Squidball: a game based on large-scale motion capture

Squidball developed at NYU Media Research Lab, :

Squidball is a large-scale, real-time interactive video game that uses motion capture technology to create a unique and energetic gaming experience. In the world's largest calibrated motion capture volume, the game debuted on August 12th, 2004, with an audience of 4,000 people, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, as pre-show entertainment for the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater. SIGGRAPH is the Association of Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group in Graphics.

Squidball is played with several (12 at SIGGRAPH) large (approx. 4ft in diameter), helium-filled weather balloons in retroreflective jackets -- these are the input devices for the game. By throwing, batting and bouncing the balloons throughout the playing field (which, in this case, was approximately 400x200x40 cubic ft), the audience plays to eliminate the on-screen targets, which are represented on a giant 40-foot video screen that also displays scoring and timers. As a result of this unusual motion capture application, the audience sees the balloons move across the two-dimensional video projection screen as they simultaneously interact with them in the 3-D space. Winning the game inspires and requires collective cooperation among the entire audience.

Augmented Reality Volcano

AR Volcano

The Augmented Reality (AR) Volcano Kiosk is an exhibit that teaches people about volcanoes, including details on tectonic plates, subduction, rifts, the Ring of Fire, volcano formation and of course, eruptions. (...) The user looks through a handheld display that consists of a display visor and a small camera. The camera continuously captures pictures of what the person is looking at and sends them to the computer. The computer software recognizes special patterns embedded in the 6-page book and replaces them with photo-realistic 3D objects, complete with animation, smoke, glowing lava and shimmering water. This technique is called Augmented Reality becuse you can still see the the real world around you, but it is being augmented with facinating 3D objects.

Why do I blog this? I haven't found (so far) lots of AR projects like this one, which are connected to educational purposes. See thie video here.

Real Tools for Virtual Objects

Touch Interactive (a Scotland-based consumer product design company offering a more contemporary range of design services) has this project: Real Tools for Virtual Objects:

Real Tools for Virtual Objects is an ongoing research project at Touch Interactive. The objective of the project is to develop research knowledge in the area of creative computer use with the overall aim to develop new, exciting, and more effective interactive solutions for designers working with computers for 3D design and development. The project aims to develop new tangible solutions to human-computer interaction focusing on the physical and social human interface as the absolute target for design development. (...) At this stage the project has developed input devices for generating 3D virtual concepts. This has come about from the extensive design research developed for this project from challenging contemporary computer related design and modelling solutions to traditional creative processes and physical modelling techniques. (...) Each tool has a metaphor which represents its task. They also have affordances to guide the user to perform their specific tasks. The system has seperate software windows customised for each tool.

Why do I blog this? it's a very pertinent project which connects both new tangible interfaces AND physical affordances. I like this idea of a tool seens as a metaphor to represent its task. The notion of affordance is indeed a crux issue for interaction design.

Computer-enhanced astrobiologist

(via ), an intriguing research project lead by Patrick McGuire Astronauts aboard some previous missions to the moon, such as Apollo 15 in 1971, were trained in geology, enabling them to identify ancient rocks that might reveal signs of water or life. The new system would do away with the need for such specialised training. a computer would analyse the rock formations in the astronaut's field of vision and issue an alert when it detects rock types that need to be sampled. The prototype consists of a hand-held video camera connected to a wearable computer, but later versions may link the camera to a head-up display within an astronaut's visor.

Why do I blog this? This Cybord astrobiologist project is very appealing. I skimmed through one paper about it: Field Geology with a Wearable Computer: First Results of the Cyborg Astrobiologist System. Of course, I am more interested by how people use this than how it works (it's my user experience focus). The paper reports how it was useful and the issues that emerged.

Storytelling Animals

Storytelling Animals is a project developed by Visions for Museums (v4m).

I involves young visitors at Universeum in Göteborg through introducing four animals and their exiting interaction with the Swedish landscape.

The “Audio Guides” offer the children exiting interactive explorations in the reconstructed Swedish landscape of “The Water’s way”. The project is based on the previously developed digital guides with animal characters, developed by V4M.

Bioelectric Music

Taken from a ppt talk by C.J. Bolland:

own work with the IBVA (E.E.G Interactive Brainwave Analyser) led to the development of a performance system that incorporated a Roland GR30 guitar synthesizer. Electrodes attached to the forehead provide a non localised measurement of cortical evoked potentials (neuron activity). Continuous monitoring of E.E.G produces can be broken down into analysis of signals within a particular frequency band (Beta, Alpha, Theta waves etc). The fluctuating amplitudes of these brainwave rhythms were mapped via Midi values controlling pan, modulation, timbre and additional effects for a guitar synth voice

ACM Computers in Entertainment about Pervasive Gaming

ACM Computers in Entertainment does not have a lot of issues, but the next one is about Pervasive Gaming (thanks Trond Nilsen for pointing me on it). There will be interviews with Ken Goldstein and Seamus Blackley + full interviews and papers on multiplayer games, pervasive gaming, wireless games, Xbox 360, et al. Stay tuned. Papers will be available here (you will need an ACM account).

