all the lenses and make only one big curved display? Dream on, dream on, ’til your dreams come true =)
21:23 Product Review, Virtual Reality DIY
I finally was able to open my GameTrak box =)
Easy Setup
The setup is really simple :
- Plug the foot mat to the base,
- Plug the USB cord to your computer,
- Put and plug the gloves
And you’re ready to go. But where to go? I bought the system alone, with no game.
Suddenly I had a doubt. Will I be able to use the gloves without a SDK?
Getting the datas
I went into the Control Panel > Game Controllers, and was happy to see a GameTrak entry.
At first the output seemed strange, and I was afraid some computing would be needing
(like if they gave orientation of the base plug and lenght of the cable).
But it all made sense quite fast :
the position returned by the controller was indeed the x,y,z datas of the first glove,
and the x,y,z rotation is in fact the position of the second glove.
Wow, I’m so clever. lol. Edit: I’m not that clever after all, see Gilles Pinault’s comment below :p
So in Virtools I simply dropped a Joystick Waiter, and set the Position as the position of a 3D Frame,
and the Rotation as the position of another 3d Frame.
Of course, the axis were wrong; GameTrak uses X,Y as the base plane, and Z as the height (as any reasonable 3D software should do and Virtools uses a screen based (irk), left handed (irk!!!) coordinate system.
So after a small vector component shuffle, my two virtual hands began to move!
The latency is really low I’m really happy about that.
I’ll have to test the accuracy, but I really don’t have time right now.
Physical Design
The gloves seem to have been designed with children in mind.
It is stretchable so no problem to fit it to my hand. I’ll have to test it on friends with Canadian hands :p
After 10 mins of use, it starts to be a bit tight and I could feel the blood flowing more slowly,
especially in my little finger, where there’s a special strap.
There is also a small stich rubbing the thumbs.
All in all nothing really annoying, and it will easily for forgotten in the midst of action =)
Conclusion
So my first impression is really good! For the moment it’s up to my expectations: cheap, easy setup, easy to use, low lattency.
It will be more than enough for my needs right now. I’ll let you know when I have a bit more experience with it.
ps: I’ll be off a a couple of weeks, first to give a VRPack training in Belfast, then for a week of parachute/freefall at Bouloc. Be nice to each others
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