YouTube channel Vsauce posted this excellent video the other day. It explains lots of tricks and details about how our eyes work, including resolution and lots of fun illusions. It’s really handy for understanding how VR can make environments look immersive to the eye.
Team Vex
Team name: Vex (Virtual EXperience. Clever, I know)
Jacob Hanshaw, Corey Groom, Giang Nguyen
Equipment: Oculus Rift
General Description:
We want to build a multi-player virtual experience. Creating immersion through story and emotion is likely too complex for class and requires more assets. As such our experience will likely focus on action.
Skills:
Jacob- General Programming, Unity and C# Experience
“I’m confidant that I can design a good game, create environments, and use general physics.”
Corey- General Programming
Giang- General Programming
Challenges:
Creating realistic character models is a monumental task in and of itself. Animating them correctly and avoiding uncanny valley is a million dollar industry.
Online real-time multiplayer is one of the biggest challenges in computer science today. It involves keeping multiple complex physics systems in perfect synchronization.
Creating and using portals properly is something that a lot of the smartest programmers in the world (at Valve) spent a lot of time doing and released research papers about. Making a seamless transition from one place to another is hard. The portal must show the proper perspective to potentially multiple people looking at it. Without perspective differences it will be a painting instead of a window. Also, the transportation must be seamless or other players will notice the portal. This means that the player must be in two places at once while transitioning through the portal. If in one place or the other, then there will be a discontinuity in the player’s body.
Creating an FPS by itself means unique gun holding physics, gun animations and reloads, and shooting physics. Shooters in particular are hard for real-time online multiplayer games as they require precise timing.
What is your first step:
Research!
I researched these concepts and found that there are existing libraries that may help abstract some of the harder details of this project. Though experts with one of the tools said it would take 2 weeks to make a simple offline FPS level, so this project may still be significantly out of scope.
Option B: A God Among Men game without portals
Option C: A God Among Men game without portals or internet
Option D: Create levels for Portal 2 and play them on the Rift (Likely actually possible!)
Games:
Runner and Gunner
Runner and Gunner takes inspiration from Mirror’s Edge, Portal, The Matrix, and Inception to create a novel gameplay experience.
The idea is that there are two players:
A runner whose goal is to get to a predetermined location as soon as possible. The runner can see and turn off or on pre-existing portals placed around the world.
A gunner whose goal is to shoot the runner. The gunner may get trapped in a certain area due to portal placement. It is the gunner’s job to notice when they are trapped and take control of another person around the runner.
Potential features and difficulty adjustments could involve allowing players to place portals, making the runner’s goal a moving target, giving the runner multiple goals, limiting the number of portals a runner can use, changing the runner’s speed, adding camera shake to the gunner’s gun when moving, limiting the gunner’s ammo, showing the gunner the runner’s target(s) or not, allowing the gunner to destroy the runner’s target(s), etc.
Chill AKA Fiend AKA Horror Game
or
A God Amongst Men
Other ideas are to create a game (Chill) to scare the Occulus Rift user. This design is more iterative as a scary game could be created, then another player controlling the scariness locally could be added, and finally the game could be made online multiplayer.
The final idea is that Chill could be slightly distorted to a mythology style game where players fight ginormous enemies. The optional extra player could then control the enemy, add extra enemies, or provide aid in the form of power-ups.
Music Visual Team
Name is TBD
We are playing to create semi-interactive 3D music video. We will have specific song that the visuals play to, an ideally have it loop multiple times. As of now we are hoping to build a series of shapes, displaying on a black/white/neutral background, that adapt according to the music. A possibility we are also discussing is having the music adjust according to the user’s movements.
General inspiration video: SYNESTHESIA
We have some experience in music production, hopefully enabling us to adjust our sound according. Overall we also know general programming, which will make the starting process easier. Also a background in design, which may make creating the patterns easier.
All of us are pretty unfamiliar with making 3D objects and using the CAVE and Rift systems.
UPDATE for 3/28
Song has been decided, can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/samarmus/hack-original-mix-soundcloud
Simon went through the tutorials for Open GL and feels confident about working with it but has yet to experiment with it. Wondering if we need to use Open AL for audio. We plan to experiment with the program on Friday (3/28)
Timeline:
Fri 4/2 – Have basic graphics introduced
Fri 4/9 – Music analysis programmed
Fri 4/16 – Have the basic model completed, following weeks will be spent adding on any effects
Project Posts
For class Friday, March 14, make a post containing
- Your team name
- A description of what you want to do
- Concept art (at least one image)
- Added: What equipment you plan to use
- A description of what you think you know how to do
- A description of things you are less sure you know how to do
- What is your first step
After March 14, we will have weekly project posts. These posts should contain:
- What each individual in the group worked on over the last week
- A description of the accomplishments made
- A description of the problems encountered
- An analysis whether or not the project is still on schedule
- Plans for the upcoming week
- Finally, include at least one piece of media related to your work (image, video, audio, etc)
Additionally, for class Friday, March 28, make a post containing
- Any revisions to the plan from March 14th
- A timeline of weekly milestones through the end of the semester
- Fallback plans / contingencies (i.e. what will you do if things don’t go as planned?)