Sports Video Game Controllers

(via) Xavix have an interesting video-game controller: a bowling ball: There is also the racket-based interaction with Xavix tennis: Why do I blog this? here there are examples of existing objects use as game controllers which can be interesting, because players are physicall engaged in the interaction.

[fringe] interactive art to follow

[fringe]:

is a Gothenburg collective of all those who can't stop making and creating works that involve or incorporate new media, emerging technologies, and/or electronic art and design. [fringe] gives local artists and designers a space for showing and sharing their work with the community here in Gothenburg.

[fringe] happens @ BIG LOVE in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Usability and playability in Augmented reality

The field of Augmented Reality is now turning itself to the current trend of user-centric approach (which is good). There is more and more attention an thus papers that concerns LBS/Pervasive Gaming/AR usability. The following paper is a relevant example: Usability and Playability Issues for ARQuake by Bruce Thomas, Nicholas Krul, Benjamin Close and Wayne Piekarski (University of South Australia, International Workshop on Entertainment Computing (IWEC 2002).

This paper presents a set of informal studies into the usability and playability of our ARQuake game. ARQuake is an outdoor Augmented Reality version of a first person perspective desktop application. One area of investigation was comparing playing the game along different points of Milgram’s Reality-Virtuality Continuum: Virtual Reality, Augmented Virtuality, and Augmented Reality. The paper reports on the feedback from a set of users operating ARQuake in an outdoor setting.

Why do I blog this? It's another example of a study that concerns 'user experience' in AR/Pervasive gaming, which is my area of research. Of course, in this example, the methology is quite simple. The authors recorded comments about different topics like the field of view, tracking, presence and movement. The most interesting thing is that they exemplify this by few problems that happened. With more powerful techniques and the use of the logfile I am sure they have, a lots of information could be derived from the user of this game.

Ubiquitous Computing Paradigms and Scenarios

At the IEE International Workshop on Intelligent Environments, there will be a relevant session about Ubiquitous Computing Paradigms and Scenarios (June, 28-29th 2005)):

This session aims to provide a forum for presenting case studies of Ubiquitous Computing paradigms and scenarios. We invite papers in any of the topics that relate to Ubiquitous Computing research, covering both technological and human aspects. An indicative and certainly non exhaustive list of topics includes Ubiquitous Computing applications:

• in a specific environment (home, office, mobile etc)
• in dynamically changing environments or context
• that support a range of human activities and situations, and service human needs
• involving everyday objects and compositions of them
• that interface with living entities or take into account biology-inspired principles
• using, managing or generating knowledge
• that compose services used to enhance well-being (including health, tourism, education, leisure, games etc)
• designed taking into account several societal aspects, such as privacy, awareness, intimacy etc.

Why do I blog this? ubicomp and tangible computing sometimes suffer from a lack of end-user attention, relying on scenarios is a good way to move forward.

slide scroller

(via chris), the slide scroller by Daniel Fallman is an interesting device fo iPAQs:

the physical design had some initial requirements. first, it needed to be a casing to host various circuitry and batteries. second, it needed to be shaped in such a way that when lying on for instance a table, the pda's screen should be facing upwards while an optical mouse sensor should be facing downwards. third, we wanted the prototype to be appealing and useful for its interactional purpose. in this, we assumed that as the prototype would not incorporate any additional buttons, knobs, or any other interactional means other than the downwards-facing sensor, the physical design would benefit from being small and anonymous; not aiming to be the center of attention.

the actual physical design, using a minimal budget, was carried out by me during the winter break of 2002-2003. a standard compaq expansion jacket, originally intended to allow two pc-cards to be attached to the ipaq, was taken to pieces. its plastic casing was then used as the basis for the physical design. two custom made electronics circuits, including an infrared beamer, the circuitry containing the optical mouse sensor, and four battery holders were then attached to piece of plastic panel. the original flipside of the expansion jacket was cut off and replaced by this plastic panel. To connect the infrared beamer with the pda, a small vacuum formed plastic hood was designed and attached to the top of the prototype. this hood, other than aesthetically somwhat pleasant, holds a small mirror which reflects the infrared beamer's signal into the pda's infrared eye. finally, the whole of the physical prototype was painted.

