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Hardware Technology

VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality 209

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the gerbil-ball-of-doom dept.
mhzse writes "VirtuSphere provides a mechanical basis for truly immersive virtual reality environments, permitting the user to move about in virtual space by simply walking. The device consists of a large hollow sphere which is mounted on a specially designed platform that allows the sphere to rotate freely as the user walks in any direction. The user wears a head-mounted display, which provides the virtual environment.
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VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality More

VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality

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  • Anyone else (Score:5, Funny)

    by Liquorman ( 691815 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:06PM (#13615908)
    think of hamsters?

  • Truly immersive, but limited (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Currently the only environments that can be reproduced is that of a daredevil cyclist at a circus performance.

  • Moo (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chacham ( 981 ) * on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:06PM (#13615915) Homepage Journal
    Behold the room of circle square,
    Wherever it be, no matter where,
    For when we enter it hollow space,
    The real is gone, without a trace.

    Oh, to enter that seductive wheel
    Virtual entities are so surreal,
    The actual, but, imperfections corrected,
    We can blindly forget that they are projected.

    And where the triangles are a bit too outright,
    We'll turn a blind eye, enjoying the site,
    And when the framerate and just doesn't make it,
    We'll cry for a bit, but then mitigate it.

    The call of the future, the holodeck cometh!
    The hail of technology, there's no hiding from it.
    As the real is so useless, it reeks with banality,
    We don't want it at all, we want virtual reality.

  • hamster ball. can we hook up a generator too, so you have to power your own video game.

  • I've always wondered how the holodeck worked. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Silverlancer ( 786390 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:07PM (#13615923)
    You know, how they could move an unlimited distance in any direction in a room under 10 meters wide. While they don't seem to have explained it in Star Trek, I guess now they've found a solution.
  • It also provides true object representation of the virtual world, so you can touch what you see. It has the benefits of letting you open doors, or shake someone's hand.

    I guess the only downside is the one-sided bloodbath you'd be involved in during a Zelda game if you weren't able to defend yourself properly (watch your back!).

  • Bon Scott Tribute Karma Burn (Score:5, Funny)

    by alephnull42 ( 202254 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:08PM (#13615933) Homepage Journal
    Let me be the first to say.... ...Balls!

  • Not great for VR Gaming (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kainaw ( 676073 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:08PM (#13615936) Homepage Journal
    I've tried this setup twice in the past. It always feels like you are walking up an incline. To make it feel flat, the sphere has to be huge. As it is, the weight of the sphere is difficult to start moving and difficult to stop moving. What is required for a real-life VR environment is a flexible sphere that allows a flat surface for the user to walk on and power-assisted rotation to make it start and stop easily.
    • Walking is something I do in reality all the time, why would I want to simulate that in a virtual world? Give me flying!
    • You'd probably want to mount it on a platform that can tip in all directions so that you can stand on inclines in VR.

    • Re:Not great for VR Gaming (Score:5, Funny)

      by Peldor ( 639336 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:23PM (#13616084)
      But it's perfect for reliving the 'old' days when you had to walk uphill both ways to everything!
    • "To make it feel flat, the sphere has to be huge."

      Or flexible but not to flexible to feel the individual balls of the rolling underground.
    • Its been a while, but when I was younger (like 20, i'm 29 now ;)) I pondered on a "real life Doom" technique. The way I saw it, after countless hours of Doom level editing, is to make it just the way Doom made it. With heightmaps.

      I know it would be hard and probably not pratical but... You take a big warehouse, rig the floor and ceiling with 6' high wooden or plastic rod. Each rod is controlled by pneumatic (or whatever) to raise (in the case of the floor rod) or lower (for the ceiling one) and they meet
      • Mix that with a VR helmet so that the user can see a gun, textured walls and ennemies instead of rods, and you have yourself a real life Doom. Reflective patches on the rod coupled with IR on the helmet could even be used to track if the player crouch or jump (god forbid)

        Or, just give them a laser or paintball gun, and throw some other real players in the map.

