标签: rift

As you are surely aware (unless you've been living under a rock), I am enamoured with things like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (in the form of games like Obduction and headsets like the Oculus Rift ).   Well, I just received a message from my chum Rich Quinnell, who is the Editor in Chief over at IoT World. In his email, Rich said "Hi Max, I thought you might like to take a look at this Panopticam 360-degree camera ."     This little beauty -- which is the work of a company called Figure Digital -- is a spherical device adorned with 36 cameras. Using this little scamp, you could take totally immersive "surround" images that could be viewed using the Oculus Rift.   Suppose we take this one step further -- shoot an entire film using a Panopticam and then watch it using an Oculus Rift. In this case, you could be standing in the middle of the room tilting your head up and down or turning it left or right (or turning your body completely around) to see something completely different. In fact, you could watch the same film over and over again looking in different directions each time.   Actually, knowing how modern films require so much in the way of special effects and large numbers of lighting and sound technicians and so forth, I'm not sure how well this would work for something like an action movie. On the other hand, I can really envisage the most amazing educational videos taking you to places like the Great Pyramid in Egypt. And I can also envisage the most amazing computer games...   How about you? What do you think would be a good use for the Panopticam?

You may already know (unless you've been living under a rock) that I am mesmerised by things like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (in the form of games like Obduction and headsets like the Oculus Rift ).   Well, I just received a message from my chum Rich Quinnell, who is the Editor in Chief over at IoT World. In his email, Rich said "Hi Max, I thought you might like to take a look at this Panopticam 360-degree camera ."     This little beauty -- which is the work of a company called Figure Digital -- is a spherical device adorned with 36 cameras. Using this little scamp, you could take totally immersive "surround" images that could be viewed using the Oculus Rift.   Suppose we take this one step further -- shoot an entire film using a Panopticam and then watch it using an Oculus Rift. In this case, you could be standing in the middle of the room tilting your head up and down or turning it left or right (or turning your body completely around) to see something completely different. In fact, you could watch the same film over and over again looking in different directions each time.   Actually, knowing how modern films require so much in the way of special effects and large numbers of lighting and sound technicians and so forth, I'm not sure how well this would work for something like an action movie. On the other hand, I can really envisage the most amazing educational videos taking you to places like the Great Pyramid in Egypt. And I can also envisage the most amazing computer games...   How about you? What do you think would be a good use for the Panopticam?

