Nelson’s Virtual Whirl
by Tony Reveaux
Roger Nelson had his eyes on experiencing bigger and stranger worlds from early on. "I read all those science fiction books when I was a kid," he says, "and was waiting for someone to start releasing those kinds of products so I could play, and nobody was doing it - so we had to do it ourselves."
Roger continued to reach for the stars, creating games and also working on cybernetics with NASA. He has been at the center of almost every technological advance related to film in the Bay Area for the last 20 or so years, and he continues to inhabit the bleeding edge of those technologies. We spoke to him for before a domestic flight for a trip on which he plans to work out even more complex systems for several clients.
Tell us a little about Q-ZAR Laser Tag.
In the early-90s, my title in the company was 'Chief Science Officer.' We got ahold of the Q-ZAR Laser technology, which was initiated in Australia and Europe, and opened up the very first Q-ZAR in North America here in Dublin, the gateway to San Ramon. The Q-ZAR Laser Tag technology consisted of guns that sent out electronic pulses that we tracked. The game was essentially tag with flashlights which we turned into something much more exciting. I did that with Q- ZAR, and then again with a much more advanced technology called Laser Force.
And how did the concept develop?
I teamed up with guys that were building themed attractions like haunted houses, and subterranean or undersea cities were always popular looks. The Q-ZAR and LASERFORCE centers tended to be in a 3,000 - 10,000 square-foot arena with a relatively complicated maze, lots of black-light special effects and surround-sound effects. We tried to make each one unique. The gaming is similar to paintball, but it doesn't hurt. [To try Q- ZAR yourself, go to ]http://www.q-zar.com/]
So it sounds as though you created a virtualized walkthrough environment providing the immersive realism that later VR games attempt only by simulation.
That is very true. You are interacting a lot more here than going through the average dark ride. And it's often just as spooky.
And what is your focus?
Serious games, simulation, education, and training: that's really my focus. We've known for a long time that everybody learns better in immersive environments.
What about Battletech?
Battletech started a little earlier in Chicago with my friend Jordan Weisman, but the first time we put together a Virtual World Center was in Walnut Creek, which opened to the public in July 1993. We had real actors and actresses in the training videos. The storyline was that you were teletransported to another world called Solaris 7, where you were put out on the field driving your battle mech, your upright robotic fighting device. The control system was all proprietary, the real-time view out the cockpit windscreen was a 25" monitor, and down below there was another smaller monitor that was the radar probe for that virtual world. Yet it was a nonviolent sport. You were always safe. If the nuclear fury got to the point where your mech was going to melt down, you were safely ejected. The winner took all and got to take all the parts on the battlefield and go make new mechs.
And of course that game was very popular.
The idea caught on like wildfire, and we had so much interest that when we had our first PR opening we had to do it two nights in a row. The Battletech game itself was one of the best out there, in terms of play as well. The only reason that Virtual Worlds didn't continue was that the powers-that-be decided that they all be built as stand-alone centers. My intention always was (and they would have lasted much longer) to have done these as multi-menu entertainment centers where you could have engaged in a wide variety of kinds of VR games in the same venue.
And how does Kerner Motionwerx fit in?
I formed Kerner Motionwerx in March of 2007 in Emeryville. The company is very small; I just bring in people for projects when I need to. We also get calls from researchers, the video game industry, as well as for feature film production. I am interested in distributing the best of cutting-edge technologies to take on and combine them with other state-of-the-art techniques.
We've heard that you do work for NASA...
One of our jobs was to make recommendations to clients selling things like robotic telepresence - head-mounted displays combined with head-tracking combined with Cybergloves and hand-tracking, such as for serving NASA projects. You put on the head-mounted display, and you are looking through the 'eyes' of the left and right-mounted cameras on the robot; you are presented with an accurate stereoscopic view which gives you accurate depth perception. With head-tracking, you turn your head to the left and the robot turns its head to the left. The 18-sensor Immersion Cybergloves give you the chance to utilize the robot to work in hazardous environments and extra-vehicular repairs. [See ]http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/]
And what are 'serious games' applications?
The market that I'm really focused on right now involves serious games applications, like military simulation, because that's the place where people are accepting the ideas of simulation for military training. I've been selling these motion-capture suits (http://www.animazoo.com) so that we can make sure that the characters that you interact with are moving very accurately in those environments.