        Ok, it's not quite the same since you could reconfigure the levels as they move around and make it seem a lot bigger than it really is (with a careful

      • I know it would be hard and probably not pratical but... You take a big warehouse, rig the floor and ceiling with 6' high wooden or plastic rod. Each rod is controlled by pneumatic (or whatever) to raise (in the case of the floor rod) or lower (for the ceiling one) and they meet in the middle (assuming a 12' space between the rods)

        I don't see how you get the illusion of motion then. You're suggesting that rods extend and retract to do that? They'd have to be able to do it pretty fast so it wouldn't look

        • That is what the warehouse part is for. See you set the level - go through it, everyone goes to a staging level at the "end" the warehouse floor and ceiling move to make the next level, and then you start again... think Diablo, never the same level twice ... kinda neat really ... infinite dungeons for the taking....hmmm

          Sera

        • You don't get the illusion of motion, you get actual motion by running around the warehouse.

          But yeah, the temptation to squash people would be great. perhaps there could be "bugs" in the layout code.
    • Why couldn't the person be in a dome, with lots of small track balls on the floor to measure motion while still distributing the weight evenly. To ensure the maximum amount of motion transfer.

  • Whoa. (Score:2, Funny)

    by CorruptMayor ( 915031 )
    This makes Nintendo Revolution look like a toy... Oh wait.

  • 5 bucks... (Score:5, Funny)

    by omnispace ( 792135 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:09PM (#13615949)
    says this will be the controller for the next Nintendo console.

  • Whuh? (Score:2)

    by aug24 ( 38229 )
    Didn't I see this done in about 1995? There wasn't a market for it then, and there isn't now. People want their MMORPG character to move via a keypress from the comfort of their sofa, in their own home.

    J.
    • News for Nerds: Stuff that we saw demo'd a decade ago.

      I can't tell you if you saw it in 1995, but I definitely saw it within a couple of years of that (although I wouldn't like to pin it down to later or earlier).

    • "People want their MMORPG character to move via a keypress from the comfort of their sofa"

      Some people want/need to get more exercise then they do currently. For them an hour or so in this ball would be more than enough. You can always switch back to the keyboard when you get tired. therefor...

      i for on welcome our gigantic ball overloards

  • Sgi Cave (Score:3, Insightful)

    by delirium of disorder ( 701392 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:10PM (#13615956) Homepage Journal
    Hasn't similar technology been available for years? Like this:
    http://www.sgi.com/products/appsdirectory.dir/irix /products/c/957266.html [sgi.com]

    • Re:Sgi Cave (Score:3, Informative)

      by Digital_Quartz ( 75366 )
      You can't walk around in the cave. In fact, you'd have to sit in exactly the right spot in the cave, or else the perspective would be out-of-whack at the edges of each of the screens.
      • Well, actually, I suppose if they had some system for locating you within the cave, they could adjust the projected perspective as required, so you could move around...

        But, you still don't have unlimited movement. You can only walk to the edge of the room, then you have a screen in the way.
      • The CAVE system uses a head-mounted tracking system to let you move around freely in the 10' by 10' by 10' space. Of course, calibrating the tracking system is a pain, and if it isn't calibrated, things don't look right.

      • You bastard! You've ruined my memories of the Eye of the Beholder games!
    • Not like a CAVE - but yes, there has been a system built before very similar to this one (except it used rear-projection on the outside of the sphere for a much more "natural" usage.

      CyberSphere [ndtilda.co.uk]

      Alas, it has the same problems as this new offering (inertia, curvature, etc) - coupled with the greater problem of not only needing to build a large sphere, but also making it transluscent enough to back-project onto!!!

  • First it was the mouse (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First we had the mouse.. Then we had the track ball.. Then we had pressure sensitive balls. Now we get to find out what it's like to be be the mouse. Good thing I like cheese.. *squeek!*
  • http://graphics.cs.ucf.edu/MAR-Sumant/index.php [ucf.edu]
    mixed reality is something that allows people to actually interact with an environment in the real and virtual world. they use it for a lot of military simulators as well as a wide variety of other applications. plus it doesnt require the ball from American Gladiators.
  • Looks like they all ready blocked referals from Slashdot. Have to copy and paste that URL.

