While this thought is not new, I’ve had trouble justifying it in the past because of cost considerations. However, a new thought hit me today and it might be a potential solution for getting this show on the road.
I have not written about this to this blog but this concept has been on my mind for a long time. I’d like to create an immersive AR/VR experience. Currently, there is no way for we as humans to jack into the matrix and have it feed us CG content to override our five senses. However, until that interface exists, there are still millions of problems to solve generating that content and presenting it such a way that it is interesting, motivating and compelling. This goes right along what I am looking to do in the Raconteur engine. The environments, characters and stories present enough research potential for hundreds grad students and researchers for quite many years.
The test bed for this system is a virtual amusement park/adventure land. I’ll call this virtual story world. Visitors to this world will be equipped with a headset complete with VR goggles and earphones. Eventually an emitter can be provided to generate CG smells. In addition to the headset, the visitors will be wearing a trackable body suit. The suit will be used to track the precise movements of the visitor. The visitor’s motions will be fed into central program which will driver an avatar for the visitor. A CG environment and the avatar will be directed back into the VR Goggles. The story world will be constructed of a re-configurable collection of walls, doors, steps and props. The visitor will not perceive the the real story world. Instead, he will see and hear the interpretation of the story world as re-created by the Raconteur engine. Other characters in the world will either be other players or agents generated by the engine.
The story world will be constructed inside old shopping malls, supermarkets or other abandoned large spaces. The visitors will experience an alternative reality story generated by the Raconteur engine. The story world will provide the physical resistance as perceived by the engine. Touch will be provided by the story world; sight and sound by the engine. I have not figured out a way to deal with physical contact with other characters however yet.