Do you remember the original Terminator movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger portraying a cyborg sent from the future to kill someone in our time? On a number of occasions during the movie, we saw the world through the cyborg's eyes, with additional information being overlaid on the scene he was observing.   This was an early depiction of augmented reality, which refers to a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphical, and textural data.   About 12 years ago I saw some very interesting work in the augmented reality arena, including a pilot flying a plane with a computer screen in front of him instead of a window (his co-pilot did have a window and was poised to take over if there were any problems).   A photorealistic 3D model of the outside world was displayed on the screen in front of the pilot. This was augmented with imagery from a variety of radar systems (so if something flew in front of the plane, it would appear on the screen).   The interesting thing was that the pilot was attempting a real-world landing at a small airport in a tricky, mountainous terrain. Displayed on the screen in front of the pilot was a "corridor" of rectangles in the form of glowing lines that were superimposed on the scene. It looked like a computer game, with the pilot flying his real-world plane down the "corridor."   The idea was that, even at night or on a foggy day, the pilot could be presented with a scene that looked as though the world was in bright daylight. My understanding is that pilots consistently achieved better landings using this experimental technology than they did using more traditional approach techniques.   Of course, this was some time before the days of smartphones and tablets and us all having GPS-based location information at our fingertips. There are already a variety of forms of augmented reality that are commercially available, with many more on the way. Personally, I don’t think that many of us really have a clue as to how pervasive augmented reality has the potential to become.   Take a look at this YouTube video , for example. This depicts a variety of possible augmented reality scenarios in which a young lady looks at the world through the screen of her smartphone.   When she points it at the sky, she is presented with the immediate weather forecast, along with a simulation of raindrops falling on her screen. When she points the smartphone at an art gallery, she is informed as to current exhibits. Looking at a tram via the smartphone returns details as to destinations and schedules. Pointing the smartphone at a hotel provides an indication as to which rooms are currently occupied and which remain available.   What other sorts of augmented reality information could be presented to us? Well, let's return to that in a moment but -- before we go there -- let's first consider how this augmented reality information might be presented to us. One approach -- as we've already seen in the video above -- is to view the world through the screen of a smartphone or tablet computer.     Another alternative might be something along the lines of Google Glass . This has the advantage of being relatively unobtrusive, but it doesn’t really offer a fully immersive experience.     I think a lot of it depends on the quantity and quality of augmented data that is made available to us. If there were to be sufficient data, then it wouldn’t surprise me if -- sometime in the not-so-distant future -- we were to see people walking around in public sporting a full-up Oculus Rift -type display.     What? You think this couldn’t happen? Well, all I can say is that I bet when you saw the original Star Trek featuring Lieutenant Uhura with an oddly-shaped communicator module stuck in her ear, you would never have expected to actually see people strolling down the street with flashing Bluetooth earpieces.     As an aside, my 70-year-old mother-in-law has long hair. She also has a Bluetooth earpiece linked to her smartphone, and this system is set to automatically turn on if anyone calls. I had no idea she was so in tune with the times. We were strolling around a supermarket together when she suddenly commenced to have what seemed to be a one-way conversation with herself, arguing vehemently and giving herself orders. I honestly feared she had gone insane (it turned out she was talking with her administrative assistant; the jury's still out on the question of insanity). But we digress...   The advantage of wearing something like an Oculus Rift is that you do get a fully immersive experience. Also, you can change reality to suit your whims. It could be midnight in the real world, but your display could present the scene around you as though it were midday, or vice versa, of course. The downside is that it's somewhat bulky and you would tend to look like a bit of a plonker. On the other hand, once enough people are doing it, this could become the new reality (pun intended), in which case it wouldn’t be long before we were inundated with designer models.   What about the farther future? Well, there are already experiments going on to embed LEDs in contact lenses. I can imagine a time when contact lenses have the capability to project high-resolution textual and graphical imagery directly onto their owners' retinas. At some stage, it wouldn’t surprise me if it became possible to have such equipment embedded in the eye itself.   What do you think regarding the various technologies that might be used to present augmented reality information? Do you agree with my thoughts above? Do you vehemently disagree? Can you offer any other suggestions? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.   Also, earlier on in this column, I said "What other sorts of augmented reality information could be presented to us?" Don’t answer this now, because I'm going to post Part 2 of this miniseries tomorrow, but you could certainly start noodling on this question and we'll see if what you come up with matches my hopes and fears.

