The future of 3d gaming?

Johnny Lee, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon, appears to have invented one of the most promising home virtual reality displays I’ve ever seen. To do so, he attached the standard Wii sensor bar to a pair of glasses and put the Wii remote on the TV (essentially reversing the typical usage).

The effect is surprisingly convincing - click play, or visit YouTube to watch Johnny demonstrate his Wii-based VR system. If you want to skip all the setup, the 3d head tracking starts at 2:45 into the clip. via zdnet

To see some other great projects from Johnny Lee, including more using the Wii, check out his CMU Projects Page.

Get Neatorama by

RSS or email

this post? Please

email a friend

+reddit

+SU

Posted on

February 21, 2008 at 11:15 pm by Anita
Category: Science & Tech

From our new online store:


Neatoramanaut	Type Bike	I Heart Biology
» More fun T-shirt designs at our Online Store

18 comments to "The future of 3d gaming?"

mattytiz
February 21st, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Pretty awesome stuff. Always good to see people messing with the Wii, using a fairly simple gaming system and doing stuff like this, the future of 3d gaming
VonSkippy
February 21st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Yatta!
Alex
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 am
Wow, that is awesome!
darksider
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:28 am
Nintendo needs to hire this guy
Taylor
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 am
Yeah, its fantastic except the program he uses can crash your computer.
Don’t try this at home, kids.
kaloran
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:14 am
he’s got a funny voice. Kinda like a really smart, Kermit the Frog.
murre-
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 am
It sure looks awesome! Although people who have tried it on their own say the effect, sadly, isn’t as spectacular as the video make it look. :/
Rosi
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:40 am
Wow! It’s like a virtual boy that actually works and isn’t just red and black and doesn’t make your eyes hurt (that was a pretty bad console all round…)!
The only problem with this though is that in real life it would probably be less impressive because I am partially blind and have no depth perception… so for me at least I’m hoping the move to VR won’t come too soon.
Also because playing Resident Evil in 3D would probably render me unable to sleep for at least a year. ^_^
drr
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 am
For cheap multiplayer you could use shutter glasses (user sees only every nth frame). Only problem is it divides your fps by the number of players.
rojaro
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:41 am
This is a really great idea. Better than the LCD shutter glasses i still have lying around in a box somewhere since you dont need a 200Mhz screen display to get a 100Mhz 3D picture. Also, These shutter glasses work with every OpenGL / DirectX compatible game just through an additional tool which reconfigures the nVidia driver for the 3D display and i think it should be fairly easy for nVidia to adapt that tool for this ‘reverse wii-mote’ method. I really would like to see this concept turned into a real world product and if the hardware is solid i’d be really happy to shell out a 100 bucks for this.
Louise
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:57 am
Ohmygod. This guy is a genius. An evil genius because he has created something that will render players unable to ever shut off the Wii and return to rl.
Justin
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:08 am
OH MY GOD! NINTENDO! Hire this guy! Not only was I taken aback by the idea, but he was also incredibly professional and well put together for someone making a youtube video.
growabrain
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
5 years or earlier, Johnny Lee directed one of my all-time favorite videos, capturing the internet experience. It is called “Happiness”

http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/2004/04/the_meaning_of_.html
Chris W
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
i saw this video a few months back and it still amazes me! Nintendo really should hire this guy. He has come up with a really cool idea, and if it was worked on, perfected and commercialised this could be the next big thing of gaming!! would be awesome for 1st person shooter games.
Christophe
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:04 pm
wiis : is there anything they can’t do?
heather
February 25th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
This guy is brilliant! I would have never thought that 3-d tracking technology for games would be so simple. Nintendo better get this guy a development job fast, or someone else will.
pedro
February 25th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
wow! it’s incredible simply brilliant! go johnny!
Chuck
February 28th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
This is great!

I have actually caught myself, while playing shooters or survival horror games mostly, leaning my head left or right trying to get a better peek around a corner in a game.

Wow would this be cool!