Since I had the other thread closed, I thought Id start another one. Anyone has an idea for virtual reality, or when it'll become, rumors, anything, discuss! ANyways, heres my idea for a possible game console for virtual reality. It be made that theres a console box where you put in game disk, use wireless helmet, and plug in your exchangeable weapon. And to walk it would be a very small treadmill, possibly not even a treadmill at all, but a type of pad they used for ddr, which would prevent you from coming off somehow... possibly, you getting used to walking in place... yeah... like you would have to press on 2 pannels on the side to walk in one direction, 1 to walk in the other. Maybe no walking at all, just stepping on pannels. Like ddr. But running away might be slightly hard... then again... this could be awesome =). Ok, so it would be a ddr pad, with many directions. A player would have to get used to walking in many directions without looking. If you want to walk you press slightly. Jog press intermidate, and running press really hard. These could be like jelly so it feels the impact but doesn't get fucked up. And with weapons you could fight, helmet look around with vision. Also for movement of arms, possibly somekind of gloves to wear, shoulder pads, and elbow pads to determine your movement.... THat would be the cheap one. Also, different weapons would come with different games, just to get that clear. And a more pricey one the treadmill, with a full body suit. Hmm... I think I should think on this more =).

Moved to Game Design. Try to put your threads in appropriate forums, and put a bit of thought into them.

Personally, I don't think any VR design that makes use of a helmet (unless it makes sense for there to be a helmet perhaps, as in some flight sims) will be particularly successful. People just don't like wearing the helmet after the novelty has worn off. It's also a big problem for anyone who suffers from motion sickness.

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Original post by Kazgoroth Personally, I don't think any VR design that makes use of a helmet (unless it makes sense for there to be a helmet perhaps, as in some flight sims) will be particularly successful. People just don't like wearing the helmet after the novelty has worn off. It's also a big problem for anyone who suffers from motion sickness.

I agree. As far as I know, there are only 3 fields where VR is successfully applied (from a commercial POV). None of them use helmet based VR:
- Oil industry
- Car industry
- US military
These industries have a lot of money and usually opt for CAVEs or stereo tiled displays (or CAVEs built from tiled displays for the really rich). These supposedly give a much better VR experience than the helmets (although this is not from my experience because, I only experienced the high-end stuff and not the helmet :). Unfortunately, these technologies cost millions and require large rooms dedicated to it. That makes them completely unsuitable for commercial use outside industry. And, regardless of the technology used (shutter-glasses, light-polarization or Infitek) they still require glasses and head-tracking. This is often not acceptable and (continuing Kazgoroth's reasoning) might only be appropriate when playing Harry Potter games.

Anyway, NCSA already has implementations of Quake II and Quake III running in their CAVE. The link points to an interview with the CAVE Quake author. It also discusses some of the issues brought up in your post.

Tom

I forgot which company it was, but it seems there's a company that's about to hit the market with VR goggles with built in LCD (not shutter) weighing in at around 150 - 180g in weight. They seem to be fairly lightweight and most testers don't seem to have any problem with them. The selling point seems that they will be sub $400, which is within affordable consumer range. Not sure if it supports head tracking though, but I do know that headmount technology as we know it from like 10 years ago has really come down in price and size to the point where in a few years they will become ubiquitous. Especially with the next generation of transparent OLED screns (screens that become transparent when they are turned off currently interested by the military) headmounts will become less of a burden, but that is all the technological stuff.

As for games in VR, the last one that I saw was interesting was Augmented reality. Seems some university mapped a certain piece of their campus in to a Quake style map, had a guy wear a headmount with GPS and head tracking, and basically overlayed the hame level image, along with creatures and power-ups, into his field of view. So, to play the actual game, the guy actually walked around campus with that equipment and through his eyes, he could see all the monsters and such that were in the level and shoot at them with his gun controller. It was a really cool idea, not to mention a workout, since the equipment weigh probably a ton. But personally, I think something like that, if properly minaturized would make an incredible sport that may replace paint-ball or even spice up in-door laser-tag style games. You wouldn't just be shooting at each other, but would also be stalked by monsters in the level that spawn randomly.

As for the issue of motion sickness, it really can't be helped in VR scenarios. Main cause is basically your mind thinks the body is in one state, while the body thinks its in another. Even if you use larger screens with CAVEs, you still get the same problem, especially when there is massive immersion. This is why I like the Augmented Reality idea better than Virtual Reality. To most people AR may not be as bad as VR.

Well if it was on panel like ddr where you should tap with you feet where to go, you could hold on it once to walk, or quickly tap on it to run, and 3 times to sprint. I think all you would need is arrows in all directions, and when you turn your body you are facing a dif area.

Giant hamster ball! Giant hamster ball!

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Original post by WeirdoFu As for games in VR, the last one that I saw was interesting was Augmented reality. Seems some university mapped a certain piece of their campus in to a Quake style map, had a guy wear a headmount with GPS and head tracking, and basically overlayed the hame level image, along with creatures and power-ups, into his field of view. So, to play the actual game, the guy actually walked around campus with that equipment and through his eyes, he could see all the monsters and such that were in the level and shoot at them with his gun controller. It was a really cool idea, not to mention a workout, since the equipment weigh probably a ton. But personally, I think something like that, if properly minaturized would make an incredible sport that may replace paint-ball or even spice up in-door laser-tag style games. You wouldn't just be shooting at each other, but would also be stalked by monsters in the level that spawn randomly.

That sounds very interesting, I'd love to see something along the lines of paintball/lasergames making use of this kind of technology at some point. I had a quick google on the subject and found some interesting links, but I was just wondering if you had any links relating the the specific university experiment you mentioned?

Or better yet, have something like an excercise bike.

Note: This is going to have a lot of silly stuff in it...

The player could have VR goggles and ride their bike. With buttons on the handlebars and controling speed through the pedals they could have all the fun of bike-riding without all that fresh air and sunshine!

But in addition to regular bike-riding games, you could have any one of these other unique games:


Space Battle-Bikers: Fight in glorious 3-D virtual reality space battles! Face off against the dreaded alien invaders in your budget-model planitary defence vehicle, which oddly enough is man-powered for some reason. Pedal like mad while flying around shooting space ships.


MMORPG- Off Road: Ride a bicycle around in a massive online community. While fullfilling all sorts of quests. Most of which involve races or delivering items all over the place.


Tony Hawks Vitual Biker: Perform all sorts of crazy stunts in virtual reality! Just dont try tipping or twisting your body around too much in real life because you might fall over.


Bike Bike Revolution: Like Dance Dance Revolution... but on a bike.


A Biker-Gang First Person Shooter: Ride a bicycle around and shoot stuff. Powerups include different weapons, invincibility and motorcycle-like engine upgrade so you don't have to pedal.


Bleh... I seriously need to get some sleep

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Giant hamster ball! Giant hamster ball!

That doesn't sound like too bad of an idea, i'd find it alot more comfortable than jumping on a DDR platform.

I think I remember an arcade game, about ten years ago, which required the player to ride a training bike, in order to play...

You were supposed to direct a sort of balloon with your pedals, the faster you pedaled, the faster you went, tilt the handlebar, and you went left or right, or up or down, and you had to race through a series of hoops in mid air, and the ultimate stage was a sort of flying bicycle dogfighting stage, I believe...

To bad I can't remember the name of that arcade, though. It was quite fun... Can anyone find it on the net?