Make Your Own Fun

In response to “The First Steps to the Holodeck” from The Escapist Forum: Well its a nice dream….

But the reality is that we are still far far away from a “holodeck”. Yes you can surround yourself with video in a CAVE (try the Pirates of the Carribean game at DisneyQuest in Florida) or, likely more reasonably, strap on an HMD with head tracking. And yes, already some MMOs are supporting 3D virtualized sound. But haptic feedback remains as elusive as ever.

The “pressure suit” concept comes from air force flight simulators. It’s great if you want to simulate the rush of blood to or away from your head and get real “red out” and “black out” but its hardly a general purpose haptic device unless your simulation world consists of being surrounded by randomly inflating balloons.

There are some haptic feedback devices on the market today such as the Novint Falcon (http://home.novint.com/products/novint_falcon.php) but again unless what you want to simulate is pushing and pulling a little handle in your virtual world, the applications are pretty limited.

In short the visual and audio ability to do a “holodeck” have been around since Jaron Lanier coined the term Virtual Reality. What remains distant, however, are all the OTHER sensations that make it anything more then a ghostly world of empty images and sounds.

– Cyberqat

Even if all the technology was there, I still don’t think the holodeck would be the hit everyone thinks it would be. Why you ask? Because it would require a certain level of physical effort to “play”. Nobody is going to do that.

– Novan Leon

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In response to “The Life Nomadic with Nintendo DS” from The Escapist Forum: That’s an excellent little story dude. If there’s one thing I always wondered, with my five year VISA for the UK sitting next to me, how I’d cope with little funds and barely a place to live. Something tells me that in times of need, it’ll be my DS and not my PSP to help me out.

Thanks for the tips dude and now I know who to blame if I successfully end up living on the streets!

– StolenName

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In response to “Black Magic” from The Escapist Forum: Small devices with crappy screens won’t pull me for now. It was the same for me with phones playing mp3’s a few years back, the sound quality was so crap I would rather just go without it.

I think the moment they integrate them with glasses that can display the information and even overlay information over real life objects, that will be the day I will sit up and take notice.

– Trulock

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In response to “How to be a Wizard” from The Escapist Forum: Great article.

It accurately describes the mystique around geocaching and it reminds me of my first cache find. I especially liked the “invisible thread” imagery… how true!

– lorenzolio

Been geocaching for almost 2 years. This hobby has introduced me to more places than I would have ever imagined. It has taken me down countless dirt roads in the Jersey Pine Barrens, on top of a skyscraper in New Orleans , in rock formations on beautiful beaches in Bermuda, a buried schooner, hidden corners of old San Juan, covered bridges, a burning town in Pennsylvania, and more.

For me, there is no greater adventure than geocaching.

– Pirate Brahm