[HN Gopher] Tilt-5 Was Magical
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Tilt-5 Was Magical
Author : jpm_sd
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-11-23 13:15 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kguttag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kguttag.com)
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Disclosure, I have done some consulting for Tilt-5.
|
| I really don't think people appreciate the technology of a retro
| reflective game surface and individual viewers. The concept that
| everyone gets to look at the game board from their own
| perspective is simultaneously "of course" and completely
| unintuitive to folks who are thinking "computer game." I am not
| sure why this is but so often the comment from people who see the
| glasses for the first time is "Wow! I really didn't know what to
| expect I guess, this is AMAZING!"
|
| After it is out there, and people have them in their hands, I
| expect WoC to wake up and say "Holy crap, we could do MtG
| tournaments with this without renting a venue." And I give Jeri a
| lot of credit for holding on to her vision of AR on game boards.
| That got out of her control at CastAR but here I think it is
| going to ship as envisioned and be marvelous.
| treis wrote:
| The problem with hidden state is interacting with hidden state.
| Like if we're playing battleship the partition blocks you from
| seeing where I place my ships. But with a filtered display you
| can see where I move my hand and know there's a ship there. In
| short, hidden state requires hidden interaction which means
| some sort of controller.
|
| At that point we might as well be playing video games on
| separate screens.
|
| I think what we want is better board games. Which means
| cooperative play in a large world. Or maybe cool graphics. Or
| maybe the convenience of not having to buy/store physical
| games.
| gumby wrote:
| There is a controller. Unfortunately they haven't yet revived
| the demo we did at CastAR where you reached out and
| manipulated real physical objects in the game. I have a video
| of that somewhere.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| So excellent idea. Consider that the players are in different
| rooms/places potentially thousands of miles apart. You look
| down at a patch of ocean with your ships arrayed and floating
| as if at anchor. Using the wand, you move over the game board
| and a light grid it superimposed on the surface of the ocean.
| As you reach a grid you suspect might have a ship or boat you
| click the wand trigger. A projectile come in from off screen
| and either you see a splash in the ocean or an explosion.
| With some debris around it. You repeat with the grid square
| next to it and another explosion and then a flaming patrol
| boat visualizes and sinks before your eyes.
|
| Meanwhile when your opponent moves, in your array of ships
| you see the ocean splash as they take shots that don't hit
| your ships, and when they do, your ship begins to burn and
| flame. Eventually they get enough hits that the ship will
| sink. At that point both you and you opponent get to watch it
| sink.
|
| You cannot see your opponent or their hands so that state is
| always hidden.
| treis wrote:
| How is that better than playing on a tablet?
| pavon wrote:
| The same reasons that playing in VR is better than on a
| monitor. But then one would question why this is better
| than VR. If all the players are physically separate and
| movement of physical pieces is limited (because all the
| opponent pieces are now virtual) you lose much of the
| benefit of AR.
|
| This device is really best suited for people playing
| together in person (with online play a nice alternative,
| but not a primary target). As such I think a better
| example of the sort of hidden state it would work well
| with is Stratego. In that game the full board is visible
| to everyone but the identity of the individual playing
| pieces are not.
|
| There are many other things you could do with hidden
| state, like show the stats of all your pieces floating
| above them, but not those of the opponents. Or show
| terrain of the board where your pieces have visited to
| you, but not to your opponents (who have to guess by your
| motions). It doesn't need to be completely hidden -
| partial knowledge or fog-of-war can make for interesting
| game dynamics as well.
| jacobolus wrote:
| If closely mimicking physical Battleship (or similar games
| that hide state by physical occlusion) is important, you
| could add a 2-retroreflective-sided board vertically in the
| middle to block each player's view of the other's hands.
|
| But a software game has many other possible mechanics that
| don't work with a physical plastic board and pegs, so more
| likely people will just modify the game so that seeing
| someone's hand motions doesn't reveal hidden state.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Magic! That was the same feeling I had when I saw my first
| autostereoscopic display in about 1997 playing some DOOM-like
| game. I ACTUALLY LOOKED BEHIND THE DISPLAY LIKE I WAS A CAVEMAN
| TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW THE LITTLE PEOPLE GOT INSIDE THE BOX.
| O_O
| invisible wrote:
| So excited to have backed this myself. It's been...a long time
| coming. Not just from this kickstarter, but a past kickstarter.
|
| The craziest part is that this is what it can do _before many
| people even have it in their hands_. The potential for this tech
| (outside of gaming even) is pretty far-reaching.
|
| So glad that Jeri was able to get this thing to fruition this go-
| around amid the pandemic and all of the logistic problems that
| has created for creating new tech.
| nraynaud wrote:
| As an anecdote, the CEO of tilt five wrote the guidance software
| for the Astra rocket that went sideways when an engine quit upon
| takeoff.
| wumpus wrote:
| That's how I remember the story, too, but I ran into Jeri at a
| conference a couple of weeks ago and she said she actually did
| the telemetry system. Which is also amazing.
