I just thought that the cool contraptions I had dreamt up was worth sketching out. Here they are:
Top left corner: That’s the next generation dancing machine I had a dream about. As you can see, it looks like a mix between a DDR machine and a PPP machine. The circles on the floor are both sensors and panels, so it can sort of tell between hands swinging over it and feet stomping it. There’s a bar that can be opened sideways, for bar hugging… come now, no dancing machine is complete without the bar. The entire machine is enclosed in this slick cylindrical design. More elegant than what I’ve drawn, actually, but as you can see, I’m actually quite bad at drawing machines.
Center: That’s the girl I saw from my dream, playing the thing that I’ll now refer to as Dream Stage. The screen somehow instructs her to do DDR style stomps or swing her hand around PPP style. It was actually quite fun until she failed, I thought she was doing well.
Oh, for those who have unfortunately never seen a PPP (Para Para Paradise) machine, it’s basically a game where you swing your hands across sensors in order to make arrows go away like DDR, but you can be very elaborate on your motions even though it isn’t being judged by the machine.
Lower Left: A series of sketches on how the VR-FPS machine works. First the back panel covers my back, then the front panel closes in. I then get trapped in this rigid thing and I felt it tilt back. then I found my hand around two guns and the googles suddenly turns on. I guess they put it on me somehow and since I’m wearing glasses I couldn’t feel them put it on.
Lower Right: How I’d play the game. All you have to do is force your body in a direction like how you’d push the joystick and you’ll walk forward, backward, and strafe. You don’t actually hit the walls like how I’ve drawn in the picture. The stuff felt like a combination of gel and styrofoam.
Bottom (Small): just a typical “screenshot” of how the game would look like. It’s not perfect emulation… like 3D glasses, you can peak outside the goggle area and things would look slanted, but since you’re inside a pitch black chamber, it does help getting your eyes focused on the screen.
I seriously think these two things are great. The foot-hand combination thing for Dream Stage is great, but I really love the FPS controls. While we don’t really have motion detection gels at this day and age, I’m certain that we can use motion capture equipment like the ones game studio use to make game movements – add that system to a set of wires that hangs you in mid-air, and you got yourself a virtual reality control system more elaborate and effective than anything that’s out there so far – this is one that might actually work better than the keyboard-mouse combination, and I had “gameplay experience” to prove it! (although it might just be myself letting myself win in my own dream…)