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Virtual Reality Cocoon Being Designed

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Sep 12, 2008 05:41 PM
from the holodeck-in-a-gerbil-ball dept.
Graphics Software Hardware
gurps_npc writes "CNN reports that a company called 'NAU' is working on an Immersion Cocoon that seems inspired by ST:TNG's Holodeck. The images are only 2D, and you can't touch them. But it is 360-degree video and sound, with light sensors to detect your hand movements and floor sensors to detect foot movements. They hope to have a prototype by October 2009."
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Submission: Holodeck being designed by gurps_npc (621217)
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  • What will nintendo call it? (Score:4, Funny)

    by LiENUS (207736) <slashdot&vetmanage,com> on Friday September 12 2008, @05:43PM (#24984961) Homepage
    Obviously this is the replacement for the Wii, but what will Nintendo call this one?

  • Holodeck, huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by StefanJ (88986) on Friday September 12 2008, @05:47PM (#24985001) Homepage Journal

    So from now on half of the episodes of our lives will take place in one of these pods?

  • I can't wait to get stuck in a holodeck simulation for 30 - 40 minutes until Brent Spiner fixes the problem spontaneously. The part of the article where Schaedler discusses using the technology shopping online. Imagine that popup no longer showing up in the fixed confines of a computer screen, but being able to completely fudge your 360 degree view screen with a wonderful "Guess what you just won!" tagline. Still, sounds like a great technology for educational purposes, as the article suggests.

    • > being able to completely fudge your 360 degree view screen with a wonderful "Guess what you just won!" tagline.

      It's worse than that. Imagine...

      360-degree full-immersion goatse.cx.

      • Okay, Iv've been goatse.cx'ed before [goatse.cz], but at 5'10@240 lb.'s, even goatse seems too small for me to fit into.

        Heh,Heh: let the /. n00bs be just as twisted!! Click the Link!! Click the Link!!!

        Now to go scrub my brain out with bleach!!!

  • I guess it's press release time. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BitterOldGUy (1330491) on Friday September 12 2008, @05:50PM (#24985017)
    Vague details in the article, ideas for its application, comparisons to a sci-fi program, ...blah blah, yadda yadda...not here yet...press release to get funding...blah...

    My proof:

    NAU hopes to complete its prototype Cocoon by October 2009, with models commercially available by 2014. Initially, it's intended to be used in public spaces or to be leased by companies, until the technology becomes cheap enough for the consumer market. But where NAU are creating an escape from the real world, others are working on ways of merging virtual information with the real world.

    So this is the second 'article' with no substance.

  • virtual reality FPS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by agent4256 (893846) on Friday September 12 2008, @05:51PM (#24985031)
    Does this mean we're now one step closer to virtual reality fps games? So i can take on my friends in Halo, and actually have to run around to do anything instead of just sit on my couch and move my thumbs? rock on! sign me up. i _want_ one...

      • That's the child version. Real men play "War". There's a RTS version too. It's called "Global thermonuclear war". It's pretty short tough. ;)

  • Will it have a porn, I mean, privacy mode?

  • Yawn... Welcome to the 1990s. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by retchdog (1319261) on Friday September 12 2008, @06:07PM (#24985205) Journal

    It's a consumer-grade version of this, with an added motion-sensor for walking:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Automatic_Virtual_Environment [wikipedia.org]

    Yes, this "cocoon" doesn't require the shutter glasses, but that's because it doesn't even try for 3-D. Lame.

    • When will someone either come up with full-body haptics or a direct neural interface.
      I'm voting for the former, I really don't want a script kiddie raiding my brain.

      When I google it it seems that people are concentrating mainly on stimulating touch receptors.
      While that's an important component, I want something like a suspended exoskeleton
      to provide actual force feedback to as many muscle groups as possible.

      Bring on the virtual wushu.

      • I want something like a suspended exoskeleton to provide actual force feedback to as many muscle groups as possible.

        That's some heavy porn you're into.

      • If cost and injury-in-testing were no object, we'd have had this done a decade ago. There is however little benefit in such a device.

    • Well, it would be like walking around with one eye. So it's not too bad. They could easily get around this limitation with dual projectors and polarized glasses.

  • This was submitted by Gurps_NPC, getting through one post will take an hour! Most of the effort you go through will be in tiny increments while nothing is really accomplished.

  • You can't see it on the picture but it has a little opening on the side where the food comes from.
    I also heard it's designed to project war videos and play Beethoven.

