Agreed, although I'm at a loss to come up with another solution for 3D apart from a stereoscopic display. While the idea of capturing an interference pattern in a hologram to create a true 3D image is sexy as hell, I can't fathom a technology that could create such an interference pattern in real time at a high enough frame rate and resolution to enable 3D holographic video displays. Maybe they'll figure it out when we finally get our flying cars!
I have the HTC vive and I'm still enjoying it. I think the big problem with current VR gaming is related to the games themselves and not the technology. They're still looking for that "killer app" that will break the genre wide open. I thought Beat Sabre might be the one, but I think it's popularity has peaked. A decent Star Wars-themed first-person shooter would probably work though.Until something new comes along, VR is going to remain a novelty. It's fun to play with for a time. Hell, I even own an Oculus but the novelty wears off after a bit.
Regarding the tech: Flecom went to the IAAPA Expo in Orlando a year or two ago and they had a large room-scale multiplayer VR game room set up where players wore backpack-mounted gaming laptops and standard HTC Vive headsets. He said they had 30 people in a 40 ft square room all running around shooting one another in a "Call Of Duty" style game. From his description it sounded amazing. True, this isn't practical for a home setup, but they do have wireless options for the Vive now, and with the improvements in the controllers and the displays I think all that's missing is the right game. (Even though I'll admit that having enough open space will always be a challenge, unless you opt for a stand-in-place treadmill.)
I agree. If every player is wearing a VR headset the board itself isn't needed. But augmented reality *does* have a coolness factor all it's own, so maybe that's what they were going for? (And if so, then a single 2D overhead projector will give you pseudo-3D augmented reality for a lot less money.)
Yup. For a typical high-reflectivity glass-bead screen, I think you'd be looking at a usable viewing angle (well, a cone) of about 15 degrees. If you reduce the brightness of the screen you can increase that of course, but now you run into two problems: one, the image will get dimmer as more light is scattered in other directions and is lost, and two, the polarization difference will start to smear together which will spoil the image quality.I'd speculate a large proportion of the light will still reflect off in other directions and be lost, resulting in a dim image that fluctuates in brightness according to the angle of incidence.
Bingo. This, to me, is the biggest challenge of the entire setup. I just don't see how you could make this work with people sitting on opposite sides of the table and both projecting their own views down to the screen.The light lost from the projection by the other players, especially the guy sat opposite is surely going to be reflected into your vision and cause some kind of flare or ghosting
Hmmm. So, hypothetically, let's take this in an entirely different direction: Assume you have LCD shutter goggles on each player (max of 4) and say you run the master overhead display at some ridiculously high frame rate - call it 240 frames per second. Further assume that the computer/graphics card driving this can calculate 4 separate 3D views of the board in real time based on head-tracking position data from each player's goggles. (Dual or Quad RTX 2080 with SLI should do it. Probably quad GTX 1070 SLI would be enough.)unless they have done something trick with the polarisation timings so other players projections are either on the opposite polarity or fall into the brief switching period between polarities where no light is let through
Now you interleave the displayed frames like this: Player one - left eye view. Player two - left eye view. Player three - left eye view. Player four - left eye view. And now back to Player one - RIGHT eye view. And so on... Close the shutters on each set of goggles whenever another player's view is being shown. You would then get 30 frames per second for each eye, 60 frames per second for each player, and a total frame rate of 240 frames per second.
Each player would still have full view of the game board so the cool augmented reality feature is preserved (so you can use your favorite figurines or whatever) and as long as the overhead projector is bright enough you can still see well enough even with the LCD shutters closed for 75% of the time. You could even include "hidden" objects that are unique to each player. I think this would end up being more affordable than having 4 separate computers each driving a VR headset.
The main issue I see with this arrangement would be the super-brief exposure time for each player. (1/240th of a second per eye)
I know for a single exposure the response time is around 10 ms. This would be closer to 4 ms, but it's also a repeating image, so it might still work.
Would probably flicker like hell though. Sigh. Maybe it's not such a hot idea after all...
Hehe! I like that analogy. Yeah, the more I think about this whole thing, the more I'm convinced that it's a non-starter. And to try to do it WIRELESSLY just adds that much more complexity. I doubt we'll see this in Best Buy anytime soon...it seems to me this is an attempt to reinvent the wheel, possibly in the aim of bringing a lower cost solution. However, the issue with reinventing the wheel, is you need to ensure it still comes out round.
Adam