Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!mg@munnari.oz.au From: mg@munnari.oz.au (Mike Gigante) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: Re: VR in art - medium or instrument? (sculpture) Message-ID: <12012@milton.u.washington.edu> Date: 30 Nov 90 05:13:59 GMT References: <11812@milton.u.washington.edu> <11890@milton.u.washington.edu> <119 Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu Lines: 62 Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu brucec%phoebus.labs.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Bruce Cohen;;50-662;LP=A;) writes: >In article <11890@milton.u.washington.edu> mg@munnari.oz.au (Mike Gigante) writ e >s: >> >> Robert Owen is a sculptor here who has experimented with conventional >> CG modellers in our lab. Conventional modelling tools are still >> very clumsy compared to physical (i.e. using your hands) for a large >> class of models. >Bet your life they're clumsy! yes, I have been using such things for quite a while and before I even knew about VR tecnology I have wanted to just "reach in and grab the damn thing". >> >> With a pair of gloves, eyephones and lots of software, we hope to make >> a really neat equivilent to clay modelling in VR space. >I'm salivating already. That's almost everything I want. The last little >item is something I forgot to mention in my original posting: haptic >feedback (including what we've been calling force-feedback in postings in >this group) in the gloves. You can sculpt without feedback (at least >I think you can; can't say I've tried it), but I bet it feels like trying >to mold air with wooden paddles. Mike, do you have plans to investigate >feedback? The basic support in the original Dataglove, piezo-vibrators on >the fingers, might be enough to make a big difference, even if you can't >distinguish textures. >-- This of course is the big question. I have though of surrogate methods for feedback. One of them is a superposition of a regular grid in the working space. Anytime part of the object or hand passes through the any of the cell walls, a projection of the wall is superimposed on the object/hand. (Is this clear? it is sort of like passing your hand through a `force-field' as in sf movies.) If these cell boundaries are of different colours, you can at least tell proximity. It doesn't help as much as physical feedback, but I don't know much about that area. One of the other possibilities is little nodules that can be inflated/raised (or whatever) when you `touch' some VR object. I saw a mouse at siggraph that had something like that. UNC's system of active force feedback doesn't seem quite so relevent in the sculpting case. I dunno, maybe we need an active `straight-jacket' that you wear. using inverse kinematics, you could constrain the hand position. yet still allow elbow movement etc. In fact I like this idea... >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Speaker-to-managers, aka >Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab email: brucec@tekchips.labs.tek.com >Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503)627-5241 >M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077 Mike Gigante, RMIT Australia mg@godzilla.cgl.rmit.oz.au