Starting out the year - cont.
Wrap around
The best peripheral vision experience I’ve had was with the old Matrox Parhelia and three monitors. But the problem was the games themselves. They had to be tweaked to get the world to open up to that resolution. With today’s GPUS (think SLI or Crossfire driving four displays) and the narrow bezels of the new LCD monitors, the gap between views is really small now. (One visitor to the VideoSaver web site suggested a utility that allows the user to specify how many pixels are between each monitor so that they can be "skipped" and thus the image looks seamless between the two monitors. It would be like looking through windows. Wouldn’t that be smart? Think flight sims.
Controls
The way I will know I am a true gamer, and not just an over the hill pixel chaser, is when I break down and start buying (or begging) the controls. I mean THE controls, the steering wheel and foot pedals, the joystick built in to the rocking chair, y’know, the real deal.
Is this the Holodeck?
How many SciFi books have we read that involve super VR? (I’ve even waded through the Otherland series by Tad Williams.) How many episodes of StarTrek have we seen with the Holodeck? As you may know I’ve conducted panels at Siggraph with luminaries from the graphics industry to discuss the future of graphics, and an interesting thing always comes out, almost doesn’t mater what the intended topic is. Eventually some one will mention the Holodeck – the holy grail of CGI.
And that’s what it’s really all about.
So when Microsoft and JAMDAT start to tell me about casual games, my eyes, what’s let of them after repeated laser blasts and near by explosions, gloss over and I try to be polite. Sure that’s great for those guys who are trying to build their market penetration, but it’s not what I’m after. And that’s why my New Year’s resolution is so important.
If we don’t keep playing the hot games, staying on the front line so to speak, and feed our findings, complaints, demands, and congratulations back to game developers, what we’ll end up with is a billizon puzzle games and Doom XXIV.
That’s why it’s important (and I’m not joking here) for us to play as many off the new games as we can, and to use the best equipment as we can get -- and to try the latest gear and garb. We can get a lot closer to the Holodeck, we don’t have to wear dorky headsets to get a VR world, this stuff will get better, evolve and be less expensive. The developers just need the encouragement, and that means spending your hard earned quid to get and try the toys.
Do your duty
So do your duty. Get out there and buy something weird. Try a game you wouldn’t normally try. See if you can find a pair of VR gloves, oh hell, try stereo glasses again, who knows, maybe they’re better now.
And most of all, follow my other New year’s resolution – have fun.