| nraynaud wrote:
| oops, sorry for the misinformation
| sterlind wrote:
| That was an amazing demo of Astra's guidance, in a positive
| way. Scott Manley did a video on it. Once the engine quit, the
| rest of the engines had to be vectored completely over to keep
| the rocket pointed up. And it did! If guidance hadn't been so
| adaptive, the rocket would have nosedived and blown up on the
| launch pad.
| [deleted]
| ksec wrote:
| Copied From michaelbuckbee [1]
|
| Ellsworth is a personal hero of mine - incredibly smart, wildly
| talented and has a real vision for this space.
|
| All that being said, it's a nightmare of a space which is why I
| don't think there's been a big funding event for Tilt5.
|
| "Meta View" was an AR company that raised $75mil, had a star
| studded list of VR/AR technology folks, only ever shipped a
| couple thousand units and now is defunct.
|
| Magic Leap raised $3.5 Billion and now has given up on shipping a
| consumer device (Enterprise only).
|
| Microsoft's Hololens exited consumer applications even earlier,
| enterprise only.
|
| Oculus Quest is the most successful consumer VR tech (about 5
| million sold) but it's really unclear if they're anywhere close
| to turning a profit and they've spent tons to try and jump start
| game developers in VR.
|
| Tilt5 would require from the ground up games to be made, large
| volumes of orders/units to be profitable and even if all that
| came together could still be kneecapped by chip shortages and
| supply chain issues.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29322696
| k__ wrote:
| I think, AR like this is the future of gaming.
|
| VR is a cool idea, but it falls short on so many levels. It looks
| cool to go into a space that isn't there, but you always have
| issues with the mismatch of your surroundings and the VR world.
|
| Playing Xing, and the recent Myst remake is awesome on desktop,
| but very tiresome on VR. The haptics are obviously not there and
| either you can't really walk where you need to go or you
| "teleport" around which feels strange. Overall its tiring
| mentally and physically.
| taeric wrote:
| This cracks me up. I don't think you are wrong, but I also
| remember not liking the original myst, thinking it was mainly a
| gimmick for cdrom drives.
|
| So, not being wrong doesn't necessarily mean you are right.
| There is a chance the vr world lights up. Hard to really say.
| Causality1 wrote:
| As someone whose VR headset has been collecting dust for a
| year, I think the key is movement. Moving in VR just sucks.
| Either you teleport around which is disorienting or you slide
| with a stick which is nauseating. All my favorite VR
| experiences didn't require me to move further than my play
| area. If someone comes up with a cheap omnidirectional
| treadmill or something just as good it'll blow the market
| wide open. Until then, almost everything is more fun on a
| normal screen than in VR.
| soylentcola wrote:
| I found seated "sims" or games like Elite were fine for me,
| but anything that tried to replicate the FPS-style running
| around was a no-go. I guess it's even better in those
| arcade-style setups with moving seats to help replicate the
| feeling of movement and position seen with the eyes, but
| that's even more complicated than treadmills and such.
|
| I think that for VR, the trick is to stick to experiences
| where your POV matches your meat-space position. Trying to
| shoehorn the conventions of flat-panel games into 3d VR
| either requires a lot of increasingly complex sim stuff or
| is just always gonna give you that mismatch between what
| you see and what you feel.
|
| In that sense, I agree that AR is probably a lot more
| doable if you intend to be walking/running around.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| And the motion sickness, ugh. I'm not prone to motion sickness,
| but for some reason the subtle delays really affect me. I don't
| quite feel sick necessarily, but if I do VR for about 10
| minutes, I feel just kinda _off_ for about 3-5 hours
| afterwards. It 's not a good feeling.
|
| I honestly don't really think it will become a household thing
| until they develop black-mirror-type contact lenses.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I am _somewhat_ prone to it, and I got seasick for about 12
| hours from 30 minutes of sedate VR once. Eventually I
| realized what I needed to do was go outside and walk around
| to reset things. I haven 't had anything that bad since-
| spending a bit more time in VR helps a _lot_ - but it's not
| like I can just hand someone a headset and tell them to try
| it for more than a couple minutes without risking ruining
| their day.
| Karliss wrote:
| Do any of current VR headsets do reprojection within headset
| independently from the game framerate similar to what tilt-5
| does? I would expect it to help a lot with minimizing any delays
| and thus reducing motion sickness. Shouldn't it work even better
| with VR since most objects are further away from eyes compared to
| virtual tabletop thus smaller change in shape of them when doing
| minor head movements?
|
| I can think of two potential problems with VR reprojection that
| don't affect tilt-5 as much. Virtual tabletop rendered by most
| tilt-5 applications is closer to being flat surface which can be
| reprojected perfectly (ignoring pixel density). There is no
| rendered content to draw on the edges of screen when turning the
| head left or right, in case of tilt-5 unless your head is very
| close to the board nothing is rendered on the edges of FOV anyway
| since the board is in the middle of it. Might not be too much of
| problem since FOV edges need less details. Simply fading black or
| generating filler based on edge colors similar to TVs with
| ambilight might be good enough. There is also an option to render
| slightly wider FOV to give some buffer area if it means that
| hitting high framerate isn't as critical.
