FreeGameDev

I had this idea a while ago and tried to bring it to fruition with little luck. I'm betting someone here can help me get this going!

Imagine being in a real-life go-kart, but playing STK. Allow me to explain.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that combines video cameras with real time surface mapping to allow 3D objects to appear on surfaces. For example, imagine pointing a web cam on your desk, and seeing the Eiffel tower appear in 3 dimensions on your desk when viewing the feed on your computer screen. If you have a webcam handy and don't believe me, you can see it for yourself here -> http://www.arsights.com/index.php

As the founder and CEO of Narconia.com, I contacted http://www.t-immersion.com/ to discuss possible collaboration on a PR event involving this idea. They're leading in AR right now, but we need a Mario-Kart like game to handle the functional elements while Total Immersion handles the AR part of things. We have little funds at this point, but I really want to see this happen.

Would anyone be willing to participate in this project? Contact me directly at Robby@Narconia.com or just vote/comment on my idea in the proposal pool at Narconia.com.

I'm hoping to hear from you! =D

Your description is misleading. You don't just see the Eiffel tower (or whatever 3D object) appear on your desk. It's not some magic that turns your webcam into a holographic projector. It "augments" the webcam feed with a 3D model by placing it on an image it recognizes within the viewable area of the webcam. Therefore the video from your webcam makes it look like there's a 3D Eiffel tower on your desk, although of course you are only looking at an identifiable flat piece of paper that the software is looking for.

Just to reiterate; augmented reality does not, "allow 3D objects to appear on surfaces." Augmented reality allows 3D objects to appear on videos of surfaces.

Still your idea sounds cool.

I would have voted but I would have to register just to see the idea pool. I don't like that. How can you share a link to something when it's not public? I object to having to give up my details just to have a look.

Thanks for the response Charlie! My original sentence explaining how it worked provided that added information, but it made it sound confusing. Also, I assumed it would be obvious that pointing a webcam at a surface wouldn't actually cause a 3D object to appear on the surface irl haha.

I agree with you wholeheartedly in regards to requiring an account, but people are still paranoid about their ideas being available to everyone, so I was forced by way of user satisfaction to add a small level of dedication to seeing peoples' posts. I hope that in the future, the community will become more receptive to an open forum. At Narconia, the community is King, so I will always lead our site in the path of the peoples' wants and needs.

Hi,

well, I would be willing to create an account, but apparently I can't read the terms&conditions without having an account? If I click on the 'Terms and Conditions' link on the register page, I am asked to register or login first.

But generally I don't really understand what you want;

Imagine being in a real-life go-kart, but playing STK.

So you would drive around in a real go kart, but watch on a screen stk? This sounds dangerous to me - since most likely the go kart will not be on anything resembling a STK track

So perhaps I am getting this wrong. Looking at the video there's this shot of someone playing a kart racing game with a CD in his hand (and another shot with nothing in the hands) - like the kinect. I have to admit that I don't think this is the way a kinect should be used. I tried it, and only getting frustrated reactions, and a sore arm Besides STK would need many controls (fire, nitro, view backwards).

I could imagine e.g. taking a picture of the user, and then using this picture in game (e.g. add a screen to a track in STK and show a picture of the user; or use the user's picture in highscore lists). Is this what you want to do?

Cheers,
Joerg

Haha, o wow. I'll get that fixed. Thanks for the heads-up.

Basically, the go-kart helmet is a headset. Go-karts and their tracks are generally designed with safety features such as wall bumpers and manageable speeds to reduce risk of injury from collision. However, the headset would be a semi-transparent screen, most likely a Heads Up Display or monocle, that allow the user to see the camera feed from the camera mounted on the top of the helmet.

As you look out on the track, you would see the presents augmented in 3 dimensions that could be picked up at designated marker points on the track. Using either sonic or visual positioning systems to track the position of all of the karts on the track, intersection of the karts' position with a presents' position would cause you to pick up an item for use.

In your video feed, you can now see what the item is that you've picked up. Firing a bowling ball for example, would augment the rolling ball onto the track in your view in 3 dimensions, giving you the appearance that the ball was launched out of your actual go-kart. Intersection of the theoretical location of the ball and the actual location of your friends' kart in front of you would dictate a collision. The collision would throttle back the speed of your friends' kart, allowing you to successfully pass themm, for example.

I hope that cleared things up. I'll be speaking with Total Immersion on Thursday. I contacted a go-kart facility in Haverhill, MA in the US today, and look forward to hearing back from them regarding a facility to house the project.

Our terms and privacy can be seen without signing in now. It's basically just a legal disclaimer on our end for other users being idiots. If you detect idiots, let us know and we'll investigate to ban.

Shortbutlucky {l Wrote}:Haha, o wow. I'll get that fixed. Thanks for the heads-up.

Basically, the go-kart helmet is a headset. Go-karts and their tracks are generally designed with safety features such as wall bumpers and manageable speeds to reduce risk of injury from collision. However, the headset would be a semi-transparent screen, most likely a Heads Up Display or monocle, that allow the user to see the camera feed from the camera mounted on the top of the helmet.

OK, now I understand.

As you look out on the track, you would see the presents augmented in 3 dimensions that could be picked up at designated marker points on the track. Using either sonic or visual positioning systems to track the position of all of the karts on the track, intersection of the karts' position with a presents' position would cause you to pick up an item for use.

In order for this to work we can't use STK's position, since it will never be exact enough - the kart simulation is pretty simple. I can't really say how accurate it can become if we would really tweak the parameters, but this would certainly be a lot of work. So getting the position and orientation from the real kart into STK would be a first important step.