    And speaking of URLS, here is the link to the manufactures website [virtusphere.net].

    This thing reminds me of a human version of a hamster ball [arcatapet.com].
  • They could simulate walking up and down hills with this thing. Biasing the ball to preferentially rotate in a a particular direction would create a simulated gravity gradient. The user would definitely find it hard to walk "up hill" and easy to walk "down hill". It couldn't do stairs, only slopes, but it could give the user a real work-out.

  • Wireless? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Digital_Quartz ( 75366 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:16PM (#13616013) Homepage
    I wonder how they're getting the video signal to the HMD? Any decent resolution is going to require a fair ammount of bandwidth. It's obviously not going to be a cabled connection (where would the cables go?).
  • Funny part is that if you run into a wall, the ball locks up and you go flying.
  • you are inside the thing, and your server that controls the thing gets slashdotted? The VR software starts dropping the gravity simulation threads? The program renders trees falling up, epileptic seizure inducing flashes, you try to exit and you hear HAL 9000 say "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that."?

  • What are the specs on the "special manipulator" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Safe Sex Goddess ( 910415 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:26PM (#13616110) Homepage Journal
    "Users can even ineract with objects in virtual space using a special manipulator."

    This sounds like it could be fun, depending on how big the special manipulator is.

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @03:32PM (#13616169) Homepage
    ...kinda cool I suppose. Does limit the sorts of thing you can walk on - pretty difficult to simulate stairs, for example.

    I always though that some sort of moving tile [trnmag.com] system with lots of small, tilting variable height tiles would work pretty well for simulating walking on undulating terrain, as well as being able to cover stairs etc.

    Maybe a large spherical room with walls covered in shifting variable tiles of this sort, that way you could have overhangs etc as well. Go rock climbing up a virtual Eiger, with only a few feet to fall if you slip :)
    • Seems like any scheme that doesn't have your legs accelerating a mass when you try to walk will feel different than reality. For gaming purposes I'd rather see an augmented reality setup like a lasertag arena. Lots of features like stairs and ramps that you'd actually have to walk on, with environmental details added digitally.

      In a large enough arena it would be easy to overlap features such that the virtual world could be much larger than the arena and features like stairs and ramps could be reused (alth
    • Does limit the sorts of thing you can walk on - pretty difficult to simulate stairs, for example.

      * begins work on 'Dalek: Apocalypse' FPS game *

    • I always though that some sort of moving tile system with lots of small, tilting variable height tiles would work pretty well for simulating walking on undulating terrain, as well as being able to cover stairs etc.

      It was just a first step (yuck-yuck), but I tried the moving tile system you linked to a SIGGRAPH last year, and it was... lame. It didn't feel natural at all, and hard to use; though it was quite cool to watch I have to admit.

      Think a sphere with your variable height suggestions on the in
  • This is one obvious solution for providing an "infinite environment" in a finite space. Another is active floor tiles.

    There are two problems with them. First, they can't actually give you completely natural motion anyway because, no matter what you do, the accelerations aren't going to work out correctly, and acceleration is what your brain senses.

    Second, it's not clear why you need something even this complicated: your brain is adaptive enough that it will perceive even much simpler interfaces as the rea
  • I find it interesting that a lot of the focus at the end of the article is on creating some sort of Holodeck, ala Star Trek. It's a sad state of affairs when the latest tech "innovation" comes from the previous week's episode of Star Trek.

    So, where are these brilliant ideas going to come from now that there *is* no more Trek?
  • You are in a giant plastic sphere. Obvious exits are: none. >_
  • You roll around trying to roll onto these platforms that shoot out blinding steam when you do ... meanwhile these huge American Gladiators get in your way and make your goals impossibly hard.
  • The relationships between the horizontal forces your feet exert when walking on a surface, and the accelerations produced in other parts of your body that are capable of sensing acceleration are going to be very different when walking on a flat surface than when walking within a counterrotating sphere.

