N00bs rejoice (if you know how)!
New technology from Japan could help make navigating online virtual worlds simpler by letting players use their own bodies and brain waves to control their avatars. God forbid learning how to when you can translate your own thoughts and motions.
New technology from Japan could help make navigating online virtual worlds simpler by letting players use their own bodies and brain waves to control their avatars. God forbid learning how to when you can translate your own thoughts and motions.
The new position-tracking system developed by Tokyo University uses a mat printed with colorful codes and web camera to calculate the player's position in three dimensions. At a recent demonstration, a researcher strapped a web camera to his hip, lens down, and walked around the large mat. Up on the screen was the computer graphic-generated 3-D world of his avatar, and as he moved across the mat, the view on the screen shifted perspective. When he crouched down to peer under a virtual parked car, the image swerved to show what his avatar would "see" — the vehicle's underside.
Keio University is working on technology that monitors brain activity so players can make their avatars move in games like Second Life just by thinking of commands like forward, right or left. The interface uses electrodes attached to the user's scalp to sense activity in the brain's sensory-motor cortex, which controls body motions. Software then translates the brain activity into signals that control the avatar.
"The difficult part is to stop thinking," said a research student. "I want to go left, so I think, 'left' — but then the avatar turns too far to the left before I can get rid of the command in my head," he said.
There no immediate plans to commercialize the technology, though but both groups are applying for patents.
One of the wonderful things about virtual reality and online gaming is you can tell who is a n00b and who knows what they're doing. Watching avatars stumble around awkwardly and walk into objects while as their real-world users fumble with the controls is almost as fun as blasting them in a game or flaming them. But more than that, it's a right of passage.
Being able to do something without trying or practice is both unnatural and skipping a fundamental step in development. Walking, talking, even learning to control your bladder so you don't wet yourself are learned behaviors, the same as targeting a weapon or moving online. This isn't The Matrix where you can just get new abilities slammed into your cerebral cortex - you still need to develop the skills. While the whole notion of virtual gaming and (sadly) living tries to supplant reality, if there is no real action or experience to learn how to do things, the process is little more than a 3-D movie with directional control, and that's virtually no experience. Hmm, maybe that's exactly why Second Life sucks.
Keio University is working on technology that monitors brain activity so players can make their avatars move in games like Second Life just by thinking of commands like forward, right or left. The interface uses electrodes attached to the user's scalp to sense activity in the brain's sensory-motor cortex, which controls body motions. Software then translates the brain activity into signals that control the avatar.
"The difficult part is to stop thinking," said a research student. "I want to go left, so I think, 'left' — but then the avatar turns too far to the left before I can get rid of the command in my head," he said.
There no immediate plans to commercialize the technology, though but both groups are applying for patents.
One of the wonderful things about virtual reality and online gaming is you can tell who is a n00b and who knows what they're doing. Watching avatars stumble around awkwardly and walk into objects while as their real-world users fumble with the controls is almost as fun as blasting them in a game or flaming them. But more than that, it's a right of passage.
Being able to do something without trying or practice is both unnatural and skipping a fundamental step in development. Walking, talking, even learning to control your bladder so you don't wet yourself are learned behaviors, the same as targeting a weapon or moving online. This isn't The Matrix where you can just get new abilities slammed into your cerebral cortex - you still need to develop the skills. While the whole notion of virtual gaming and (sadly) living tries to supplant reality, if there is no real action or experience to learn how to do things, the process is little more than a 3-D movie with directional control, and that's virtually no experience. Hmm, maybe that's exactly why Second Life sucks.
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