iMyth

Tag: Vicon

  • Dreamscape Immersive opens “Alien Zoo”

    Dreamscape Immersive opens “Alien Zoo”

    Yesterday, Dreamscape Immersive opened it’s first location-based immersive experience, “Alien Zoo”. It is open now through March 2. This project has been hidden up until now so no real information is available at this moment in time. Until I have an opportunity to experience it for myself, we’ll need to depend on the reports from fellow explorers.

    What I do know can be found on their website, http://www.dreamscapeimmersive.com/index.html. The participants can share their experience with up to six others and should take about 40 minutes. I don’t know if the layout will be an open sand box or if you will be confined to a specific platform. The concept art suggest the group will be bound to a motion controlled vehicle which will tilt and swivel in place as the platform guides the participants through the experience. Participants will be equipped with backpack computer and head mounted display, gloves and shoe coverings. These components tell me that Dreamscape Immersive is utilizing Vicon tracking technology to not only track HMDs but also hands and feet and most probably waist movement as well. This means participants will be able to see and observe their own avatars as well as observe and potentially interact with the avatars of other participants. Because of the Vicon tracking participants will be able to interact with props and sets and, potentially, interactors within the experience.  The interactors are teased as Megaraffes, giant brontosaurus-like giraffes, Frogcats, which should drive merchandising wild and the spider-like Sicari which will add a bit of interactive danger to the experience.

    As mentioned, this experience will be using Vicon tracking technology. This should deliver a truer one to one physical experience than the Void’s “Secrets of the Empire”. Instead of tracking head and gun position and partially tracking hands, Dreamscape Immersive should be able to lock on to a physically accurate interactive experience with everything in the environment. This sounds really interesting! Also of note, Dreamscape Immersive provides specially tracked wheel chairs for physically impaired participants. This sounds like a great way to include handicapped folks and have them integrate naturally with the experience. This is a very interesting approach to the throughput puzzle.

     

    I am very excited to test this new experience out! It will only be around for a few weeks and no doubt be replaced by another groovy interactive experience. Way to go gang!

     

     

  • Sensics’ New Professional Grade HMD

    Sensics’ New Professional Grade HMD

    Sensics, a long time manufacturer of high end Head Mounted Display devices, has recently released its new professional grade HMD geared towards VRArcades and amusement parks.

    This new headset has two versions: $2160.00 and $2590.00. Sanitation and Resolution are it’s big selling points. Hygienically, the new units include a machine-washable, hypoallergenic face mask that physically separates from the display. This detached face mask has two advantages. First it is easily set aside and sanitized for later use apart from the disply, expensive part of the HMD. Secondly, participants can strap in and adjust the headset for optimal fit before clipping into the display. Both of these contribute to greater customer throughput. No longer does the attraction need to stop between sessions so the new users can exchange sets with the old. The new users prep themselves before the start of the experience, receive the display portion from the prior users then immediately start the experience with minimum downtime. Experience operators then sanitize the used face masks and help the next participants prepare for their own experiences.

    The resolution of the more expensive unit is 1440×1600@90 Hz LCD which is 70{76c5cb8798b4dc9652375d1c19c86d53c1d1411f4e030dd406aa284e63c21817} larger than the Vive/Oculus display at 1080X1200. Whether the rendering engine can handle that much more throughput is an entirely different issue and will need be explored. The cheaper unit resolution is 2160X1200@90Hz OLED. Here are some of the image comparisons:

    Currently the headsets will be equipped with integrated 9-axis orientation trackers which is very similar to what you currently have in your cell phone. For room scale and larger experiences, this headset lends itself naturally to an OptiTrack or Vicon tracking solution. Regretfully, this does not sound immediately compatible with Steam VR tracking. However, a third party could very well create an attached controller which could track the headset as an added component to an existing Vive setup.

    While this system sounds very interesting, at this moment in time the cost for these units is very expensive and prohibitive. Past the R&D and prototyping stages this tool would be very useful for commercial usage.

     

  • Introducing Dreamscape Immersive

    Introducing Dreamscape Immersive

    I just discovered today there is a new player in town, Dreamscape Immersive. Dreamscape is a new Los Angeles-based startup for location-based virtual reality planning to open their first VR Multiplex in Los Angeles this coming September. The facility will use untehered VR headsets to allow consumers to move freely through a space and interact with real and virtual objects as well as with each other. This is very similar to the iMyth experience.

    Dreamscape has an impressive list of investors and supporters. Co-chairman Kevin Wall is an Emmy award winning producer. The company’s CEO is Bruce Vaughn, who until last year was Chief Creative Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. Imagineering has been hinting at this new medium for the last ten years. Maybe Vaughn’s exodus signals Disney’s apathy or unwillingness to participate in this new field. Dreamscape has raised $11 million in funding in a round led by Bold Capital, with contributions from Warner Bros. 21st Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), IMAX Corporation, Westfield Corporation, and Steven Spielberg. Advisors include star designer Yves Behar and legendary film music composer Hans Zimmer.

    Just as iMyth has its sights on shopping malls, the first location for a Dreamscape Multiplex will be the Westfield’s Century City Mall, which is undergoing remodeling and expansion. iMyth will need to establish its empire in central Florida.

    Dreamscape has said that its multiplex will be powered by technology from Swiss tech and arts foundation Artanim. These folks have probably been doing immersive experiences longer than anyone else. I first learned about them before Siggraph 2015.  Artanim co-founders CaeciliaCharbonnier and Sylvain Chagué will serve as co-CTOs of the company. Artanim had been a non-profit foundation in Switzerland. it will be interesting discovering their ambitions over the next few months.

    One interesting thing to note is that they will be using the Vicon tracking system mixed with the OCculus Rift. A basic installation of the Vican cameras probably starts around $160K. This is a hefty price to pay. However, the Vicon system can track multiple objects at the same time including multiple participants and props without additional cost. At this moment in time that inital tracking cost is a bit expensive. iMyth will probably stick with the Steam VR tracking system in the near future.

  • Thoughts about Roomscale VR

    We are standing at the precipice of explorations into VR.

    I was originally hoping to be able to exploit the usage of the giant MOCAP stage at FIEA. However, One of the most important elements, getting the track data to the game has to be solved yet. I was hoping to use  Vicon pegasus to do the lion’s share of work. However, a week has gone by and I still can’t get the UE4 plugin to work correctly. This has many implications.

    The first of these implications is that we can’t use the tracking on the mocap stage. This would mean we would need to use the Vive’s tracking capabilities. There are some unknowns about this. Out of the box, how large is the range? There is a video where the folks at stress level zero are experimenting with about a ten yard difference between the length of the lighthouses:

    This might work for the iMyth Prototype. However, we would not be able to use props and sets.

    There is also another thought that the lighthouses can be hooked up to create a matrix of light emitters. This video interview with the lighthouse creator, Alan Yates, hints at some of the unlimited opportunity.

    By this video, in concept, there could be an infinite number of lighthouses providing an infinite amount of coverage. Once again we have the same problem of not being able to use props. However, the video also hints that sensors can be placed on objects and the sensors could report their position. This would take some, ‘hacking” to figure out. However, i Imagine some kind of prop/set system could be created.

    There is one final possibility which I know nothing about. There is the possibility we could use the vicon cameras as lighthouse surrogates. That means we could already have an array of lighthouses already in place. Once again, this implies that props and sets could not be tracked.

    Right now, I’m thinking that the best solution will need to be a home brewed variance from Blade to UE4. We would need to abandon pegasus and write our own solution. Could this be done? Vicon thinks it can be done. We now would need to find an engineer to do the work for us.