From mconway@microsoft.com Wed May 20 12:54:53 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 MAA07448 for ; Wed, 20 May 1998 12:54:51 -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 MAA07753 for ; Wed, 20 May 1998 12:54:49 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mail2-b.microsoft.com (mail2-b.microsoft.com [131.107.3.124]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id JAA30470 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Wed, 20 May 1998 09:54:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: by mail2-b.microsoft.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2166.0) id ; Wed, 20 May 1998 09:54:36 -0700 Message-ID: <4FD6422BE942D111908D00805F3158DF05B26703@red-msg-52.dns.microsoft.com> From: Matt Conway To: "3D UI List (E-mail)" <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu> Subject: RE: "flying" in VEs Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 09:54:29 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2166.0) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Status: RO Doug - Ah, the ever-present tension between magic and realism (Randy Smith has a great paper on the subject. Required reading...) Actually, Scott Witherall built something similar to (but not exactly like this) in Randy Pausch's lab many years ago (Jeff, ask Randy about this to get his take). Scott called it the "Superhero" flying metaphor. Here's how it worked: The user had trackers on his/her head and between his/her shoulder blades in back. When the user arched his back and leaned forward a bit, the relative position of the trackers would shift and we used this to control flight start/stop as well as speed. By leaning to one side or the other, the user could change direction. Odd thing was, all we ever told people was to arch their backs. As it turns out, in order to keep balanced while on one's toes, you really have to stretch your arms out to your sides. Flying like a bird! Weee! Maybe it was the flying visuals that inspired people to stretchout their arms, but in any event, it was very cool to watch people do this without being told. We never published the technique because we thought it was ...um....very silly. Scott was brilliant in that mad scientist sort of way. As for giving people the experience of being a bird, I have to say that I'm something of a grumpy old man. You can *say* that you're giving someone the sense of what it would be like to fly, but what's the model you're going to use? Hang-gliders, pidgeons and humans without parachutes all behave differently when in the air --- the three behaviors go by the names: Gliding, Flying and Plummeting if memory serves. Which one are you going to use, and how is that going to map onto the human experience in terms of muscular exertion? Humans will never know what it is like to be a bird if only because our collarbones are too narrow. Besides, having been in gliders and done some hang-gliding myself, I can attest to the fact that the overwhelming sensation from first-person controlled flight is NOT visual. It's an inner ear thing. Hook a "vestibular display" up to your "bird simulator", or perhaps a fancy motion platform and then you're talking. The virtual hangglider that was done several years ago comes to mind as previous work too. That was a very cool system and very easy to use. Perhaps this is the point where you say, "lighten up, Matt. We're talking about doing something fun!" - which is a counterargument that I'm extremely persuaded by. Just be careful about over-selling the experience. Best, Matt PS - doug - I just got back from Charlottesville - shame to have missed you. Had we connected, I might have been able to write off the trip as a business expense!!! =) D'oh! -----Original Message----- From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu [mailto:bowman@cc.gatech.edu] Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 1998 7:52 AM To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu Subject: "flying" in VEs 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/