From bowman@cc.gatech.edu Wed May 20 10:52:33 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA28955 for ; Wed, 20 May 1998 10:52:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu ([128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA14495 for ; Wed, 20 May 1998 10:52:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id HAA19792 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 20 May 1998 07:52:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lennon.cc.gatech.edu (bowman@lennon.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.9.20]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA14480 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 20 May 1998 10:52:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from bowman@localhost) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) id KAA28939 for 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu; Wed, 20 May 1998 10:52:17 -0400 (EDT) From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu (Doug Bowman) Message-Id: <199805201452.KAA28939@lennon.cc.gatech.edu> Subject: "flying" in VEs To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu (3D UI List) Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 10:52:17 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Status: RO Hi folks, It's been awfully quiet lately... In thinking about travel metaphors for VEs, we often talk about "flying" (3d travel) versus "walking" (travel contrained to 2D, or travel along a surface). But the flying metaphor is not really very much like real flying. You move along at a constant rate of speed usually, with no effects of gravity, and can even stop in midair. These qualities are good for many applications because they make the motion easier to control and less cognitively challenging. This is what you want if your goal is only to get the viewpoint to a certain location. However, one of the great selling points of VEs, as Jeff and others have mentioned, is all the magic we can do in them. We can let the user be whatever she wants to be, or do whatever she wants to do (new personae and abilities). The other day, my wife was wishing that she could be a bird, and experience the magic of free flight. Why not, I thought, implement such a technique in VEs? I haven't thought of all the details yet, but I can easily imagine such a technique that used a head tracker to generate the images, and two hand trackers with which the user could control the flight. The user would spread his arms out like wings. A flapping motion could give you lift, the 'wings' could be pulled back to reduce drag, tilting the wingtips would change your pitch, changing the wing plane would change your roll and allow you to turn.... Has anyone seen anything like this implemented before? Or heard it proposed? Or thought of it themselves? I'd like to try to create an implementation 'in my spare time' :) but don't want to duplicate work. What do you think of this idea? I think it could be a very compelling experience if done correctly. Doug (trying desperately to increase list traffic) -- Doug Bowman, Ph.D. Candidate College of Computing, GVU Center, Georgia Tech Room 388 CRB, (404) 894-5104 bowman@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Phd/Doug.Bowman/