I got very excited about the idea that we could really increased the artificial intelligence of the characters you might interact with, and in the process of working in that arena, I realized that it didn't really matter how smart the characters were if they weren't moving correctly. That's when I realized that I really had to focus on motion capture for a while. There are many ways of doing motion capture, and I have tried to immerse myself in all of them. You can do it magnetically, or optically, or using inertial sensors. The prices are coming down to be more reasonable, and more people are interested in this technology - especially now that people can animate entire feature films in their garage.
Tell us a little about Animazoo.
At Siggraph, we showed the Animazoo technology's real-time motion control over the Internet. We were doing digital puppetry in the booth where our model, an actress, was driving a character on the screen. We didn't track her face, so we used a microphone technique - sensing the phonemes to drive the character's mouth movements. On the other screen we had the feed from our office in Brighton, England, so we had a Skype video screen set up. People who came into our booth could give instructions to the people in the studio in England to prove that it was realtime, by telling them to do actions like clapping and jumping. We were actually driving the motion capture skeleton in real time and recording that remotely. One of the projects we did that has military and organizational applications was a simulation of exposure to crowd control, such as handing out food off the truck at a UN refugee emergency station. Another target for a company called Virtual Heroes is immersive trauma centers: training people how to administer treatment to patients in stressful environments, which will have synthetic characters that will react correctly to medical treatment.
This sounds challenging...
The project that encompasses the most technological challenges right now is in the American Sign Language research lab that I supply technology for. We started using the 22-sensor Immersion Cybergloves at $35,000 a pair. That gives you all the nuance of finger motions and the palm curl and that sort of thing. But that still doesn't give you necessarily the absolute positioning of where the hands are in the room or in relationship to the body. We're using magnetic techniques for location, that's the less expensive way, and we also have acoustical techniques to employ. They are also going to be using an IGS 190, which is a full-body tracking system. The goal is to make simulated 'actors' look more and more accurate. We're seeing how Hollywood is moving towards synthetic actors, and there's a lot of interest.
Tony Reveaux has been a Bay Area media writer, editor, teacher and consultant since the 70s.
Posted on Oct 03, 2008 - 04:34 PM
by Tony Reveaux
Roger Nelson had his eyes on experiencing bigger and stranger worlds from early on. "I read all those science fiction books when I was a kid," he says, "and was waiting for someone to start releasing those kinds of products so I could play, and nobody was doing it - so we had to do it ourselves."
Roger continued to reach for the stars, creating games and also working on cybernetics with NASA. He has been at the center of almost every technological advance related to film in the Bay Area for the last 20 or so years, and he continues to inhabit the bleeding edge of those technologies. We spoke to him for before a domestic flight for a trip on which he plans to work out even more complex systems for several clients.
Tell us a little about Q-ZAR Laser Tag.
In the early-90s, my title in the company was 'Chief Science Officer.' We got ahold of the Q-ZAR Laser technology, which was initiated in Australia and Europe, and opened up the very first Q-ZAR in North America here in Dublin, the gateway to San Ramon. The Q-ZAR Laser Tag technology consisted of guns that sent out electronic pulses that we tracked. The game was essentially tag with flashlights which we turned into something much more exciting. I did that with Q- ZAR, and then again with a much more advanced technology called Laser Force.
And how did the concept develop?
I teamed up with guys that were building themed attractions like haunted houses, and subterranean or undersea cities were always popular looks. The Q-ZAR and LASERFORCE centers tended to be in a 3,000 - 10,000 square-foot arena with a relatively complicated maze, lots of black-light special effects and surround-sound effects. We tried to make each one unique. The gaming is similar to paintball, but it doesn't hurt. [To try Q- ZAR yourself, go to ]http://www.q-zar.com/]
So it sounds as though you created a virtualized walkthrough environment providing the immersive realism that later VR games attempt only by simulation.
That is very true. You are interacting a lot more here than going through the average dark ride. And it's often just as spooky.
And what is your focus?
Serious games, simulation, education, and training: that's really my focus. We've known for a long time that everybody learns better in immersive environments.
What about Battletech?
