The Gadget Show Live, April 2013: Technology in the UK
by Ian Cutress on April 4, 2013 6:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- UK
- Gadget Show
I hope I am right in saying that most of us have been to that one ‘ride’ in a theme park or museum, that attempts to emulate a roller coaster or a car ride, with images on every wall along with the sensation of wind in the hair. The IglooVision concept is almost similar to this, except you are in a large igloo shaped dome with a PC and a first person shooter game.
In the marketing video above (much better than any one I took at the event), the gamer sits with a keyboard and mouse to enjoy the experience. The version igloo had on display at GSL was a little different.
Let me set the scene – you are holding a gun like device with a sensor on it, and are standing in the middle of the igloo with a large field of vision screen showing Crysis 3. There is an analog stick on the gun to strafe, but where you point the gun is where the screen will be looking.
The system uses five projection screens in the roof of the tent to broadcast the image you see, and anything outside the field of vision is black (otherwise you could look behind instantly). If you turn 10 degrees in a direction, the system responds by moving the image around the inside of the tent and you are facing the new direction. It sounds and looks amazing at first, with the minor downside that actually you are just rotating in a small tent.
The hardware under the system is actually quite interesting from our point of view. The part which makes the IglooVision system theirs is the depth at which they integrate the system in to the rendering pipeline. So on the base of it all is a system powered by an AMD Eyefinity card that outputs the image to five Mac Minis. The Mac Mini’s have information about where the gun is pointing, and calculate how much of the original rendered image has to be shown on its projector. The other difficult part of the equation is making the game recognize the difference between strafing and turning with the new input methods.
Obviously this is all still very early prototype stuff. Ideally Igloovision would have it all minimized into one PC to power the five projectors, and make it work on any title possible. I was told that the bulk of their code deals with OpenGL, but due to recent media coverage in the UK, NVIDIA have had interest and the company is dealing with NVIDIA and APIs under NDA to help improve the system.
My critiques came in a few parts – one was the resolution/quality (the overall output was only 720p), second was the frame rate which was around 20-25 FPS, and the third was the lag. Much like the problems Oculus has with head turning, IglooVision has the same here, and there was a noticeable lag in the system. Talking to one of the team at the event, the fact it was an early prototype was repeated often enough that they know it is an area to work on!
IglooVision itself have marketed this technology for entertainment other than games, such as at Festivals or corporate events to promote products (with and without the motion sensing). The company has 8 full time staff, and was initially funded through independent investors. They have sold their system to at least one client, and as such are feeling the pressure of deadlines! While the system overall is not one for the home, I can see use at LANs in terms of the gaming market. Good luck to them, I would love to see it finished. This is essentially what we should have had with the Wii on day one!
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hrrmph - Sunday, April 7, 2013 - link
Ahh yes, but Amazon.co.uk has had the Netgear D6300 WiFi-ac Router / ADSL Modem for 6 months or so. Currently at a mere £170 ($270).Amazon.com in the US only just got that listed and only in the Amazon Market Place from 2 third-party sellers. The French seller only wants $410, while the Irish seller wants $450.
I had to import my Blackberry Z10 from Canada; my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 from Dubai, and my old Philips X523 Dual-SIM from China.
If you are a global thinker, the world is full of apparently "locked washrooms on the highway of life." They can be overcome, but, as you rightly pointed out, it will cost you.
Oh and a UK seller just last week refused to send to the USA some snorkeling gear that is otherwise out of stock elsewhere. Guess that one would cost a plane ticket and the old "ship to hotel room at LHR Terminal 5" trick or ship to friends house in Europe. Been there, done that, on both sides of the Pond.
Not picking on any one country here, but if you think globally, trade barriers are everywhere.
They exist from currency (why does pound sterling demand a 60% premium over the dollar?) to restricted shipping (already covered) to restricted availability (hey Hollywood, how about those DVDs that Obama gave to the Queen that couldn't be played in the UK) to lack of standardization (hate the big British electrical plugs and the whole American special "letter sized" paper thing is inefficient compared to the new world standard A4).
How about the ridiculously un-Spock-logical date format that the USA uses. Who puts the medium sized (medium granuled) units first, the finest units in the middle, and the coarsest ones at the end. We do!
Umm... didn't we lose an interplanetary mission because we Americans couldn't be bothered to switch to metric like the rest of the world. I think the chimps will be converted to metric before we do.
And, whats this quaint thing where Europe has a political union, but still cannot agree on a unified language to trade in. Arabs have a common formal language across 2 continents. Why cannot 'The Continent' do the same?
Driving on the left? I'm tired of switching my brain back and forth depending on who's territory it happens to be in. The right generally prevails worldwide. The left has lost. Let the former empire get over it and get its roads properly untwisted.
Are we solving the world's problems yet? The first step is admitting there is a problem.
Okay, that's enough for now. Maybe the kids can fix this irrational mess that we've been unable to. ;)
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IglooGaming - Tuesday, April 9, 2013 - link
Glad you enjoyed the dome. We are well aware of some of the issues and these will be ironed out in the next few months. We have some big collaborations lined and hopefully we can launch this very soon. The beauty is that we can take any game made for Trinity and play it immediately in the dome. Also we need to work on the control system, which we have in development. This will be much more accurate. If you want to know more please contact ian@igloovision.comDeviceSquad - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I went to the SadGit Show on Friday and it was more of the same tat, aside from maybe six items we highlighted on our Device Squad website.BrennaFullen - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
This is a very cool exhibition from the University of Cambridge, I think many students were interested in visiting it, you can also attend a dissertation writing service by clicking here , you will find all the necessary materials for writing dissertations, I think it will be interesting for you.