In your video feed, you can now see what the item is that you've picked up. Firing a bowling ball for example, would augment the rolling ball onto the track in your view in 3 dimensions, giving you the appearance that the ball was launched out of your actual go-kart. Intersection of the theoretical location of the ball and the actual location of your friends' kart in front of you would dictate a collision. The collision would throttle back the speed of your friends' kart, allowing you to successfully pass themm, for example.

I hope that cleared things up. I'll be speaking with Total Immersion on Thursday. I contacted a go-kart facility in Haverhill, MA in the US today, and look forward to hearing back from them regarding a facility to house the project.

Your idea would require to create a somewhat accurate model of the real track, and then to feed the position from the karts and the orientation of the helmet into STK. Turning STK into a kind of 'replay' only engine (i.e. it doesn't run physics, it only displays the kart at a certain position) is easy (and already implemented for debugging), but STK would then still need to do collision handling. Then you would need an option to feed a 'fire' command into stk.

But then you would need to be able to feed different views into the two helmets. How should this work? ATM STK only supports split screen, i.e. you would run a server on one machine, and somehow get the two rendered images to the helmets. If you instead want to have two laptops running in each kart, which are coupled, that's basically impossible till we reach 0.9 ('impossible' meaning it would be a lot of work - a simple frame-by-frame synchronisation for LAN networking was implemented, but has proven to be too slow for wireless connected computers).

Cheers,
Joerg

Well basically, the goal is to not even need to render a track at all. AR depends on adequate surface mapping technology from the cam in order to augment objects into the real world, so STK would technically only need to handle item appearance, function, and interactivity between the karts. (Aka, kart 1 has fired a plunger, kart 2 has been hit)(kart 3 has received a bowling ball).

Positioning and collision would most likely be best handled by Total Immersion on the AR side of things since they specialize in manipulating position of a 3D object on a real surface.

To summarize, whoever the STK expert in this project is would only be responsible for connecting item design, events, and consequences. Total Immersion would handle positioning and collision on the software side. I'm working on positioning systems on the hardware side. Then we'd most likely need someone for networking to link the individual kart events together. A mechE friend of mine is willing to handle the stopping, slowing, and speeding up of the karts.

Hi Shortbutlucky,

this idea sounds awesome, but the main developers of this project (Joerg and I) are both busy with the core game and I can't see any of us investing a significant amount of time in this

Gotcha,

It's more of a learn as we go thing for fun. No need for a significant commitment, I just figured this'd be a cool thing to pursue and would get a lot of attention on the web if we could pull it off and get it out there. If anyone's interested in pitching in at all, again my e-mail is Robby@narconia.com or you can call me at (888)705-8830. I've got skype or a dedicated ventrilo server if anyone was interested in just chatting about it.

Kind regards,
-Robby R

You've got a fun game nevertheless. Great work all =D

Shortbutlucky {l Wrote}:Well basically, the goal is to not even need to render a track at all.

My wording was indeed imprecise. I thought STK would still render the items on track, and in flight (but obviously not the actual track).

AR depends on adequate surface mapping technology from the cam in order to augment objects into the real world, so STK would technically only need to handle item appearance, function, and interactivity between the karts. (Aka, kart 1 has fired a plunger, kart 2 has been hit)(kart 3 has received a bowling ball).

But also item positions, which then somehow would need to be forwarded to the helmet/AR. And kart position must always come from the karts, and that would include orientation of the karts (or you would just use a simplified approach in which the karts are always 'pointing in the right direction', ie along the track) - but this issue need to be solved. You will never be able to approximate the kart's position within STK (ok, maybe good enough for a short you tube video of driving with a curve or two ).

Positioning and collision would most likely be best handled by Total Immersion on the AR side of things since they specialize in manipulating position of a 3D object on a real surface.

What kind of collision are you talking of? With items, esp. with moving items like balls? This would then reduce STK to simple move bowling balls around - and I'd say there are easier options to do this, just chuck in a simple physics engine (or even do your own. That would be a lot easier than trying to adopt STK. Just simulate a simple homing missile going directly towards the opponent, or one just going straight

To summarize, whoever the STK expert in this project is would only be responsible for connecting item design, events, and consequences. Total Immersion would handle positioning and collision on the software side. I'm working on positioning systems on the hardware side. Then we'd most likely need someone for networking to link the individual kart events together. A mechE friend of mine is willing to handle the stopping, slowing, and speeding up of the karts.

I still think you are missing the point on how to get the kart position into whatever software system you will be using. Can I recommend sitting down and writing down the actual requirements, and designing what system is doing what precisely? I.e. where are the kart positions coming from (which are necessary in order to determine the position of whatever item is being fired), ...

But otherwise, similar to auria, I won't have time either to work on this. I am more than happy to give you a few hints. E.g. STK can already run without a display, so you would only have to get the item positions out (which is simple enough) and get them to AR/helmet (which you would have to figure out anyway), and figure out how to get the positions from the karts back into STK. And you would need someone to model the track.

Good luck!
Joerg

Ya, i'm a chemical engineer with some self taught programming skills, so I've got a lot of learning to do before I can attempt to lead a software development project like this. I'll work to get this structured with a little more detail as the pieces become more clear to me. Thanks for the tips Joerg!

I thought this was a proposition to make an arcade version of STK (you sit on a stationary go-kart with steering wheel, breaks, accelerator, and fire button). Man was I off.

Turtle {l Wrote}:I thought this was a proposition to make an arcade version of STK (you sit on a stationary go-kart with steering wheel, breaks, accelerator, and fire button). Man was I off.

I LIKE THIS!