Battletech started a little earlier in Chicago with my friend Jordan Weisman, but the first time we put together a Virtual World Center was in Walnut Creek, which opened to the public in July 1993. We had real actors and actresses in the training videos. The storyline was that you were teletransported to another world called Solaris 7, where you were put out on the field driving your battle mech, your upright robotic fighting device. The control system was all proprietary, the real-time view out the cockpit windscreen was a 25" monitor, and down below there was another smaller monitor that was the radar probe for that virtual world. Yet it was a nonviolent sport. You were always safe. If the nuclear fury got to the point where your mech was going to melt down, you were safely ejected. The winner took all and got to take all the parts on the battlefield and go make new mechs.
And of course that game was very popular.
The idea caught on like wildfire, and we had so much interest that when we had our first PR opening we had to do it two nights in a row. The Battletech game itself was one of the best out there, in terms of play as well. The only reason that Virtual Worlds didn't continue was that the powers-that-be decided that they all be built as stand-alone centers. My intention always was (and they would have lasted much longer) to have done these as multi-menu entertainment centers where you could have engaged in a wide variety of kinds of VR games in the same venue.
And how does Kerner Motionwerx fit in?
I formed Kerner Motionwerx in March of 2007 in Emeryville. The company is very small; I just bring in people for projects when I need to. We also get calls from researchers, the video game industry, as well as for feature film production. I am interested in distributing the best of cutting-edge technologies to take on and combine them with other state-of-the-art techniques.
We've heard that you do work for NASA...
One of our jobs was to make recommendations to clients selling things like robotic telepresence - head-mounted displays combined with head-tracking combined with Cybergloves and hand-tracking, such as for serving NASA projects. You put on the head-mounted display, and you are looking through the 'eyes' of the left and right-mounted cameras on the robot; you are presented with an accurate stereoscopic view which gives you accurate depth perception. With head-tracking, you turn your head to the left and the robot turns its head to the left. The 18-sensor Immersion Cybergloves give you the chance to utilize the robot to work in hazardous environments and extra-vehicular repairs. [See ]http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/]
And what are 'serious games' applications?
The market that I'm really focused on right now involves serious games applications, like military simulation, because that's the place where people are accepting the ideas of simulation for military training. I've been selling these motion-capture suits (http://www.animazoo.com) so that we can make sure that the characters that you interact with are moving very accurately in those environments.
I got very excited about the idea that we could really increased the artificial intelligence of the characters you might interact with, and in the process of working in that arena, I realized that it didn't really matter how smart the characters were if they weren't moving correctly. That's when I realized that I really had to focus on motion capture for a while. There are many ways of doing motion capture, and I have tried to immerse myself in all of them. You can do it magnetically, or optically, or using inertial sensors. The prices are coming down to be more reasonable, and more people are interested in this technology - especially now that people can animate entire feature films in their garage.
Tell us a little about Animazoo.
At Siggraph, we showed the Animazoo technology's real-time motion control over the Internet. We were doing digital puppetry in the booth where our model, an actress, was driving a character on the screen. We didn't track her face, so we used a microphone technique - sensing the phonemes to drive the character's mouth movements. On the other screen we had the feed from our office in Brighton, England, so we had a Skype video screen set up. People who came into our booth could give instructions to the people in the studio in England to prove that it was realtime, by telling them to do actions like clapping and jumping. We were actually driving the motion capture skeleton in real time and recording that remotely. One of the projects we did that has military and organizational applications was a simulation of exposure to crowd control, such as handing out food off the truck at a UN refugee emergency station. Another target for a company called Virtual Heroes is immersive trauma centers: training people how to administer treatment to patients in stressful environments, which will have synthetic characters that will react correctly to medical treatment.
This sounds challenging...
The project that encompasses the most technological challenges right now is in the American Sign Language research lab that I supply technology for. We started using the 22-sensor Immersion Cybergloves at $35,000 a pair. That gives you all the nuance of finger motions and the palm curl and that sort of thing. But that still doesn't give you necessarily the absolute positioning of where the hands are in the room or in relationship to the body. We're using magnetic techniques for location, that's the less expensive way, and we also have acoustical techniques to employ. They are also going to be using an IGS 190, which is a full-body tracking system. The goal is to make simulated 'actors' look more and more accurate. We're seeing how Hollywood is moving towards synthetic actors, and there's a lot of interest.
Tony Reveaux has been a Bay Area media writer, editor, teacher and consultant since the 70s.
Posted on Oct 03, 2008 - 04:34 PM
