Head Tracking

Hehe, so something interesting showed up in the digg side bar today. It would seem to be an interesting way to make a 2d screen seem 3d. It's not exactly a feature suggestion, but it would be cool if something like this could be applied to SL.

http://www.digg.com/nintendo/Head_Tracking_for_Desktop_VR_Displays_using_the_WiiRemote

second time in a week ive posted this awnser

it ends up being electric pulses on a wire going to a port, get a driver that remaps it to keyboard or mouse and you can play SL with head tracking, a power glove, powermat, zapper, activator, brainwaves and anything else you can imagine

heh, in this case you're wrong. This isn't causing the avatars head to track the camera, it's causing the viewport to rotate in place toward your RL head. Might barely be possible with camera controls, but probably not the way they currently are.

Mapping it to mouse or keyboard isn't a solution because the way that video showed it, it wouldn't be taking over for the functions of either of those.

This would require a custom build to add input hooks for rotating the camera viewport. The idea isn't so much increaseing your field of view, although it does do that, it's to give a 2d monitor the feeling of 3d when you move your RL head in relation to the screen, by causing the view to shift as if you're looking through a window instead of a monitor.

yea ok so you want to control the camera instead of the AV, same thing cept SL doesnt support hotkeys for camera so you have to hack the client instead of applying a mapping driver

unless you used mouselook

still if you have ever used any form of this crap (and i have off and on for about 20 years) you would know its about as worthless as a screen door on a submarine

why would i want to control the camera independant of my AV with my head, my head does not even go a full 90 degrees in any one direction and just to do something like zoom in to a prim would make you go thru the motions of a tropical birds mating call

and the fact that your head is constantly moving, no matter if your aware of it or not, makes the system a pain in the ass cause your either getting POed over shakey cam

OR

you biuld in a buffer to compensate that, which means your head now has to travel 90 degrees to move the camera 50 and you get POed because it takes sooo much more effort over a flick of the wrist

not to mention the WII remote is still a peice of crap, ive tried for hours and hours to get tiger woods golf to work right but every game by the 9th hole on my backswings it starts fkin up, and i tell you what, its fun when all 4 of your co-players are pissed and complaining about the exact same problem of my drive wont go more than 10 feet (and we all have our own wiimotes)

the stupid thing wouldn't even move the WII's menu cursor for the first 30 min i had it, then i realized i have to hold my arm in some funky special perfectly level with the receiver bar posiotion which quickly became a pita

oh and yea looking like a window, how am i supposta do that when myhead is turned sideways to that window?

Did you even watch the video?

It's not tracking your head angle, it's tracking your head position in relation to the screen. The whole point is that your head is always moving which is what would give the 3d illusion.

As for your problems with the wiimote, personally I haven't had a problem using it. I can't speak for the rest of the world. I wasn't suggesting that a wiimote be used anyway. If a game ever did offer this I would hope it would come with a device custom made for the purpose. But for a proof of concept, the wiimote and the sensor bar were cheap and available I'm sure.

I'm not saying it would work flawlessly, that it's full head tracking, that it's anything other than a gimmick. In spite of it's short comings it would improve immersion without requiring people buy a full vr rig, adding a massive amount of code to SL, or any game it might be used in.

...Why am I arguing? heh, I just thought it was cool. I sympathize with you about waiting forever for good VR and not seeming to see any progress toward it. You might consider not shooting down every gimmicky step from point A to point Z, just because it's not point Z.

The wiimote is actually a perfect example of one of those gimmicky steps. It doesn't actually do all people think it does as evidenced by the ability to bowl moving nothing but your wrist. It does popularize the idea of translating your body motion into a game on the fly, and got every other game company to start thinking about putting accelerometers in controllers. It even got people like this guy to start thinking about how else you might use the technology. This is how progress is made. Sorry it took 20 years to make it even this far. Maybe with little gimmicks like this it won't take 20 more.

yes i did watch the video its a cool effect but i cant very well see the other end of the football feild by walking behind the tv, just like i cant see the person standing right beside me without walking across the room