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Author Topic: For Engineers  (Read 6742 times)

Offline JDuzio

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on: May 04, 2008, 11:02:20 AM
I dont know if someone else posted this idea or not, with 5 full pages of topics i could have missed it.

The idea is to combine the VR display with the "minority report"-esq hands on interface, along with a CAD program. This interface would use the hands on approach you get from working on things in reallife, but the computer benifits you get from a CAD program. The VR headtracker would be benifitial in zooming in and looking at the blueprints from other angles. and because its VR, you could stick you head into places you couldnt in a real tinkering session. Although i dont think we could fully get a 3D hollogram type interface, a projection or TV with the VR and hand controls should be signifigant enough.

I am going into Mechancial Engineering next year at RPI, and i hope to have atleast a few of these programs working on my laptop by then. If anyone has any ideas on programing or reverse-engineering/programing a CAD program for this interface, it could be the next big thing in science.

I will bring this idea to college with me, and hopefully with that many great minds (computer science, computer engineers, mechanical engineers, ect) this system could be in use rather quickly. But college is still another 3 months away, so i thought i would throw the idea out there for anyone who thinks they could help.

so? what do you think


Offline Dennis

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Reply #1 on: July 30, 2008, 12:33:41 AM
This is a great idea. I'm not one to go to for feasibility because I'm new here and don't know much about the actual hardware capabilities yet.

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From the specs introduced in your idea, I was wondering whether or not it is possible to have multiple wiimote connected to one computer for potentially different tasks. this might be a derivative project, but may help turn this idea/project into reality sooner. the following is what i propose.

a bundle of maybe four wiimote to support multiple head-trackers. or maybe varying uses in the case of a solo project, such as having some of them interact only with hand movement.

and then the whiteboard projection wiimote to the side. a possible glove could be made from the whiteboard wiimote and the additional "hand-watching" wiimotes at front. all the while wearing a head-tracker guided by a single wiimote at the front.

the hand-watchers would guide location and depth to where your VR hand exists and then the pen-clicks from the whiteboard wiimote would sense grasp-motion.
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i am only proposing what i can infer from your idea and putting my spin to it. if it is too far from your idea, please detail your idea a bit more.


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actually, scratch that.. since it is an IR camera it will likely pick up nonsense IR as well so the hand lights would affect the head tracking lights and vice versa... the idea is there though but i doubt that (my version) is possible now.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2008, 12:56:25 AM by Dennis »


Offline Dennis

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Reply #2 on: July 30, 2008, 09:19:03 AM
how about instead of head tracking for movement, convert the head tracker to hand/glove as i have proposed in the previous reply but to replace the head tracking movement wiht the wiifit balance scale. you should be able to translate various weight shifting to manipulate the screen movement.  but then again, i'm not sure if it would be as 3-dimensional if you don't use the head-tracking system.


Offline latrokles

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Reply #3 on: October 27, 2008, 11:36:49 PM
I was cruising this forum and came across this post. I've been thinking of something along the same lines (sans the holographic display), though Id like the CAD approach, at this moment I am just experimenting on 3D modeling software... http://www.blender.org/ in particular (python scriptable, that's a big thing for me).

What I've done is very basic (though not fully working right now and it's only available for OSX at the moment).

I've written a simple program in Objective-C that reads the irData from the wiimote, package it up, and send it as UDP packets over a local socket.

A python script reads from the socket and does the necessary mapping to the display coordinates.

At the moment, I'm only concerned with getting 2D to work well. I may add a second wiimote for accurate 3D support, and then work on using the python script inside Blender.

The python script + blender should work with no tweaks in any of the major three platforms. The wiimote stuff, however, has to be ported using the libraries and drivers of choice for each platform.

Anyhow, nice to see there's others with an interest in using this in 3D/CAD apps...

If you're still working on it, I'd like to hear how things are going...


Offline Pityu

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Reply #4 on: April 16, 2009, 01:48:01 PM
Hi!

I am studiing as an engineer too, I use wiimote too, but i do not think that headtrack could be used in designing. It does not worth I think.

For positioning I use one wiimote bending it, for moving I rendered functions to the arrow buttons.

So the positioning is solved.

Btw i use glovepie.

For drawing you can use the wiimote as a mouse... but you do need to use numbers, so the keyboard is needed too.


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