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Making 'Second Life' More Like Real Life

Making 'Second Life' More Like Real Life

See now this is much more interesting, and in my mind - is a step forward (and useful evolution of virtual worlds).

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Take the new position-tracking system developed by Tokyo University, which uses a mat printed with colorful codes and an ordinary Web camera to calculate the player's position in three dimensions.

The user turns left, and the avatar turns left. The user crouches down, and the avatar follows.

"This technology lets you use take the actions you'd use in real life and transpose them to the virtual world," said research leader Michitaka Hirose. "It could make maneuvering much, much easier."

At a recent demonstration in Tokyo, researcher Katsunori Tanaka strapped a Web camera to his hip, lens down, and walked around on a large mat with specially coded patterns on it. On a large screen was the computer graphic-generated 3-D world of his avatar.

As Tanaka moved across the mat, the view on the screen shifted perspective. When he crouched down to peer under a virtual parked car, the image swerved to show what his avatar would "see" the vehicle's underside.

posted by Netwoman @ 9:29 AM