| Author | Message | ||
     SamH Rating: N/A |
This may seem like a strange thing to do, but I am writing to report on the attempt to model with 3D studio Max while using an HMD and head tracker. The impetus for this 'experiment' is two fold: First economic: my notebooks monitor is a bit small for modeling intense scenes. I have been dreaming of more screen real estate, and thought this might be, an albeit eccentric way of getting there. Second, the motivation is philosophical - readings of Gibson, Stephenson, and lately Barry, all have the heroes and heroin’s with their respective machines and not much ancillary hardware, certainly not 75lb 21" CRT monitors. I thought it might be cool to 'goggle in' and see if I could get some work done. On to the review: The hardware: I-Glasses SVGA - this is the model before the current line of supposed upgraded optics Intersense intertrax 2 USB Dell Inspiron 8200 P4 2.0GHz, 1Mb RAM NVidia Quadro 4Go The Software 3Dstudio Max 6.0 Intersense Server Windows XP -> The Intersense server software is used to provide a 'virtual desktop.' This is done because the native resolution of the I-sense HMD is only 800x600 pixels, way to low for any serious work. This virtual desktop pans naturally with head movements via the tracker. The tracking was smooth and easily adjustable via the gain controls in the server software. Right out of the box however there is a large problem which many emails to Intersens have not resolved: While the desktop can be expanded almost infinitely, the maximum size of any one window can only be increased to what windows 'thinks' the desktop resolution is. That then is 800x600. There is a workaround though. Instead of cold switching the display over to the HMD and disabling the integrated monitor on the laptop, instead, extend the display onto the HMD. Windows will then allow you to maximize windows on the HMD's display to the maximum resolution of the laptops display. This workaround obviously wouldn't work if the HMD was the solitary display on the system. I am not going to go to heavily into the optics of the HMD, since I have read that these have largely been addressed in newer versions. If anyone reading this post finds it of so much value that they would like to send me a new pair gratis for review, I am open to that, will be objective, and will return them after intense and thorough testing. :-) Getting to actually running the software: One would think with the Quadro based GPU that 3DSMax would prefer an OpenGL based renderer. This is actually not the case. I found that I got better performance switching 3DS to its DirectX rendering system. Even there though, there was a great deal of refresh lag, especially when performing modeling operations. Just sitting and panning around the interface without actually doing anything worked ok, but once I got into actually modeling things the screen sort of got into a psychedelic 'wipe' effect. This is probably a limitation of my notebooks rather wimpy hardware, and would most likely be resolved by a high end gaming GPU and processor. Lastly - I did not set my system to use large fonts as I normally do when using the HMD. Perhaps due to this, I did begin to experience eye strain after about 25-30 minutes. This may also have been compounded by my frustration at the fairly unusable state of the screen refresh. All in all I would like to try this interface with more robust hardware. I would like to see intersense get into that bug with the window size. That being said, I can see people ditching even the latest wide screen displays for HMDs, oh say, 50 or 60 years from now. SamH | ||
| HmdJunk Rating: N/A |
Hey, nice ideas you have! I actually though about a way to customize current 1st-person shooters with a headtracked HMD and a additional IR-tracker (or anything else) for aming.. The ultimate way to get into the games market would be to sell a HMD-set with a integrated headtracker + another (bluetooth?) tracking device that allows 'kids' to use their toyarms as a kind of lightguns... just a little add like these lasersights policmen screw on their handguns. Such a HMD set, combined with a special driver (or some software mods )for the newest games would be a real success;) | ||
| Markus Rating: N/A |
Hi, you wrote "and lately Barry". Since i'm a big fan of Gibson and Stephenson, could you be more specific with the authors name or the title you are refering to? Thx Markus | ||
| Samh Rating: N/A |
Max Barry _Jennifer Government_ another good one: Jeff Noon _Vurt_ others - some of which I havent got around to reading yet Synners The Demolished Man Broken Angles Altered Carbon Carlucci Storming The Reality Studio (critical history) Wetware Anything by rudi rucker |