| bencoder wrote:
| Yes, all of the headsets do some form of reprojection if frames
| are not generated fast enough, or to account for the latency
| between generation and display.
|
| If you turn your head fast you'll see black at the edges where
| it's not caught up
| Taywee wrote:
| I would love to work something like this into my D&D sessions.
| Looks amazing.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Could we put the reflector on a wall, blow it up, and use it as a
| window with virtual screens behind it to create a "multi-monitor"
| set-up like others are trying out in VR right now? Or do the
| tracking markers have a limitation in how big a rectangle they
| can follow?
| nraynaud wrote:
| I wanted to do that for CAD modelling if the glasses can be
| worn all day long. Look a the display for normal things, and
| look at the reflective panel for 3D things. I guess game
| developers could be interested too.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| > The resolution is a modest 1280 by 720p
|
| > It has a 110-degree field of view
|
| With that big of a field of view, and that low of a resolution,
| I don't think you'd be happy with reading text. But I'm just
| guessing.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| 1280x720 AR eyeset can be good to excellent for reading text
| (I do it often).
|
| But, the comfort is around a dozen lines (or less) per
| screen...
| vanderZwan wrote:
| That only applies to projection cone + pixels on the glasses.
| It's not how it necessarily translates to "effective"
| resolution on the wall when moving your head.
|
| I mean, I don't typically read with the corner of my eye. The
| eye saccades are relatively central.
| kguttag wrote:
| As others have said, that is probably not the best use of
| Tilt-5's technology. No matter how you move your head, it is
| still 1280x768 pixels spread over 110 degrees.
|
| Doing a little math, that is only about 13 pixels per degree or
| 4.5 arcminute/pixel. Typical VR headsets are about 30
| pixels/degree (2-arcminutes per pixel. For optical text reading
| like with a computer monitor, I consider 40 pixels/degree
| (1.5arcminutes/pixel) the bare minimum.
|
| There is also some scintillation from the beaded screen. Not
| terrible, but enough that it would not be good for text. So
| even if the resolution was higher (which is possible with this
| technology), I'm still not sure it would be good as a computer
| monitor.
|
| The case where it works best seems to be in "tabletop"
| applications, and it behaves best when the viewer is about 45
| degrees to the surface. Business and military applications for
| things such as "sand tables" also fit this model.
| Fnoord wrote:
| This would be a cool way to play a virtual version of M:tG or
| Hearthstone. Or Netrunner or Slay the Spire. Or Warhammer
| (Quest). Etc etc. Especially during a pandemic. But one can also
| already play RPGs where you have to use your imagination instead.
| Then _you_ are the VR /AR.
| sparsely wrote:
| I didn't realise how precise the reflections from retro-
| reflective materials were. I'd always just thought they were for
| high vis gear, cool to see such a creative use for them here!
| rkangel wrote:
| It's taken me a moment to think things through, but they only
| need to be precise enough to get back to the relevant user and
| not the one 90 degrees round the table.
|
| The precision that's important is the projector. You project
| the top left 'pixel' to the top left of the board, it retro
| reflects back in your general direction _from the top left of
| the board_. Same for bottom right and all the other pixels.
|
| I presume the better the retro-reflectivity the more efficient
| the system is (because less light is wasted going to places
| that aren't your eye), but it only needs to be 90 degree ish
| good enough for selectivity
| ajayyy wrote:
| There is a different image per eye, so much more precise than
| that
| rkangel wrote:
| If you read the article, the retro-reflectivity is not used
| to separate left and right eye images. Two different
| projections with different polarisations are done, and then
| filtered into the correct eyes. See the section "Left and
| Right Eye Stereo Polarization" under "A little of the
| physics".
| PaulHoule wrote:
| You don't need perfect separation to get a good stereo
| effect.
|
| My son bought a pack of red-blue 3d glasses and we were
| looking at anaglyphic images online and enjoying them even
| though the images weren't perfectly clean.
|
| In 3-d movies (Toy Story 3d) there are places where an
| isolated really bright object shows through cross channels
| and there some double imaging but it doesn't break the 3d.
|
| These work for most people
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Eye
|
| and the channels aren't separated at all, your brain are
| doing it all out of desperation for closure. (Blood in the
| Gutter!)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Crosstalk can cause nausea and headaches in some people,
| just like VAC and motion lag.
|
| That being said, circular polarization off of a retro
| reflective screen is one of the two state of the art ways
| of doing step stereo 3d: if you saw Avatar in a modern
| theater, there's a good chance that was used, so
| crosstalk should be minimal and much better than with an
| anaglyph.
|
| [edit]
|
| I should also note that circular polarization is
| different from the linear polarization that was used e.g.
| in Disney attractions in the '90s (and thus still used in
| some of the older attractions). With linear polarization
| if you tilt your head 45 degrees to one side or the other
| you will get an even mix of the L/R channels in each eye.
| Circular polarization does not have that issue.
|
| Though it seems to me with the projector originating from
| the same plane as the glasses, circular polarization
| would be redundant. I'm sure the engineers there know
| more than someone who dropped out of physics after
| flunking the optics lab though :)
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