ENRA Video Projection Videos
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Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IALr6M2NXsE
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Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p7JJQdVgq0
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Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GPirK-Cp34
Reading 6
For class 3/10/14
Post Comments by 11:59 pm on 3/9/14
Virtual Reality as the End of the Enlightenment Project
by Simon Penny
Please print out these articles and bring them with you to class on Monday for discussion. Alternatively, you can bring digital version of the reading with you.
Discussion (Two Parts)
Part 1
What do you think the author is trying to have the reader take away from this piece? Do you feel this piece is effective overall? What points do you think were effective/convincing for you and which were not? (Write at least 1-2 paragraphs)
Part 2: Pick four of the following
- Choose one of the examples the author lists of pre-1950 VR. How would you compare these types of systems to VR systems of today?
- The paper predicts that a future that we seem not to have arrived to. Why do you think this disparity exists? What things do you feel like have come to fruition and things do you feel like are still in the future.
- Do you agree with the author that VR is different than tradition mediums such as film, television and so on? In what ways is VR similar and in what ways is it different?
- The author argues that inventors often don’t see the downsides of their own inventions. Do you feel that this is the case for VR? Does VR present a more powerful means of presenting images for companies than other forms of media?
- What do you think about the authors take on “how real is VR?” Do you find the passenger analogy apt? (state why)
- What do you think of the Battletech example? Do you feel like video games have taken the role of simulated Interactive media that the author suggests? What do you think of the authors argument about “undiminished feeling of free will”?
- What do you think of the section on surveillance? Do you feel like it fits with the rest of the article? Describe why or why not
- What do you think of the quote from Lanier about the cup? Do you agree with the author or Lanier. Why or why not?
- The author states that the R in VR is misleading. Do you agree?
- The author implies that being inside of a simulated environment can cause the senses to become out of alignment. Do you agree that this is a concern? Does the section on cognitive plasticity make this concern seem less threatening?
- The author brings up the idea that humans only navigate a 2.5D space so that multi-dimensional data representations are not useful. Do you agree? Could VR provide a better approach to multi-dimensional data analysis?
- Do you agree there is no need for a body in VR? Do you agree that Randy Walser and Eric Gulichsen are misguided in their quote? Should we be concerned about alternative bodies?
- You may find a term or topic that you are unfamiliar with. If you would like to, do a little research on the subject (wikipedia would be a good place to start). Briefly describe your understanding of this concept and how confident you are about this understanding.
- Find a topic that you interesting, dubious, or curious and explain why. (Write at least 1 paragraph of explanation and add citations if warranted)
Project Brainstorm
Here are some notes from our class discussion today. Please post comments as to which projects you would be interested on working on and feel free to add in more information. We will determine project teams next week.
Idea 1: Alteration of Physical Spaces
Enable the rapid prototyping physical spaces, simulate visual impairments, and simulate different users (such as child height).
Idea 2: Virtual Experiences
Simulate virtual creatures such as from the film the Birds, virtual zombies, murder mysteries or to create the feeling of what it is like to be chased. Could also be for education, such as with the Magic School Bus. Finally, create the experiences seen in video games.
Idea 3: Create an Augmented Reality Visualization
Overlay virtual stats onto a virtual map. Visualize large amounts of data in 3D. Create immersive visualizations of music. Create a GPS based AR game.
About the projects
The idea for projects for the class is to generate a working prototype by the end of the semester. This means that the project need more be a proof of concept than a refined product. We will have weekly progress posts that will demonstrate each group and individuals efforts and progress. At this point is perfectly acceptable to aim high and scale back later.
Reading 5
For class 3/3/14
Post Comments by 11:59 pm on 3/2/14
What it is like to see: A sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience
by O’Regan and Noe
http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/Synthese/MyinFinal.html
Discussion (Pick 5)
- Do you agree that the authors theory “provides a unifying framework in which to consider the relations between sensory experience in different sensory modalities …, and the relation between sensory experience and other human activities.”? Briefly discuss the merits or the shortcomings of the authors theory.
- What do you think of the idea of “feeling the presence of redness”? Do you agree that this feeling can be described with second-order awareness? Would it be possible to give a robot or AI the ability to feel the presence of redness?
- What are you initial thoughts on the ideas presented for “change blindness”? For examples, you can watch a few examples from http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/#CB. In what ways do you see us being able to exploit this in VR applications?
- While the authors mention machines, the focus for the article is on humans. Do you think that a machine could have sensation, perception, and/or awareness? If so, describe with examples for each. If not, describe why not for each.
- You may find a term or topic that you are unfamiliar with. If you would like to, do a little research on the subject (wikipedia would be a good place to start). Briefly describe your understanding of this concept and how confident you are about this understanding.
- Find a topic that you interesting, dubious, or curious and explain why. Write at least a paragraph of explanation and add citations if warranted.