Make: Online: Virtual Worlds Archives

Archive: Virtual Worlds

November 6, 2009

Claim virtual turf with real-life balls

Want to claim your city as your own? Competing with a rival gang for turf, and want to avoid messy knife fights? Well now you can, thanks to Urban Defender. Working over a short time period, a team of students from Zurich University of Arts built a system to claim buildings by throwing a specially equipped ball at them. Impacts are detected by an accelerometer connected to an Arduino, which is wirelessly connected to a Beagle board which uses a GPS to coordinate the hit to a specific address.

They apparently didn't have time to finish the multi-player version of the game, but I think the concept is too good to let die. Someone should definitely hook this up to the social networking game foursquare. As a bonus, you could use the sensor units to play the actual game four square when you get tired of fighting for turf.

October 28, 2009

DIY virtual reality goggles

Check out this cool Android-based head mounted display. Andrew Lim of recombu.com used an HTC Magic running Google Street View, safety goggles, and some cardboard to fashion one of the coolest HMD this side of Lawnmowerman. [Thanks, Andrew!]

October 16, 2009

Street View's embedded videos

Phil Clandillon has a cool new video project featuring Google Earth mashups with panoramic images of specific locations relating to the background of the music on the Editors' new album.

After the break is more background info.

Read full story

October 13, 2009

Giant hand torments city goers

Here's an excellent use for a giant LED billboard: a crazy augmented reality installation. The appropriately titled Hands From Above was made by artist Chris O'Shea. Want to create your own? You might run into trouble finding such a nice billboard to use, however the programming environments he used- openFrameworks and openCV - are both freely available. His source code doesn't seem to be available though, unfortunately. [via interactive architecture]

October 12, 2009

Fantasy cartography forum

Cartographer's Guild is a thriving online community for folks who are interested in making maps of places that do not exist. There are some really beautiful graphics to be found, particularly, in their Cartographer's Choice forum. Shown at the top of the post is Sapiento's Post Apocalyptic Amerika, and immediately above is töff's Map of Ceres: 16th Millenium.

October 6, 2009

Make your food look better with augmented reality cookies

The fine folks over at Telart have been baking up some special cookies. Instead of worrying about making their cookies look appetizing, they instead focused their efforts on making them look like a fiducial, and then used an augmented reality program to put their logo on top of the cookie.

This is pretty cool by itself, but think of the potential for the technology. Don't like eating your veggies? Pop in the appropriate models, and appease your mom while nomming on delicious cookies. Want to build an obsolescence-proof kids cereal? Make fiducial-o's instead, and let your customers download the latest software when they want to eat them. Forget to make a cake for your significant other's birthday? No issue, just drop down a loaf of bread with one of these markers baked in, and voila! The possibilities are endless.

Check out their instructions to try this at home!

Update: Permissions on the video were updated to allow it to be included above.

September 25, 2009

Wearable eyeball sees what you can't

This conceptual sensory augmentation device is one of the creepier ones I've seen, I think because it seems to have a mind of it's own. The Miruko wearable eyeball attaches to your body, and continually scans for monsters that only it can see. Once it finds one, you can follow it's gaze to figure out where it is looking. To capture the moment, you pull out your trusty iPhone, which is running an augmented reality program, to finally see the virtual target. For now, it appears to be only looking for monsters, but I'm not sure I would trust it to do that for long. After all, it appears to be a monster itself, and why should it be loyal to us humans? If it starts leading people down dark tunnels, don't say I didn't warn you.

There aren't any build instructions, but do you really want to unleash this kind of thing on the world? Ok, I agree. Anyone know how to build a monster detection sensor?

[via pink tentacle]

Layar AR goes 3D

Layar, the augmented reality app for the Android platform will be incorporating 3D capabilities into the application in November. They've released a tech preview this week for PICNIC '09 in Amsterdam. The preview, which is available from the Android Market (and only works with-in and around the PICNIC festival) is a significant improvement over flat pins on a map and hopefully encourages people to further investigate the use of augmented reality.

[via androidworld.nl]

September 23, 2009

Heads-up iPhone AR navigation system

Tokyo-based Ubiquitous Entertainment has built the iPhone ARider, a portable head-mounted navigation prototype. It attaches to a standard bike helmet and is capable of delivering visuals via a Scalar Corporation T3-A retractable HMD. With the glut of AR apps hitting the market you'll likely see a lot more HMD projects showing up in the near future. If you know of or are working on an AR physical computing project and would like to share, please leave a comment.

21th Century "Chonmage" ARider [via zikkir]

September 18, 2009

Augmented Reality Pool / Pool Playing Robot

Deep Green, the pool-playing robot from the Robotics & Computer Vision lab at Queen's University has been making the rounds on other websites recently. Its robot arm uses a huge gantry to move anywhere over the table, and then a special cue stick tool to hit the ball.

