A gaming experience that only requires you to use your head
Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s PlayStation Move started a movement that’s steadily been picking up momentum over the last year or so, bringing motion sensing into gaming. This has added a new dimension to gameplay, making it far more immersive than ever before, and opening up pathways for gaming ideas we had never even dreamed of before.In a similar vein, students from the University of Texas have put together a fantastic video-game simulation setup. It makes use of an arced gaming screen, a head-tracking camera which has a pico-projector attached to it’s rear end, fitted with a rotating motor. That may be a bit technical, but it’ll all make perfect sense once you’re done reading this and have watched the video.
The function of the head tracking camera is self-explanatory. It fixes on to the gamer’s head, thereby telling where he’s looking. The pico-projector attached to its rear end, moves with the tracker, and projects the simulated image in the gamer’s line of sight, giving him the illusion that he’s seeing things in the first-person and is truly in control of his surroundings using just his head.
There were two games on display in the demonstration, of which the first is in the video below. That being a flight simulator, in which the player pilots the plane by moving around and bobbing his head appropriately to rise, descend or turn. The second was a military based first-person-shooter simulator, in which the player really feels like a soldier himself, with his viewpoint shifting as it would by moving his head in real life. Really impressive stuff, even more so, because it doesn’t make use of Kinect or Move or the likes.
Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to throw those gamepads away. This could well be the future of videogame technology!
In a similar vein, students from the University of Texas have put together a fantastic video-game simulation setup. It makes use of an arced gaming screen, a head-tracking camera which has a pico-projector attached to it’s rear end, fitted with a rotating motor. That may be a bit technical, but it’ll all make perfect sense once you’re done reading this and have watched the video.
The function of the head tracking camera is self-explanatory. It fixes on to the gamer’s head, thereby telling where he’s looking. The pico-projector attached to its rear end, moves with the tracker, and projects the simulated image in the gamer’s line of sight, giving him the illusion that he’s seeing things in the first-person and is truly in control of his surroundings using just his head.
There were two games on display in the demonstration, of which the first is in the video below. That being a flight simulator, in which the player pilots the plane by moving around and bobbing his head appropriately to rise, descend or turn. The second was a military based first-person-shooter simulator, in which the player really feels like a soldier himself, with his viewpoint shifting as it would by moving his head in real life. Really impressive stuff, even more so, because it doesn’t make use of Kinect or Move or the likes.
Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to throw those gamepads away. This could well be the future of videogame technology!
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