From jpierce@cs.cmu.edu Thu May 21 22:25:14 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 WAA02210 for ; Thu, 21 May 1998 22:25:11 -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 WAA11367 for ; Thu, 21 May 1998 22:25:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu (UX2.SP.CS.CMU.EDU [128.2.198.102]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with SMTP id TAA32568 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Thu, 21 May 1998 19:24:55 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199805220224.TAA32568@wheaten.hitl.washington.edu> Received: from ASYNC3-CS2.NET.CS.CMU.EDU by ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu id aa09671; 21 May 98 22:23 EDT X-Sender: jpierce@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 22:09:07 -0400 To: 3D UI List <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu> From: Jeff Pierce Subject: Re: "flying" in VEs In-Reply-To: <199805201452.KAA28939@lennon.cc.gatech.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Status: RO At 10:52 AM 5/20/98 -0400, Doug Bowman wrote: >It's been awfully quiet lately... It's not my fault, I was out of town. =) >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. I think the reason people generally refer to this is flying is because you're not constrained by "gravity", which is the way many people think about flying. Consider one possible advantage of flying interfaces for locomotion: if you add wind to the environment, you can exert some control over where the user goes. This makes for good storytelling: you constrain the user's motion without the user blaming the system for being arbitrary. For extra points add in clouds streaming overhead and a fan blowing on the user (at a variable rate depending on the height of the user) outside VR. You can tell I've been consulting for Imagineering. ;) >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? > >[...] > >Has anyone seen anything like this implemented before? One of the groups in the "Building Virtual Worlds" Randy taught this semester implemented something like this. They had a tracker on each of your hands and one on your head. Direction of travel was controlled by the hands, so you can look one direction and fly in another. Flapping your hands increased both height and velocity. Tilting your hands caused changes in direction. They had you fly through a canyon to a waterfall (constrained motion again ;) for the virtual experience. Flapping was somewhat of a hassle, but the experience of soaring was extremely cool. I can talk to them about sending you the code if you're interested. Randy's putting together a "summary tape" of the BVW experience; I can ask about getting copies if people are interested. Among the cool worlds presented at the final "show" the class put on for the university: play Spiderman and web-sling your way through a city, play Godzilla and destroy Pittsburgh (extremely cool), and Mr. Roger's Virtual Neighborhood. We actually got Fred Roger's to come to the lab to see the latter. He's great guy: just like he is on TV. ;) Jeff