Virtual Reality Venue - VE

[kylelefevre]

Hello All,

I've been on the forums now for a few months. I came here while researching headmount displays for the project I was working on, and came upon the Rift. I've been glued to this forum ever since. I wanted to share the project my team has been working on for the past 4 months. We are finally ready to launch it on Indiegogo(edited). It is presently pending approval, so we will likely be launching it sometime in the next few days. That said, we would love to get some feedback from the community.

The concept is a venue based VR gaming center. That has evolving story lines you play over time on your different visits. To add to that is an at home companion game that has alternate storylines. The first experience is called Project HeLa a survival horror game.

If you get a chance, check out our website to see the video we will launch with, concept art, and more details. We would greatly appreciate any feedback. This is an awesome community for that.

http://www.ExperienceVE.com

Thanks!

Edit*
It is now officially launched! However, we did change up our plans and have gone with Indiegogo. Take a look!

http://www.indiegogo.com/experienceve?a=1189128

Please share it with people you know if you like it! Thanks again!

A tech demo concept level picture - "Dust"


Some concept art from Project HeLa

[brantlew]

Well I like the ambition. People have been talking about doing VR facilities for a while. Some of the technical details are a little light. More important than the graphics technology is going to be the tracking technology. Do you plan to use a pre-existing professional skeletal motion capture system or are you developing your own optical system in-house? How do you plan to scale to that size of a facility? I can see limitations both with the wireless HDMI and with the optical tracking without a lot of custom hardware/software work. Where is your projected first facility located?

[kylelefevre]

Thanks for the feedback Brantlew. The first city is Chicago. The technical details are light for two reasons. First to not bog down the casual kickstarter backer that is not interested in it, and second some of it is internal knowledge only at this point. I absolutely agree with you that pretty graphics don't mean much, but we do need to sell the story. Great hardware with no story very rarely is successful either.
It will be readily available hardware that is modified to our uses. Scalability is already squared away, we can ultimately handle any space depending on funds raised.

As for the wireless HDMI, that is actually the most difficult part. We have tested distance and can get more than 75 ft without obstruction, which is fine for our setup as there will not be obstruction. We also have a prototype we are working on if necessary for moving the base station around - think a conveyor type setup - so combined with longer HDMI cable (untested but from my understanding 30 ft without loss) we can further our coverage.

Our biggest overall challenge in general is latency, but I'm confident we have that all set. We will have sub 10 ms latency from skeletal tracking, sub 10 ms from wireless hdmi, and sub 10 ms from the IMU. The IMU's that are being used are also solid for up to 200 ft. We have spent a lot of time finding the best hardware out there to make this project stable.

[Zaptruder]

Nice. I had a similar idea myself, but was calling it PAARC... or Physical Activity Augmented Reality Center.

The basic idea was to create a warehouse with obstacles where objects could be moved around and clambered over while the AR/VR system projected over those obstacles.

It would mostly be large white boxes in reality, but then you can still have basic objects like barrels at site and have to scale virtual barrels in game.


The proof of concept in the video looks interesting... but I think given the amount of money required and the potential target market (i.e. quite small initially - because if I'm not near it, I'd be far less interested in funding it), this is definetly a venture cap style project.

I mean it'd traditionally be a borrow from the bank, or get money from friends and family kinda deal before the internet as well. It's basically a mix between an arcade and a paint ball/light gun type setup.

[kylelefevre]

Zaptruder - I absolutely agree with you on the challenges of raising money from people outside of the Chicago area. Our hope is that we do a good enough job getting the word out around Chicago, have people who are interested in playing the companion game if they are too far away, friends/family that love us, and people who just want to see it come to exist so we can expand further!

Thanks for the feedback!

[brantlew]

As for the wireless HDMI, that is actually the most difficult part. We have tested distance and can get more than 75 ft without obstruction, which is fine for our setup as there will not be obstruction. We also have a prototype we are working on if necessary for moving the base station around - think a conveyor type setup - so combined with longer HDMI cable (untested but from my understanding 30 ft without loss) we can further our coverage

What about having a more sophisticated network rendering system so that as the player passed from one zone to the next, a different computer and transmitter would take over the rendering? I guess there are an equal number of problems associated with smoothly passing the player from signal to signal, but at least then you wouldn't have to deal with the mechanical complexities of moving a computer and power source around.

[kylelefevre]

Brantlew - Passing from one server to another is certainly a possibility. However, we are very cautious about the concept as any issues with the change could have bad results (ie player running into something). We will be able to get by without any mechanical or software changes. The facility will be setup to have the base stations centrally located, within reach of all areas of the facility, and without obstruction. Ultimately if we keep the facility within a certain dimension we will be ok. We also will continue to look out for better and stronger wireless hdmi units that will suit our needs.

[brantlew]

One last idea. If you reduce your criteria for graphics, you could just render locally at the player with a small mobile device equivalent to a smart phone. You would still need a central server to coordinate the player positions and fuse the skeletal tracking, but the bandwidth requirements and latency would be tiny compared to multi-player HDMI transmission. And the range would be extended as well - using something as easy as WiFi.

