Virtual Reality – The future of gaming, but how do we achieve it?
by: Bradley Wint on March 25th, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Gaming has come quite a long way from what it was in the early 80s and 90s. Back then we bounced a white ball between to moving paddles, in 2D and in black and white. As time passed, color came to games, then texturing, 3D gaming (from a 2D angle) and so on. There have been quite a lot of advances over the years, basically transforming the gaming world into something closer to reality day by day. Looking at the past few years, there have been a number of accessories adding to the real experience such as joysticks, the Wii remote controller and the upcoming Xbox Project Natal system.
The Natal system is basically yet another advancement in reality gaming, by eliminating the need for a physical controller. Now you can control the objects on your screen by just moving your hand, which put’s Sony’s Playstation Move at a disadvantage. However, what is the next big thing in gaming? What will take us to the next level? Nintendo was able to thrust us into the future with their Wii controller, so what will take us to the next level in the future years to come?
Virtual Reality seems like the next step into the future, but the only places it’s currently being used to a limited extent is in the labs of research companies such as automotive or aerospace industries. If you’ve seen the units used, the virtual world is displayed in a very bulky headset worn by the tester. There are lots of wires coming out of these headsets, making them quite cumbersome. Did we mention this technology is still very expensive? So how is Virtual Reality ever going to enter the home and how is it going to be in a portable form that is at a price that is affordable by regular consumers’ standards?
Just recently I re-watched the movie “The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest” and enjoyed how they used light to project the computer’s image rather than having a bulky monitor. Also, with the 3D televisions hitting the market (with upcoming 3D games), I thought to myself, “what if they could build a console that projected a light show that could be translated into a virtual world when using some type of special glasses?”
Instead of using a bulky head piece to display the virtual world, how about using some kind of technology that separates a display stream into different colors. Just like 3D, looking at this light source would be like looking at utter confusion. However if you were to put on a specially designed Virtual Reality pair of glasses (maybe something very light weight and sleek in design), it could interpret the speed of the different colors of light, as well and filter out different color schemes for different segments of the feed. This filtering would then somehow trick the mind into thinking the world around you looked like a 3D environment.
Maybe then, you could integrate the wireless technology used in Project Natal to add an interactive perspective to it. This would essentially turn your living room into a virtual reality center with just some fancy lighting effects and a pair of shades. This would allow you to carry your console to other houses or maybe into an open space to expand your world’s borders. Even if the concept means purchasing units that have to be placed at the four ends of the room to shoot out beams of light, it would still be more cost effective and hopefully still more portable that what we have seen today.
Here is a scrap drawing of what I think might be a concept.
There obviously are a ton of issues outstanding such as the effects of environmental lighting, light interpreting glasses and much more. However, I don’t think limitations like these are severe problems since developers always find work arounds to these problems. Who ever in the 80s thought we could interact with the video game with just our bare hands or watch movies in 3D?
Have something to say? Be the first!