    Within a few minutes within a Virtusphere, unless you are walking very slowly, won't your brain will become aware of discordant sensations from all the muscles and proprioceptors and semicircular canals and th
  • I've been toying with the idea of building a VR-style flight simulator simulator like this, with a "realistic" cockpit, multiple displays, etc. The big difference would be being able to orient the pilot in 3D in-synch with the simulated aircraft's orientation. Sticking the whole thing inside a giant hamster ball like this would be a pretty decent solution (not a big deal to keep it battery-powered with wireless network connectivity).

    Any suggestions on constructing a big-ass sphere like the VirtuSphere guy
    • Unless you have a large room for this, I wouldn't suggest going this route - constructing a 3DOF mechanical gimbal system is not an easy thing to do. It isn't impossible, but it will be difficult, expensive, and big. Furthermore, battery power will not cut it - even if you eliminate the PC powersupply and wire batteries directly, you will be lucky to get an hour or so of running time, if that - which may be OK, but remember - in between sessions you have to wait a long time to charge them back up. These rea
  • I've been working on an idea for a few days that I think tops this:

    1) Create an enclosed dome-shaped LCD with a radius of at least 2 meters and pixels as small as those found on standard desktop displays. Think the top half of a sphere closed with a flat floor. Easier said than done, but stick with it.

    2) Make a sphere of flexible, transparent plastic and thread it through a small gap between the walls and floor of the LCD dome. This plastic floor will act as a 360-degree treadmill allowing the dome

  • Hmm.. IPOs, buyouts, mergers, and now Virtual Reality. Sounds like the bubble all over again...

  • HAHA yeah right. (Score:3, Informative)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @04:45PM (#13616754)

    They had one of these at PAX. Plastic sphere, fairly heavy construction, on some wheels and sensors that allow fairly free rotation. You wore a head-mounted display and had a "gun" peripheral that you could point and shoot. Play time was about 5 minutes and lines were about an hour long.

    Guess what? It sucked. Everyone who has considered how to make an immersive VR environment has, at one time, considered sticking someone in a sphere so they can walk around like this. Within 5 minutes, they've also come up with a number of problems with this setup: inertia keeps the sphere going, walking isn't really "flat", you can't run cords into it, and it's expensive and bulky.

    I stood in line, figuring they'd come up with solutions to some, or most, of these problems, making it actually usable. They didn't. Stopping and turning was terrible, walking normally took serious focus, and and to top it off, the demo game was unplayably bad: PSX graphics at best, the "which direction is up" calibration was constantly off, it didn't track motion very well, and things just seemed to pop up randomly. And the actual view window was really small. "Immersive" my ass.

    This technology isn't worth further investigation until they can prove the above problems are fixable.

  • Forget shooters, now what I'd really like to play inside this would be a game of Sonic the Hedgehog. :)
  • The way I thought this kind of thing should work is, you are on a platform whose surface is like a conveyor belt that can move in 2 dimensions. (I know it sounds impossible, but I'm sure someone like Rubik could invent one.) Then there is a sensor which tracks where you are, and the belt is constantly moved to keep you in the middle of the platform.

    Now, the problem with this is, as you start to move you expect your momentum to change in certain ways. You lean forward a little as you start to walk and then l
    • Two-dimensional "conveyor belt" systems have been created. A few in Japan, and a few here in the US. One of the most interesting ones was created for DARPA's Dismounted Soldier project (a large project aimed at providing training for soldiers via virtual and real environments, using standard training with "live" equipment, coupled with trainees in virtual worlds using the internet or private network links).

      In this system, imagine two wide "belts", overlapping each other at right angles. Now, imagine that th


  • See SPIN [timesup.org] for an older project in this vein.
  • would be if they had a video showing the virtusphere in action and what the user was seeing simultaneously side by side.
  • 1) Jumping into water
    2) Swimming
    3) Weightlessness.

    It may be fully emmersive, but it's not perfect.

    GJC

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