Therapeutic Interactive Yoga System

Responses in Light, Sound and Scent — A Therapeutic Interactive Yoga System by S. Fels, J. Gauthier and P. Smith.

an interactive system that uses gesture recognition to enhance the yoga experience through visual, auditory and olfactory feedback. Ancient theories associated with Kundalini yoga provide the theoretical basis for this research. The sensory feedback provided by the Therapeutic Interactive Yoga System promotes an immersive, multisensory experience that corresponds to the system of sensory stimuli outlined by chakra theory. As a user performs yoga, the system monitors the user’s body and responds with colour, sound and scent appropriate to the user’s yoga postures. Testing reveals that the Yoga System succeeds in producing an “enjoyable” and “relaxing” environment — one that seems to enhance the personal, meditative and therapeutic experience of yoga.

DVD controller for kids

A DVD remote control for pre-schooler, made by french toy manufacturer Berchet (which has recently been bought by his neighbor Smoby)

DVD Kids Remote Control is created specifically for children to play with their favourite TV characters. DVD Kids aims to make interactivity easier for young children through specially designed interactive DVDs.Children will enjoy fun adventures whilst learning new skills. DVD Kids offers your children a unique level of interactivity between the DVD player and your TV never achieved before. From 2 years

Why do I blog this because I am watching kids interfaces ;) This one is appealing and way better than the Shinco gamepad-like controller I mentionned last week. The remote is large enough, the two button are well positioned on each side of the controller (it's possible to add more buttons with special sheet at the center of the pad). Then the most important point is the shape and the size of the object: it's big and should be positioned on the kid's belly so that it's directly pointing the DVD set. Therefore, the designers got ride of the most important problem kids have to control tv/dvds: the fact that they have troubles pointing the device/screen. I am not very surprised to see that Berchet did a good job, they have a pretty nice lab where they do fine user-testing with kids.

For older kids, there is also the weemote:

US Marines’ robot controlled by a PS2 like controller

Via defense review, another use of video-game controllers for military purposes (see for the ps2 pad that controls missiles): a remote-controlled throwable robot for which the controller was copped from a PlayStation 2 gamepad (according to popsci). The 'Dragon Runner' and its handheld controller/backpack:

A bunch of researchers at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, Pensylvania have teamed up with the United States Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) in Quantico Virginia to create a small, lightweight little Mighty Mouse of a prototype "concept demonstrator" robot called the Dragon Runner Mobile Ground Sensor System (or just "Dragon Runner", for short), which is a man-portable mobile reconnaissance/scout robot (or "bot"), that will travel at up to 20 miles per hour and allow our Marines to "see around the corner" in urban combat/warfare environments. (...) So it can "sneak and peak", Dragon Runner is outfitted with a small video camera, an audio mic, IR (infrared) illuminators (for night operations), and IR sensors (for obstacle avoidance), and is controlled remotely by a single operator via a control unit tethered to Dragon Runner's nifty carry backback by an expandable cord that looks like a much thicker version of the cord that connects a phone handset to its base on a normal house phone. Since most Marines today have most likely grown up gaming with Sony Playstation2, Microsoft XBox, and Nintendo, controlling Dragon Runner is most likely a relative piece of cake.

A video of the robot here.

Why do I blog this? I am always interested in analogy-based phenomenon - like when something (concept/idea/design) is transfered from one field to another. Here it's pretty close (remote controlled objects) but as I stated earlier in my post about the missile guided by a PS2 pad, the interesting thing is that the game controller tends to become standard.

Malleable Music: pinching, twisting or squeezing to do music

Malleable Music is a project by Sidney Fels at the Human Communication Technologies Laboratory at the Unversity of British Columbia in Canada:

The malleable surface touch interface combines a deformable input surface and video processing to provide a whole-hand interface that exhibits many attributes of conventional touch interfaces, such as multi-point and pressure sensitivity. This interface also offer passive haptic feedback, which can be effective with applications such as sculpting or massage. (...) This interface allows for people to control the computer using pinching, twisting, squeezing and other forms of whole hand manipulation. We want to use this device to create a new musical instrument.

Video here. Why do I blog this? looking for new interactions that may be interesting to kids future games, I found that capturing touch interaction through a deformable surface is relevant idea.