It's hugely impressive, but the size and complexity of the hardware puts it out of reach for most Makers [please -- someone prove me wrong!]. So, that's why I was attracted to the second half of the video: The students developed an equally impressive augmented reality mode that works without the robot. By using a projector and a camera located above the table, it recognizes the position of balls. As the player moves their pool cue, the system projects the predicted trajectory of the balls right on the table. If you can hit the ball consistently, this could be a great help in visualizing & setting up complicated shots!

The tech of Burning Man

@brady mentions some of the noteworthy tech coming to this year's Burning Man festival in this article over at O'Reilly Radar. Items of interest include local SMS and Burning Man Earth online directory, API, and beta iPhone app.

Burning Man Gets an API (and a Whole Lot More)

June 18, 2009

Interactive ping-pong table / virtual aquarium

Ah, the gay (19)90s: before Y2K, 9/11, Gitmo, CDOs, and all kinds of other depressing modern acronyms. Venture capital fell from the sky like manna, and everyone was getting rich on the Internet, even though nobody knew exactly how. Enter, into that milieu, the following brilliant idea, courtesy of the wunderkinder at MIT's then-ascendant Media Lab: Ping-pong tables ought to contain schools of virtual fish that react to the impact of the ball. The rave toy to end all rave toys!

Pre-coffee sarcasm aside, this really is pretty cool. PingPongPlus is the work of Craig Wisneski, Julian Orbanes, Ben Chun and Professor Hiroshi Ishii. The "fish" mode is only one of several possible interactions, and they all include sound effects. Check out the vid:

April 5, 2009

Updated Power Glove with Bluetooth and Arduino

Power Glove 20th Anniversary Edition -- Build Video from Matt Mechtley on Vimeo.

Matt Mechtley is responsible for this maker's dream project: getting a classic Nintendo Power Glove to work with custom games by replacing it's brain with an arduino, implanting an accelerometer for motion detection, and using a bluetooth modem for wireless connectivity. He's outdone himself with downloadable code, schematics, this awesome video, and an Instructable to top it off. You may remember Matt from my asphalt mosaics video, or from the many appearances of the video games he works on around the internet. Matt writes:

I always loved the Nintendo Power Glove. Not because it was a fun or useful peripheral -- it wasn't. In fact it wasn't bad, as Lucas asserted, it was absolutely terrible. Only two games were ever made to work with it -- Super Glove Ball and Bad Street Brawler. You could use it with other NES games of course, but it was just an obfuscated controller. Plus, it was horribly imprecise, and since it required a sensor bar to find its orientation, you had to hold your hand at shoulder level all the time. No, I loved the Power Glove for what it represented -- a precursor to virtual reality, a way for humans to directly manipulate computers, like an artifact from some sort of alternate future Earth.

I realized one day that we're actually living in that future. It doesn't look the same as we imagined it, but the necessary elements are all there. It's been 20 years now since Mattel released the Power Glove, in 1989. Especially in the last few years, the availability of sophisticated sensing equipment to hardware hackers has grown by leaps and bounds. Technology like programmable microcontrollers, accelerometers, and Bluetooth are readily available -- and cheap. In short, the time is ripe to re-make the Power Glove -- and make it right.

April 4, 2009

TouchTable map

This is a neat Touchable map via Wired Science. I wonder if Apple has a patent on the multitouch for non-portable applications.

He says it was designed for kids to learn geography, but it appears that the Department of Education was not paying the bill. It's kind of like the interactive LED table from EMS, but way more expensive and militaristic.

March 22, 2009

Helen O'Loy, the original DIY Bride?

Image from KuiperCliff

The Steven writes in the comments:

You say DIY bride, I think of Helen O'Loy by Lester Del Rey

Well, maybe you haven't heard of ol' Helen O'Loy either. O'Loy sounds a lot like Alloy, doesn't it?

Spoiler Alert: Don't read the wikipedia entry, it gives too much info.

Spoiler-less synopsys:

Dave and Phil are two pals who spend a lot of time together. Although Dave is a robot repairman and Phil is a doctor, they become increasingly interested in building their own robotic housekeeper. Finally they produce "Lena", a housekeeping robot who does a pretty good job of things, but she still lacks the common sense that comes from having emotions. After trying - and failing - with mechanical glands in Lena, they order a high quality Dillard's robot to experiment with. The results are good, but a little bit too real as their new creation, Helen, falls madly in love with one of them.

Maybe you want to read it for yourself, then Google Books is your friend. Or if you want to hold a real atomic version, then you can have that too.

Read any good robofiction lately?

March 21, 2009

Wearable metadata

Patty Maes of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab introduces what may be the must have gadget in the not so far future.

The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user's pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user's fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

Thanks Lyle and Susan.

Want to give this system a try? She says it can be made from off the shelf parts for just $350. Post up your ideas in the comments, and show us your stuff in the MAKE Flickr pool.

