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3-D Virtual Reality in the News
November 29, 2006 | 8:35 pm
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By Jon Noring
I continue to be intrigued by the potential of online 3-D virtual reality. I became interested in it earlier this year after hearing about Second Life from an eye-opening blog article written by Richard Charkin, the CEO of Macmillan UK, who wrote about the potential of 3-D interactivity with digital content. Soon after joining Second Life to see it for myself, I wrote a TeleRead blog article describing the Misadventures of Jon Olmstead, my Second Life personna.
Two news items appeared today relating to 3-D virtual reality that might be of interest to some who follow the TeleRead blog.
Building the 3-D Internet
First item is the article Building the 3D Internet, which mentions, among other things, IBM’s interest in 3-D virtual reality, having just rolled out a $100 million dollar project to develop 3-D technologies.
The article made the point that in the future we may visit many web sites as avatars in a 3-D virtual reality environment, rather than the present 2-D mode. Certainly this will benefit e-book and digital publication publishers, retailers, and even authors by improving the e-book browsing and shopping experience, as well as to provide new ways for readers to interact with the publications, with other readers, and even with authors.
“Heavy Rain” by Quantic Dream
The second news item comes from my friend Ravenelle Zugzwang (her Second Life name), who today posted to her blog an article linking to a wonderful 3-D virtual reality video Heavy Rain by Quantic Dream (a cropped and resized screen capture from this video is reproduced above.)
After watching the video, it made me think about the future of book publishing where 3-D virtual reality videos could be made of the book characters. Maybe instead of static book covers, we’ll have 3-D virtual reality book videos, as well as online 3-D environments where we may visit and experience the book in virtual reality.
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Comments:
I’ve been meaning to write about this topic for a while now, and it appears now is my chance.
I have been a great fan of VR stuff for a rather long time and have been constantly disappointed because there was so little progress in that field.
The real and important point in this whole matter, at least for me, is that today’s way of navigating digital content is rather stupid. I’ll try to explain:
Many things these days are rendered in full-3D mode. All information for 3D display is there.
Prime example: Games.
Console Games and PC-Games are almost completely 3D today. However, the display that shows the actual image is 2D and the controls (controller or mouse and keyboard) are totally counter-intuitive. Moving around in a 3d world with WSAD and a mouse is convenient in its way, but it seriously limits the amount of interaction with the virtual world.
Things like the new Wii-mote controller are little steps in the direction of better input, but they are woefully inadequate.
Using full-3D interaction would have several big advantages however.
Today, many of us are computer-users at work and computer-entertainment-users (games, audio and video) at home. The result is, that we are getting all kinds of dysfunctions due to lack of proper exercise and of course due to constantly sitting and staring at a monitor while moving only our arms and fingers (and those also only a little bit).
While I believe that browsing the web (like this blog) or hacking data into corresponding input-fields is something that can be done very well with a mouse and keyboard setup, I think that most other human-computer interactions should be a lot more physical.
Let’s take one of our all-time favourite MMORPG games today. World of Warcraft. I no longer play the game, but I was a member of the community for a while, so I know a bit about it. There are many problems with kids getting addicted to the game and playing for hours and hours, neglecting other duties and stuff like that. Now, you could say that giving people a more immersive access to the game would make it even more addictive, but I would like to disagree…
Think about this setup: You strap into a harness (with some kind of bodysuit with sensors and feedback motors) and put on your 3D Visor. Now you are in the game. Of course, the world is beautiful and there is so much to explore. You would like to stay there for hours and hours, just like with he normal game. But while you can certainly go around clicking buttons all day, I think hardly anyone can actually walk around, up and down hills, and swing a huge two-handed sword for that long, which would be exactly what my “vision” of “VR-WOW” would entail. It would make us all fitter, give us a good way to work out while having fun and we could even let our “primal instincts” like hunting in the wild out for a stroll without endangering ourselves or others.
The details of the bodysuit, the 3dglasses, the computer-human interaction and everthing are of course things that still have to get worked out…but they only will is somebody actually starts working on it…
The ebook angle:
Imagine browsing Amazon.com in full 3D…moving around the shelves, miles and miles of shelves, reading a snippet here and there, choosing a book just like you would in real-life.—only with the added advantage of being able to browse more books that any bookstore in town could ever hope to have on show. And then you could get the books you liked delivered to your ereading device. End of story?
No way!
There has been lots of talk about interactivity in books. Well, how about a whole new world of books, VR books where the book meets the movie and the Computer Game all in one experience? Enjoy history as a bystander, watch battles take place, see Leonardo in his workshop, explore the virtual reconstruction of long-vanished cities with your own feet and see what it could have been like with your own eyes!
Read a novel and influence its outcome. Watch the storyline unravel as a bystander (ghost) or take an active part as the main character or as a smaller participant somewhere…would that be cool?
I think it would be the real digital revolution, and it should not be too far beyond our technical grasp.
Already, VR is being used for psychotherapy, but so many uses are as yet unexplored and so many possibilities unused.
I hope I will still be around when it will be possible to do at least some of these things!