For me personally - as long as the tracking and latency are accurate and stable, I would be fine with a loss of visual fidelity - especially if the range and environmental complexity could be increased. And we're not talking about going back to 80's graphics here. Smart phone class devices are capable of some compelling visuals these days.

[kylelefevre]

We have thought of that path as an alternative also (along with laptops on the back, etc), and honestly even UDK has a pretty decent mobile platform that could be usable especially to start. Within a couple years I wouldn't be surprised to see mobile graphics starting to catchup to where we are now.

That said we wish to start our plans on the high end of the spectrum. I'll agree with you in that even running the experience off of mobile 3d graphics would be a great time. However, there have been many small virtual reality simulators over the years done in numerous ways. Between latency, mechanics, and graphics they have never taken off as a long term wide spread venture. We really want to help spread this technology and make it better for everyone. We feel it needs to be a strongly immersive experience to have staying power.

Part of our Kickstarter, if you look at it when it launches, states that part of our philosophy. We will be sharing all the details of our hardware once we launch the product. I've personally wanted this to exist for years, so I want it to keep getting better for all!

I remember playing counter-strike 10 years ago and thinking to myself, "why doesn't someone create a scale model of militia or dust and track players in it for a virtual "real life" death match." Granted it wasn't feasible back then....but it is now!

I love the feedback though thanks for your thoughts. Feel free to keep them coming.

[Chriky]

Looks really cool, its an idea that a few people on the forums have discussed. I was wondering how the skeletal tracking works, it looks like they have IR lights that flash at different rates with fixed cameras looking out for them...? Is that right?

[Zaptruder]

I was just thinking... if you can get this working well, you'd be able to capitalize by getting theme parks and similar places as investors/buyers for the tech.

Imagine doing Harry Potter with this tech - 'learning to cast spells in Hogwarts'.

[kylelefevre]

Chriky - The optical tracking technology we aren't going to far into describing at this time. There are a number of reasons behind this. What we use now works just fine, but it will require more work on the software side for us to make custom as we grow to the size planned. Ultimately, depending on the levels of funds raised we may use a different technology. There are four different methods we are looking at based upon - funds raised, how much each company will partner with us (we are speaking with 3 of 4 presently), cost, accuracy, development needs.

Ultimately, all systems are accurate enough and low enough latency to be safe for all players. That said some are easier to deploy and will cut out a lot of the work on our side. Finally we want to establish a solid partnership with a vendor to continue further growth into the future. Sorry, I know that didn't answer your questions, but we will be releasing full details of how to put together the system in the future for everyone to enjoy.

Zaptruder - Yes licensing & consulting is 100% a part of our companies strategic plan moving forward. The number of companies that could benefit from this are numerous. I was watching Terminator Salvation the other day and kept thinking about how exciting it would be to see that running on our system.

[brantlew]

I still can't shake the feeling that you are making a mistake with the HDMI streaming. Now obviously you're still prototyping so it's easy at this point to investigate different avenues. But I feel that if you go too far down that path that you may end up wrestling with issues of range, stability, and scalability. Issues that you would not have to tackle with localized rendering. And ultimately I think the feeling of immersion and "connectedness" is more tied to the system response instead of the visual fidelity. You could put players in a Tron grid and they would feel immersed as long as the system felt stable and latency free. Just my 2 cents...

[kylelefevre]

Brantlew - You are correct that at this stage in the game we can always shift gears pretty easy. That's also the beauty of being a small startup and not a huge company. All things considered we can change course if that is necessary. The budget for our project allows us to go down either avenue. We are continually conducting tests and will continue to do so. We feel strongly at this time that our approach will work sucessfuly.

Another important aspect in our minds is raw computing power we can put into the system. With the clients running on servers that are wired Ethernet connections we increase stability and lower latency. Really it causes less potential issues from cropping up and the only real concern is the strength of the wireless hdmi signal.

We also have put a projected space of 5,000 - 10,000 sq ft for that specific reason. If we are struggling to make the 10,000 sq ft work properly, we know we can do it in 5,000. So essentially we create two separate play spaces each running their Experience, as opposed to one larger one.

Just out of curiosity have you had bad experiences with using wireless hdmi technology? We had our own doubts on it first as well, but were pleasantly surprised with the results.

[brantlew]

No, I don't have first hand experience with wireless HDMI. But I do have a lot of experience with telepresence robotics and video streaming over WiFi. Admittedly - a different animal but I know first-hand how crippling of an experience it is with even minor drops in throughput. With local headtracking and rendering, network lag will manifest itself in more subtle ways like choppiness in other players or skeletal tracking but your immediate sensory experience will be stable. With video transmission however, any drop in throughput will result in a jarring discontinuity that could kill the immersion.

[cybereality]

Sounds like an interesting project. I wish you guys the best.

[kylelefevre]

Thanks all for the kind words. It is now officially launched! However, we did change up our plans and have gone with Indiegogo. Take a look!

http://www.indiegogo.com/experienceve?a=1189128

Please share it with people you know if you like it! Thanks again!