Posted by Chris Connors | Mar 21, 2009 08:00 PM
Computers, Culture jamming, DIY Projects, Electronics, Gadgets, hacks, How it's made, Imaging, Something I want to learn to do..., Telecommunications, Virtual Worlds, Wearables, Wireless | Permalink | Comments (7) | Email Entry | Suggest a Site

March 14, 2009

Hangar No. 5: Blender-made action movie

Nathan sent this tip in via the comments:

"Hangar No. 5": The story of two treasure-hunting teens sneaking into an abandoned military base looking for a rumored gold cache. Once inside, they accidentally activate a top secret relic of the Cold War - a huge mobile weapons system bent on protecting the base from all intruders. Cut off from every exit, the pair must fight to survive.
Running 11 minutes, this live-action short was produced entirely by undergraduate students during fall 2007 and spring 2008. The film contains 110 visual effects shots, all of which were completed by the film's visual effects supervisor using the open-source animation software Blender for all 3D work Apple's Shake compositing software for 2D work.

The varied effects in the film include a fully CG robot, CG set extensions, green screen replacement, extensive rotoscoping, wire removal, 3D camera tracking, image based modeling and lighting, volumetric lighting effects, and particle effects. All CG models,
textures, and other assets were built from the ground up.

Pretty cool video, death dealing robots, racks of automatic weapons, conspiracy, great special effects, mounds of gold bullion, clever story and a cliff hanging ending. For more information, check out the project's site. They set up a funding mechanism where people can contribute to the producers of the film before downloading it.

How do you like working in groups? What is the best thing you have created in school or university? How does a collaborative project help prepare you or your students for life and work in the modern world? How do you plan on funding your projects? How important is money to your projects? What have you or your students created with Blender? Share your thoughts and projects in the comments, and pass along your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

March 13, 2009

Solve a Rubik's Cube with Blender

Youtube user Petitblenderman has a great video of a Rubik's Cube solved in a Blender animation.

Danny says this looks reasonably solid. You may remember Danny's laser cut tactile cube post by Collin.

Looks pretty legit to me. The cube's colors are all in the right place, although I was a little confused at about :27 where in the middle of the solution, the cube seems to be scrambled only by half turns (180 degree turns on a face). The rest of the solution is in half turns, which is unusual. It looks good though!

Have you got any clever Rubik's Cube solutions/problems? Have you made something cool with Blender? Join the conversation in the comments, and contribute your photos and video to the MAKE Flickr pool.

March 8, 2009

Night of the Living Dead Pixels

Peter writes in the comments about Blender. He and his mates did an independent study to learn Blender, an open source software platform for 3D design and animation. The results of their work is a clever short film titled The Night of the Living Dead Pixels. Their video animation was awarded best short film at the 2007 Suzanne Awards for creating with Blender.

Via email, Peter says of the project:

We (myself, Jere Virta and Jussi Saarelma) are currently fourth-year 3D animation students at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Vantaa, Finland. As part of our degrees we are required to do five months of internship.
About two years ago, towards the end of our second year, we were approached by our lecturer Kristian Simolin (who I by the way happen to know follows the Make blog...), asking whether we wanted to spend the summer months with access to the school computer labs, teach ourselves Blender, create some sort of animation to prove we'd done so, and have it count towards our required internship. The three of us had collaborated on some animation projects before, and found out that we worked well together, so we jumped at the chance.

A really great aspect of their project is that they hit it from so many different angles. Sure, they learned some newfangled software, but they also documented their process. They blogged about the making of the video, telling of their successes and setbacks, they created a website, they posted their work online. When students go through such great effort to tell the story of their project's creation, not only do they learn the skills of the project, they also provide a path into the ideas for the students and teachers who follow them. Their YouTube account has many short segments of their work, showing the evolution of the project.

Peter again:

For our animation we wanted something combining our love for videogames, zombie flicks and offbeat/poor humour. Arriving at a concept we all could agree on was pretty easy.

At that point we had previous experience with using 3ds max, and for this kind of work we found that Blender had no problems standing up to it. It's lightweight (loads in seconds, and even runs off a USB thumbdrive if you want), full of features (even has its own integrated video editor and compositor, in addition to the 3D tools), and once you get past the initial hurdle (which really isn't as steep as some people would have you believe) the user interface lets you work very efficiently. We found the user community great for support, and the fact that you can get more or less directly in touch with the developers to ask about possible bugs and the like is pretty amazing

From their blog:

Jussi, Peter and Jere, three 3D Animation students at Laurea Polytechnic, Vantaa, Finland are doing the internship of their dreams over the summer: Learn the free 3D software Blender, produce a short animation and keep a blog about what spending the summer in a school computer lab feels like.

Peter suggested the forums as a good place to get help on learning Blender.

Fluid sims in Blender

Blender is an open source software project that allows users to create three dimensional objects which can then be rendered into animation sequences and more.

From ~kronick

Does your school use Blender? What great things have you designed with Blender? What is the best way to get started learning Blender? Add your ideas to the comments, and contribute your photos and videos to the MAKE Flickr pool.