project-holodeck
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Project Holodeck makes you look kind of silly during a VR zombie apocalypse
The Oculus Rift had a big presence at IndieCade this year, but one of the VR headset's most interesting uses wasn't being showcased at the official Oculus booth. Enter Project Holodeck, a self-contained virtual reality system created by a team of students. The system employs PlayStation Move for positional tracking, a Razer Hydra for in-game control and an Oculus Rift for the display. All the components are self-contained with a backpack and a helmet, meaning there are no wires to trip you up, allowing you to actually "walk" inside of virtual space. I took Project Holodeck for a spin, trying my hand at some virtual zombie slaying, and the experience was certainly unique. See it for yourself in this video.
Project Holodeck gets help from Razer, swaps Kinect for Move tracking
The group of folks bent on crafting a real-life version of Star Trek's "Holodeck" -- a virtual playground, essentially -- are getting official support from gaming hardware company Razer. That support means not only access to Razer's hardware but also the company's staff of trained professionals. The Project Holodeck team have already implemented Razer's "Hydra" -- a PC-based motion controller that originally shipped with Portal 2 -- into their work on Holodeck showcase game, "Wild Skies." But that's not the only big news for Project Holodeck, as the team recently swapped Microsoft's Kinect motion tech for Sony's PlayStation Move motion tech. Project lead James Iliff told RoadtoVR.com, "The Kinect hardware is extremely lacking in fidelity. Every point the Kinect tracks is filled with unmanageable jitter, rendering the data useless for anything other than the most simple of interactions. We tried very hard to get around this with several software algorithms we wrote, to get multiple Kinects to communicate with each other, however this did not really make anything more accurate unfortunately." In place of Kinect, the team strapped a PlayStation Move setup to a Pro-Tec skateboard helmet, and combined that tracking with the Hydra's motion control and Oculus Rift's head-mounted display. The result is ... well, it's a person standing in a room with a whole bunch of electronics attached to their person. But also, it allows players to interact in a 3D environment -- from perception to engagement. The team's still got plenty of work ahead of them, as evidenced by their latest video (below), but it sounds like things are coming together more cohesively than before.
Project Holodeck and Oculus Rift hope to kickstart every gamers' VR dream for $500 (video)
Star Trek: The Next Generation may be coming to your living rooms soon courtesy of some hot new Blu-ray pressing, but one of the most compelling pieces of the technology shown on that series still remains elusive: the holodeck. Don't get down, sunshine, because we might soon be making our first, tentative steps into a virtual courtesy of Project Holodeck. It's underway at USC's School of Cinematic Arts as well as the Viterbi School of Engineering and starts out with a pair of Project Oculus glasses. These glasses, which were shown off at E3 by none other than John Carmack, cram a 1,280 x 800 display into a pair of glasses that present a wide, truly immersive field of view. Pair that with a PlayStation Move for head tracking and a Razer Hydra controller and you have the beginnings of a proper virtual reality environment.An early concept of what the complete system might feel like can be found after the break, a couple of people acting out a sequence from Skies of Arcadia, which could be called a spiritual inspiration for the first game designed for Project Holodeck: Wild Skies. In it, two people "pilot a massive airship through a exotic world of floating islands" -- though whether they look as kawaii as their Dreamcast predecessors remains to be seen. When you might actually get your hands on the system is also unknown, but one piece of the puzzle, the Oculus Rift glasses, are said to be hitting Kickstarter any day now -- for an anticipated price of just $500. Bat'leth and copy of Workin' out with Worf not included.