    And yes, it will run the new HP Linux.
    • Alluding to another movie...

      It shows immersive images of beauty and grandeur, while playing 'light classical' music. And at the end, the food comes OUT of the little opening.

      "It's green"

      Set in 2022, Edward G. Robinson was 62. Which means his character was born the same year as I was. And that's only 14 years away.

  • Shopping for books in 3D? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JesseMcDonald (536341) on Friday September 12 2008, @06:24PM (#24985393) Homepage

    This is interesting technology, but I'm not sure the examples in the article were thought through all that well.

    Imagine Amazon.com being fully 3D. We could walk through a 3D space where you have all the books lined up, and you could walk right up to a book.

    That might make sense if you were just browsing, although there are a lot of ways to sift through books which don't map well to inanimate shelves. What if you know which book you want, though? Do you look up the title, author, publisher, etc. in a digital representation of a manual card catalog, and then spend at least a couple minutes walking over to the indicated location? (Just how many books does Amazon sell, anyway? How many miles of shelves would it take to hold them all?) That seems like a lot more work than using the much-derided keyboard & screen we have already.

    Virtual shoppers might be able to take books off their shelves and read a sample, or even ask other virtual customers for recommendations.

    You can already read samples on a regular screen, and most of the people I know who don't care to read off a 2D computer screen wouldn't be much happier with the immersive 3D equivalent; they want to actually experience the book's weight, texture, and smell. Recommendations, in turn, are more valuable when you can correlate what everyone has said about the item whether or not they happen to be hanging around at that exact moment. In a purely interactive system there probably wouldn't be anyone around to ask most of the time.

    • So, what you're saying is that it's like a bookstore, but without being able to read all of the books, or actually touch the books, and it will give me a headache if I try to spend more than an hour or so looking through the catalog (because of the screens). It won't even be as useful as a normal computer, because it will be much more difficult to search and browse around (in terms of having to walk). And there won't be anyone to talk to. Who could possibly think that this is a good idea?

  • So really... (Score:5, Funny)

    by pcgabe (712924) on Friday September 12 2008, @06:36PM (#24985515) Homepage Journal

    [...] an Immersion Cocoon that seems inspired by ST:TNG's Holodeck. The images are only 2D, and you can't touch them.

    So, not at all like the Holodeck, then?

  • How do they plan to deal with the issue of... well... farts.

    Also... Smoking.

    Won't anyone please think of the smokers?

  • I'd b impressed if they could just come up with a floor where I could walk/run in any direction and it would keep me in place. Do that, and then we're talking about something.

    • This is a simpler solution shown on /. before. Not as good for running though.

      http://www.virtusphere.net/product.htm

      • I used one of these once on a conference. It's an interesting concept, but it doesn't really work that well. The whole thing has a huge inertness due to its mass. This means that you have to do large steps to get it to move, and then it's hard to get it to stop. Abrupt movements are out of the question.

        I think one person on that conference actually fell while trying it.

        Additionally, it doesn't really feel like walking in a virtual environment, since you can feel that sphere underneath your feet. Maybe hamst

  • So it's a fancy CAVE. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Max Threshold (540114) on Friday September 12 2008, @09:23PM (#24986621)
    So they built a fancy CAVE [wikipedia.org] in a shiny plastic sphere. I've wanted to build something like this since it became attainable without a research budget. Just network a few PCs and hook them up to five or six heavily diffused projectors pointed at the outside of a translucent cube. The ultimate innovation would be to let the user walk around on the surface of a giant trackball...

  • There is a company with headquarters in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (just down the road from RIM in one of the few buildings in the area that RIM doesn't own) that has been doing this for many years now.

    Check out the public docs at
    http://www.christiedigital.com/AMEN/Markets/AdvancedVisualization/ [christiedigital.com]

    Did you see the opening or closing ceremonies of the Olympics? All of that projection was done with Christie equipment. And their 3D submersive stuff is crazy. They have intentionally stayed away from more consume

  • From the caption: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Normal Dan (1053064) on Friday September 12 2008, @11:31PM (#24987415)

    The Immersive Cocoon could revolutionize the way we interact with computers.

    Unfortunately, it wont.

    • TFA seems to suggest 6 years, so maybe it can dodge the 5 year effect, provided no one updates us on it for a couple years.

    • No, Riker was the only one who was in the simulation. The alien didn't have access to any holodeck logs, only Riker's memory.

      That was a pretty cool episode up until the ending, which was lame!

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