Awareness Communications by Bear/Doll

Close to Nabaztag (the WiFi rabbit), there is this appealing project: bear/doll interface:

Awareness Communications by Entertaining Toy Doll Agents by Kazuyuki Saitoh1 , Tomoko Yonezawa, and Kenji Mase (paper presented at International Workshop on Entertainment Computing 2002)

We propose a sensor-doll system that provides multiple users at remote locations with an awareness communication channel. A doll is used as the interface agent of the local user, and this agent is connected to a remote doll by local and/or wide area networks. The doll sends out information on the local ambient activities and the user's intentional interactions to the remote agent and, at the same time, displays the received remote activities by adapting its presentation to the local context. Musical sound expression is used to display the remote awareness, mixing the local response and remote activities. Music also provides an entertaining and sympathetic intimacy with the doll and eventually the remote user. The design and implementation of the networked sensor-doll, equipped with various tactile sensors and a PC, are described in detail. We also discuss issues of awareness communication and give preliminary experimental results.

Why do I blog this? I thought it was a cool ambient interface for kids.

DVD player for kids

A new DVD player for kids (9 9euros), created by the company Shindo (shinco?) and distributed by Sodifa. It plays DivX, MP3, DVD and burnt CDs: Why do I blog this? it's part of my daily watch for a video game interface. I found it's a relevant new interface to play DVDs (and interactive DVDs) for kids. The idea of using the gamepad metaphor as a DVD controller is somehow relevant. The pad is interesting however the button on the DVD reader are not apparent enough and too small for kids. I am also critique about: where is the 'mute' button on the controller? there is also menu button (or is itg on the right part of the pad). In addition, there seems to be button that may have multiple functions which is bad (for instance there are no numbers, will it be the arrows?). I like the knobs but there are too tiny as well. Moreover for pre-schooler I would rather advocate for a wired pad instead of this wirless gamepad-like remote controller. I would also be interested in running small-scale test with kids to see the differences between playing video games and DVDs with this controller.

Tangible Computing versus Standard Game Controllers

There seems to be some papers that compare the difference between physically controlled game controllers and standard ones. The following one tackled this issue with regard to how appealin is it for the players to use these 2 kinds of interactions: Johnson, D. M., Gardner, M. J., Wiles, J. H., Sweetser, P. M. & Hollingsworth, K. A. 2002, The inherent appeal of physically controlled peripherals, in Entertainment Computing: Technologies and Applications, eds R. Nakatsu & J. Hoshino, Kluwer Academic Publishers, USA, pp.371-378.

The author used an experimental setting to compare how players used 2 game controllers with 2 games:

Users were given the opportunity to play two Sony Playstation 2 games, SSX Snowboarding (an arcade style snowboarding game) and Time Crisis 2 (TC2; a shooting game), with both a standard controller and an alternate control device. The alternate control devices used were a Thrustmaster Freestyler Board (a snowboard shaped device which the user stands on and shifts their weight to control) for SSX, and a Namco G-Con 2 Gun (a hand held imitation pistol which is aimed at the screen) for TC2.

Then players had to use those 2 controllers with the 2 games, one after another. They used a 9 points Likert scale to evaluate the appeal of each (+ open ended questions). The results are interesting:

The qualitative findings indicate that physically implemented controllers do not always offer a greater quality of control than standard controllers, nor are they necessarily more realistic or intuitive. The findings across the two games support the first hypothesis, that the quality of control experienced by a user will be improved by physically controlled game peripherals which offer the user a more realistic or intuitive interaction. (...) It is important to note that while physically controlled peripherals seem to consistently lead to fun on the part of the user they do not necessarily lead to greater ease or quality of control.

There is also an account of the quantitative findings:

Overall, the ANOVA results suggest a consistent set of findings for TC2, and more complex patterns for SSX. For TC2, the physical controller (gun) was preferred over the standard controller for game performance, level of control, fun, ease of use, and overall preference. For SSX, the standard controller was generally preferred, except for ratings of fun. Also, ratings made by inexperienced and female users tended to be more equivocal than those made by experienced and male users respectively. (...) Overall, the results indicated that controller preferences are not simply determined by the nature of the device (standard versus physical) but instead that preferences are moderated by amount of control, intuitiveness and degree of realism experienced, and also by demographic factors of gender and experience level.

Why do I blog this? I'm interested in how people use game controllers, especially with regard to specific game play. Recently, tangible interaction is more and more trendy but there is a strong needs to evaluate how it can fit to peculiar game design. This kind of study is then very relevant for game designers to take crux decisions.

Tangible Video Browser

Another project by the MIT Tangible Media group, the Tangible Video Browser:

The Tangible Video Browser provides a tactile and efficient interface for viewing digital videos. Tokens act as both containers for a set of videos and controllers for selecting a video and navigating within the video. Placing a token on the interface enables access to the set of videos and depressing, releasing, and rotating the token controls the navigation.

Why do I blog this? last year I did some research for a company about remote controller. Clickers indeed sucks and suffers from tremendous usability problems. Embedding the interaction in a tangible controller would be a nice solution.