A number of things amaze me about today's high-technology, including the fact that it's so pervasive and it sneaks up on you while you aren't looking. The result is that you end up using all sorts of cool things and you forget what life was like without them.   Now, I know there are a lot of young people who don’t actually remember a time before the Internet, but even those of us who are older tend to forget the way things were. When I was a kid, for example, we had one small black-and-white television whose main display was a cathode ray tube and whose electronics was vacuum tube-based. I would never have dreamed of having high-definition color televisions in just about every room of my house as I do now.   We also had one black dial telephone wired into the wall in the hallway. I had to ask my parents' permission to make a call. I would never have conceived of a world in which everyone -- including young kids -- strolls around carrying smartphones that can take pictures and videos, send emails, run apps, and show locations using GPS.   What about computers? When I was a student in the UK the late 1970s, there was an advert in the Practical Electronics hobbyist magazine for a single-board computer boasting an 8-bit microprocessor, a hex keypad, a smattering of 7-segment displays, 1 Kbyte of RAM, and 1 Kbyte of ROM… and it was way more than I could possibly afford. At that time, I never thought I would ever own my own computer. Now I'm surrounded by the little scamps (as I pen this column, I'm facing a wall of four 28-inch monitors).   The reason I'm waffling on about this is that so many things that were considered to be in the realm of science fiction in the not-so-distant past are now taken for granted. But the really strange thing is that, when most of us see or hear about something that doesn’t exist yet, we still think of it as still being in the realm of science fiction or -- at best -- being in the far distant future.   If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times… the future is closer than you think. As one example, how about a techno-telepathic, non-invasive brain-to-brain interface in which one person thinks about pressing the fire button on a computer game. This brain signal is detected and transmitted across the Internet to a second person whose finger moves in response. Science fiction, you say? Well, not according to this article from the University of Washington.     How about mind-reading? This is, of course, an old staple of science fiction, but surely it's not possible… or is it?   Are you aware of the work being performed by Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at U.C. Berkeley? Basically he gets a subject to watch a video, and he reconstructs that video by scanning the brain of the person watching the video (while the person is watching it, of course). As you can see from this video , this technology is still in its early days, but -- even so -- it's significantly more advanced than I think most of us would have suspected.   iframe width="460" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/nsjDnYxJ0bo?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen/iframe   Think about the holodeck on Star Trek? The idea was that users could walk into a special room in which they could have a totally immersive 3D virtual reality experience.     Surely we are going to have to wait a long, long time before we can experience anything like this. Well, maybe not. As you may recall, I recently pledged to the Kickstarter campaign for the forthcoming Obduction immersive reality game. ( Click here to see my blog.)     Now, imagine taking a stroll around the virtual Obduction world shown above while wearing an Oculus Rift virtual headset. This little beauty is set to change the gaming industry by providing a truly immersive 3D experience. As you move your head, the scene changes to reflect this movement without any discernible latency or artifacts.     When I say "taking a stroll," I'm not simply talking about pressing forward, back, left, and right buttons on a joystick. No! I'm talking about something like the Omni Treadmill that allows you to actually walk or run around the virtual world of your choice.   iframe width="460" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/u79_egrp0Pk?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen/iframe   How about combining the Omni with the Oculus Rift? Now, I'm not really one for shoot 'em up-type games, but take a look at this video and tell me what you think.   iframe width="460" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/qpHWJMytx5I?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen/iframe   I can really see myself using this technology to wander around the Obduction world. But wait, there's more. First we have gesture recognition and control, which is starting to come online. Existing systems are primarily targeted at controlling your desktop computer. Future incarnations will be able to do so much more, including identifying and recognizing posture, gait, emotions (from facial expressions and other body language cues), and so forth.   There's yet more. A startup company called Ultrahaptics aims to bring the sense of touch to touchless interfaces and -- by extension -- virtual worlds. Based on research performed at the University of Bristol in the UK, this technology uses ultrasound to project sensations through the air and directly onto the users' hands. The end result, as seen in this video , is that the user can feel touchless buttons, obtain feedback from mid-air gestures, and interact with virtual objects in virtual worlds.   iframe width="460" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2QkbVr4J7CM?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen/iframe   Some of these technologies are still in their formative stages. Others are more advanced. What we've discussed here may well be just the tip of the iceberg. I honestly believe that most of us have no idea just how much the world will change in the coming years. Hold onto your hats, because it's going to be an exciting ride!

I saw a Kickstarter project that got me drooling with desire. This is my chance to have a truly immersive experience as I meander through a strange world populated by fantastic scenery and incredible architecture. Do you remember the album covers for the band Yes that were created by the English artist, designer, architect, and publisher—Roger Dean? When I was a young lad, I used to love the strange worlds he created with their fantastic landscapes and organic structures, such as the one shown below:     I always wished I could somehow transport myself into these worlds and wander around and explore them. To some extent, this capability is provided by today's computers. Generally speaking I'm not a big player of computer games, but there are a couple that I simply could not resist— Myst and Riven . These are immersive reality games in which you move through strange worlds solving puzzles and suchlike. Myst and Riven came before the days of high-speed graphics cards and the computational capabilities to render high-quality 3D images on-the-fly. What they did was to pre-render photo-realistic still images of the various scenes, such as the one from Riven shown below. Then you clicked on different directions with your mouse to move through the landscape.   Well, the folks from Cyan who brought us Myst and Riven have a Kickstarter project running to fund the creation of a new immersive reality game called Obduction . ( Click here to visit this Kickstarter project.) From what I read and see, like the image shown below, this already has me drooling with desire.   At the time of this writing, there are still 17 days for this project to run on Kickstarter, and they've already raised $659,675 of the $1.1 million base funding requirement. Now, $1.1 million may seem like a lot of money, but if you've seen and heard the quality of the visuals and audio effects associated with the earlier games, you will appreciate just how much effort is required to get something like this off the ground. I was hooked from the get-go, but what really has me chomping at the bit is the news that if the game's creators reach $1.3 million in Kickstarter pledges they are going to include support for the Oculus Rift. (I'm currently performing my happy dance.) What do you mean What's an Oculus Rift when it's at home? It's only the coolest next-generation virtual reality headset designed for immersive gaming. ( Click here to learn more.)   Can you imagine how incredible it would be to use one of these Oculus Rift headsets to enjoy a photo-realistic 3D visualisation of the Obduction environment? All I can say is that I can barely restrain myself from squealing in anticipation!