What an appealing piece of haberdashery
The "gargoyles" among us will no doubt piss themselves in glee -- actual humans may find themselves not so completely enthralled.
CES 2012 Week Sony's 3D head-mounted display, the HMZ-T1, may have lit up the CES floor last year, but in 2012 there's a new kid on the block: SmartGoggles. Sensics' Natalia, the company's first expedition using its SmartGoggles technology, is a fully-immersive pair of 3D goggles. SmartGoggles, Sensics Natalia Natalia …
In the 80's they looked a bit meh, nothing has changed. Fuck it, Sony did this crap in the 80's iirc. If you want to do this, get a couple of LCD's, put them in some sunglasses, get a wire to connect to some cheap headphones and a wifi device and your done.
Then try and explain why people should buy it and run into a brick wall.
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I should point out that "gargoyles" is a reference to the Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash (possibly earlier?) where people wearing this sort of getup were given the name.
Quote from the book:
"Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; there getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculater pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time."
What would be really awesome is if we could use these to experience a changed reality. For example, one reason special relativity is hard to grasp is that we can't actually perceive it. So how about using these to let us walk about in a world in which the speed-of-light is reduced to 30mph...
Ideally, I want to walk around in the real-world, and have the computer calculate the effects for me...
Anyone who has read "Mr. Tompkins in Paperback" will know what I mean
in the milenium edition of pcgamer (or was it pc zone, i forget), they did a futuretech speculation article set up as a mock news report. One of the articles was how a gadget such as this erased homeless people from the users vision, optionally replacing them with cartoon characters.
Those of you familiar with dennou coil can see it's awesome future just a little bit closer...
Aaron Em - A couple of people make references above to reading material and the information held within, which you haven't read, and neither have I. "Mr Tompkins in Paperback"? WTF is that? I'm not even going to deem it worthy of a quick check on Wiki, but I will berate the commentor.
Richard Neill - hang your head in shame. Perhaps you should just do me and Aaron a favour and burn that book so that we don't have to.
Aaron - I agree with you - if you go to the expense of buying a gaming magazine, why would you go to the effort of reading any of the editorials, or comments or anything not specifically related with a game review? How many trees have been devastated due to this nonsense that is worthless and should be removed from all gaming magazines forthwith.
How dare these people reference things you and I haven't read and therefore don't understand. Don't they realise the internet revolves around people like you I, and rules regarding our lowest common denominator status need to be adherred to? Every conversation, every thread and every comment on the internet must be specific to our beliefs, or at least all conversations / threads / comments must be only based upon those things of which we have an understanding and therefore relevant opinion.
I've read plenty of PC Gamer -- subscribed to it, in fact, back in my misspent youth. How do you think I know it's not to be taken seriously? And I don't need to read 'Mr Tompkins in Paperback', whatever that may be, in order to amuse myself by noodling around the consequences of a physics in which c = 30mph.
Has some progressive blog or other recently done a rabble-rouser on how awful Reg comments are, or something? Seems like all of a sudden there's a lot of schoolmarm hegemonists around here demanding that everyone on the Internet be nice to each other.
Considering that the first (or possibly second) effect of a world where c = 30mph would be that you'd be rendered blind because no photons would be reaching your retinas -- and that the second (or possibly first) effect would be that you'd drop dead in your tracks as a result of your body being built on a physics which no longer works -- why do you need silly nonsense goggles at all? Just hit yourself hard on the back of the head with half a brick, you'll get the same result and save yourself six grand. (Well, your executors, but still.)
"So watching VR porn is probably not recommended, then..."
Oh I don't know.... This thing tracks hand movements right? So it can use that to monitor the users level of arousal and make the 3D Virtual Strumpet respond accordingly.
Putting it crudely the faster the right hand moves the more enthusiastically the pixellated floozie (or whatever) writhes and moans, until eventually, assuming you've got the calibration right, reaching a simulated climax simultaneously with the... [pauses to consider words] ...user.
Paris 'cos she'd see the IT angle of this one right away :-)
Does it know how high (from the real world floor) your gestures are being made at?
ie can it tell the difference between a crouching hit and a standing one?
If not, epic fail - no 1:1 sword fighting game (The holy grail of motion controlled games IMHO) using this system then.