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Stringwalker: VR with strings attached
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Hiroo Iwata's Stringwalker has to be one of the strangest input devices developed to tackle the old problem of emulating bipedal navigation in a 3D world. This controller comes in the form of a pad and a pair of shoes attached to a system of 8 pullies and sensors.
There's not a whole lot online about it, but it appears that when you move a foot around - for instance in a step motion - the distance and trajectory of that movement is calculated based upon the direction and length of string that has passed over the pullies. This is then used to scroll the world accordingly.
It also appears that by using motors attached to these pullies the system, they might even be able to simulate the exertion experienced when walking up a hill, for instance.
Expecting to see this one in an arcade is a bit of a stretch. Interplanetary-colonist-in-training? Perhaps. Stringwalker will be on show at Siggraph 07.
Via Gizmag.
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WiiHelm: Casual gaming for the sleep deprived.
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Now you can play the Wii while doing things not normally associated with gaming: like eating, falling over and nodding off on the couch. If only..
That said, it's not too far away from this.
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archive: Exporting the virtual to real world
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Via wmmna: "Although the computer games always try to imitate the physical world there are always elements, objects and behaviours which only exist in the virtual world. Speed, by Aram Bartholl, is one of those projects that bring virtual game elements right on to the street. Bartholl aims to install the big flashing arrows from the computer game Need for Speed Underground 2 to real space."
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archive: 11 Most Groundbreaking Controllers of All Time
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The hardware interface between man and machine ultimately decides the quality of physical interaction we can share with the virtual. Honouring the successful visionaries in this field, GamePro has featured a list of what they consider to be the eleven most ground breaking game controllers of all time.
http://gamepro.com/gamepro/domestic/games/features/65948.shtml
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The 8=8 crew have created a new hypertable and deployed it as an interface for collaborative audiovisual improvisation.
While the relationship between the image and the audio output seems a little arbitrary at times, the sheer output from this interface is nothing short of impressive. Furthermore the 8=8 table implies interesting opportunities for the introduction of game logics in hypertable interfaces more generally.
Could we see something like this in an arcade one day? I hope so.
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After a long legacy of game, literature and cinema it is easy to forget that the third person perspective is a purely invented perceptual construction, being now deeply rooted in contemporary western culture.
This brilliant experiment by Takehito Etani lifts the third person perspective from its various representations and maps it directly onto himself. As a result he becomes his own operator, his own player.. Here's a video of him taking himself for a walk in Times Square, New York.
Thnx Marta!
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hello: 3D Printing for Second Life Residents
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Gizmodo are reporting on Recursive Instruments' 3D Printing service for Second Life Residents. Part of the goal of the project is to bridge the virtual and the real “by developing a cultural authority in the virtual that till now has been reserved for the physical,” Spartialian says. The service will allow residents to create physical objects that can take on personal importance or perhaps even come to have financial weight around the edges of SL’s in-world markets. If you're interested in "porting" pixels into the real-word, the sculptural artist Bathsheba Grossman has published an informative PDF outlining her experiences and recommendations.
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archive: Weapons of Choice: Happiness Is a Warm Gun
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From the next wave site:
The paintings exhibited in Weapons of Choice explore the idea of competitive play. The title takes its name from computer-game culture, where players select their ‘weapon of choice' in order to fulfil the predominant objective of game play – to win the game at all costs.
Mark McCarthy is a Melbourne-based artist. A recipient of the John Leslie Art Prize, he recently won the Discovery Day Art Award. He is represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne.
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Chris of Pixelsumo wrote to me about a collaborative project he worked on that uses a light-table and small sound-toys. Reverberations from the units are sensed by the table and are represented by ripples and other events, much as they would in a pool of water.
Something that immediately struck me when looking at photos was the possibilities an interface like this could offer gaming, perhaps even reinventing that most geeky of genres, the table-top game, in a completely new light (so to speak). More so I'd love to see a sound-space shooter like Sphere's of Chaos on this thing; a hands-on acoustic feedback game.
Cheers Chris.
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LEGOd
Video Games by Skinny Coder
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Objects of Virtual Desire
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If you've always admired Cubey Tarra's SecondLife penguin balls (who hasn't)
why not buy a real one? Yours for €3300 from Objects
of Virtual Desire.
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http://www.palletorsson.com/evil.php
EVIL INTERIORS (2003-) are reconstructions of feature films sets from movies like Psycho, Reservoir Dogs and Scarface.
The Making
The realization of the interiors were done with the first-person-shooter game Unreal Tournament 2003. With stills from the movies, the architecture of the rooms was estimated, and the textures recreated.
The project resulted in 16 large sized photos of different scenes that was shown at the Gallery Andréhn-Schiptjenko in February 2003. It also resulted in a real time data animation presenting the different rooms in slow motion, yet to be presented to the public.
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In a radical exposition on the psychoanalysis of the player-avatar relation, Episode 7 of the Pure Pwnage series engages the sociological impact of surrogate identities. I jest, it's actually just bloody funny. Get it here.
Thanks again to Dr. Chad.
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The Real Virtual Car project uses a whole car as the controller for a driving game, where the windscreen itself is the screen.
Although an old trick in cinema, this has to go into the Canon of Human Input Devices. A real car is of course, innately suited to this application, though I can't help wondering what the Sims equivalent might look like..
Download the Videos
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archive: Swearingen's Science of Place
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It's odd to walk through a park and find myself saying, "This reminds me of lvl0_42.bsp".
The work of Scott Swearingen however traverses my waking life often, and not through a formal similarity to where I am, but something less tangible; a common sense of place.
Scott offers a rare contribution to the discipline of mapping, he is concerned with the science and design of making places, and as such his work breaches the ever thinning margins between game and life.
Every one of Scott's alluring studies hint at a greater universal logic, one that echo's outward from his map and into a self-sustaining world we cannot reach beyond. Through the introduction of situations and little scenarios we get to know just enough about the world to feel like we're part of it, a denizen. In this way Scott exploits a resource unique to the medium of the game, a context for creating that uncanny sense of feeling like a local.
Scott now has a site dedicated to his work, and in the coming weeks we'll be adding some of his new work to the Art Mods section. Get the goodness here.
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archive: Automagical Scene Generation
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While this technology has been around for a while, I've never seen such an effective approach to deriving 3D scene content from photographs (texturing and all).
Hopefully this will reach the public domain in some form so we can all have a play.. How does it work you ask? Errm, like this.
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