Monthly Archives: March 2005

Late.

Well, I know it’s late, but I want to comment on this picture here. Every day I walk to work, and it seems that lately, I’m running into more and more thoughtful graffiti.

Now, the only thing this made me do was go through and look up if he really said something like this. Of course, he said a lot of really profound things. I’ll have to do something other than google it, maybe even hit the library tomorrow to look up quotations.

Him and Oscar Wilde.

The Letter V

V is for Vendetta, a book that I read
V is for Values, questioned, in head
V is for Visionary, ahead of its time
V is for Verity, solemn and sublime

The movie is coming. Get the bonfires ready.

Wonderful day

Went to the National Zoo today with Morgan and her mother. The relative warmth of today brought out a lot of people.

I hadn’t been to the zoo in a while, and all I could remember was the exhibit where the spiders are happily spinning webs without that pesky glass getting in between them and tasty people. Fortunately, that’s still there. Morgan didn’t really want to see that exhibit, but I forgot that it was in the invertebrate house. So we saw it anyway. Just past it though, is the butterfly exhibit, and that’s really beautiful.

The zoo’s under a lot of construction, so a lot of it is just dirt and chainlink fences. I’ll visit again when they’re done.

We got to see the baby cheetahs at two, a feeding at the reptile house at three (my favorite), and caught the panda feeding time at four. It was a nice route that just happened to work with some good timing. We were hardly in any lines at all.

It was nice, but I think I’ve done my zoo visit for the year. Now it’s time to hit the museums.

I touched it

Oh, the PSP has a really nice screen. The screen caps and the videos cannot do it justice. Buttons have good feedback and the analog stick has a feel somewhat similar to the Neo Geo Pocket Color, except analog and no clicking.

I’m just saying.

Augmented

Virtual Reality was hot in the 80s. We were so ready to jack in to fully realized worlds that were indistinguishable from reality.

Then we actually tried VR, and found that while it was cool in theory, the execution was a more than lacking. The visuals were lacking, the goggles were heavy, and the interfaces were clunky at best.

Now we’re well into the 2000s, and not only are there no flying cars, but there are no virtual reality salons. It’s a shame. I imagined that they would be like opium dens, where addicts would pay to jack in and escape from the real world for hours at a time. (No, instead I pay $15 a month to do that in the comfort of my own home, in a place called Azeroth.)

So we’re not really living in the future. We’re living in the here and now.

So what’s here and now? “Augmented Reality.”

Instead of trying to create a computer generated reality that is virtually indistinguishable from real life, they are working on a way to change what you see. In retrospect, it’s the first step we should have taken before making a movie like “The Lawmower Man.”

Human Interface Technology New Zealand is working on augmented reality and it’s got some of the best movies that I’ve seen. The whole concept is a little hard to explain, but I’m going to point out one of the prototypes that they have, “Magiplanet.” When you watch the video, you can see that it’s a fantastic bit of technology.

I think the project’s title is very accurate. When you see the planet rotating on a piece of cardboard, it’s almost magical. The voice of the narrator could use some work though. It’s a little too, “xxxtreme!!” Knowing that this was for children of course, I liked the way they pronounced, “Uranus.”

I chuckled.

I watched all of the videos and each time, I was impressed.

What’s amazing is that the perspectives of the augmented reality are correct. If you rotate the book with the boat popping out of it, you can actually look around the boat and it looks right.

Educational applications seem incredible. You know those audio tours that they give out at museums? Now imagine they hand out goggles instead. You could “see” ocean currents on a globe, or the inside of a steam engine.

Now, I can see this being very cool for tabletop gaming enthusiasts, people who play things like WarHammer. I’m not thinking about making the figures actually shoot or move. I’m thinking more of a user interface.

There’s measuring involved for things like movement, lines of fire, and areas of effect. Now, imagine that the figures are equipped with id tags. With augmented reality, you could see how far the figure was allowed to move on your next turn and where they could fire. You could also see the same info for your opponent’s figurines. I can see this improving the flow of the game, as well as making it more enjoyable for the players.

Another interesting thing to do would be to make actual scenery, something akin to what the company Total Immersion demos inthis video. The video’s a bit long, (not to mention Windows Media–but at least the part that I’m talking about happens early in the video.)

If you believe HIT labs, this technology’s only two years away from implementation.

I’m not holding my breath, but I would certainly like to see what else people come up with.