iMyth

Month: March 2015

  • New Role for Second Person Perspective

    It has always been my contention there are three perspectives to interactive storytelling experience:

    1. First Person, immersive, totally interactive
    2. Second Person, semi-interactive
    3. Third Person, passive

    With the new developments with AR/VR these days, most of the audience attention has been placed on the first and third perspectives. Today, I have just become aware of a new avenue for the second person perspective.

    The folks from Sword Coast Legends and Wizards of the Coast are working on a Dungeons and Dragons RPG game experience on the computer. As the role players experience the dungeon in real time, a dungeon master (DM) is also manipulating the game experience concurrently with the players. Reminding that the DM does not necessarily want to destroy the gaming party, just make sure they are challenged sufficiently. Similarly, it is often the DM’s responsibility to deliver a fun playing experience for the players.

    Within the interactive storytelling experience, A contributed second person perspective can really help to push the game and prevent it from getting stale along with upholding the fun factor of the experience. While the interactive storyworld experience is not exactly an RPG game, it can borrow some some of the same interactive components. It seems all that is in place with this RPG system is dungeon crawling and fighting. While this is fun for certain purists. Others will be seeking the interactive characters and dynamic experiences. An involved second person perspective can really help avoid the interactive storytelling experience prof devolving into porn.

  • Leap Now Bundled with OSVR Hacker Dev Kit

    Here is a quick and cool development involving Leap and OSVR.

    The folks over at Leap will be bundling their goods with the Razor folks in their combined OSVR package which is an open source VR development package.

    As mentioned in a prior article, Leap has an interesting tool on their hands. I don’t have immediate plans using the OSVR platform but I hope Leap’s tools are still available outside. We’ll see.

  • Improbable

    During my daily wanderings I happened to chance an article about a company in London, Improbable, obtaining $20 M in funding. Great job guys! Congratulations.

    I wanted to know more about who was Improbable and what are they working on. From my very brief introduction to their website and the brief lecture provided by their founder, Herman Narula, I can guess they are a simulation company providing content for games. I am not sure if their simulations are centered about “life” simulations such as the Simms or event simulations such as sports games, Madden, Fifa, etc. .Regardless, I think they are right track establishing what I call “Grammar Based Universes”.

    It will be interesting observing how this company develops. I hope for the best for these guys and hope they start providing solutions which not only simulate life and events within the context of the Storyworld but also generate content to populate the Storyworlds based on templates and style guides provided by the world’s authors.

  • VR in the Court Room

    Here is an interesting new article by the Swiss Institute of Forensic Medicine proposing using VR to help settle Court Room decisions. They are looking into using VR to re-create crime scenes or scenes under legal scrutiny.

    While this direction is hardly surprising, it is not a very new concept either. Legal teams have been utilizing computer graphics as a visualization tool since the early 90’s. In fact some of my first jobs revolved around creating accident reconstruction for consulting firms. I believe this approach is effective. However, as with all media, VR needs to be authored and is subject to biased interpretation.

    I thoroughly believe that VR can make an excellent legal tool. The cost may make it prohibitive. Instead of authoring just one perspective, a full 360 degree perspective must be maintained. To complement the visual presentational elements I believe further advancements in procedural storytelling must be made. More specifically, the development of a storytelling language needs to be developed. The language provides a neutral format to which any situation may be described without biased interpretation. From that language the situation may be re-created to any media format; Video, VR, Comic Strip, Novelization, … . The interpretation to media will provide the biased interpretation. However, the language itself should be as neutral as possible.

  • HTC Vive: Welcome to the fray!

    These are indeed exciting times!

    HTC Vive has just drop its hat into the VR ring with with HTC Vive; Valve’s HR headset:

    HTC Vive

    Not much is known about this headset but supposedly they will have a commercial version out by the end of the year. It sounds like it is a beefier, faster version of the Oculus Rift. Maybe Vive has solved some tracking issues too? We look forward to finding out.

    I have heard that Valve will be introducing the new headset at GDC this week. I look forward in having a hands-on demo!

    Also, in related news, I have just found out a site I have been frequenting lately, WEMO.IO,  is actually a VR company run by old associates, WEVR. They have just announced a partnership with Valve to be a development partner for their new headset. From the initial looks of it WEVR is foccussing on a suite of VR production tools as well as producing their own VR content.

    I’ll need to drop a few emails to what some of the old folks are up to. It’s re-assuring confirmation to know that the wave that has been building for the last few years is actually seen by other like-minded souls.