V.R. Sports

By | February 27, 2006
4 Comments

February 27, 2016

centre court2.JPGYou finally made it. Wimbledon, Centre Court. An audience of thousands looks on cheering. The Chair Umpire calls out, “Quiet Please….Quiet.” The crowd hushes as you bounce the ball twice, throw it high in the air, and serve. This is match point. This is for the championship.

A godlike voice drowns out the crowd, “Honey, could you put that game on pause and come help your son with his Algebra?”

You sigh. “Okay.” The real world intrudes. You take off your sports goggles and ear pieces. Center court disappears. You are back home in the large VR gym you put in behind the garage.

The gym is 18 meters square with a vaulted ceiling – the size roughly of half a tennis court plus the out-of-bounds. You spent extra for the high ceiling so you could play basketball. A lower ceiling would have be sufficient for many sports including tennis and golf, but you love playing half-court with your son. You like to play hoops in the Hawaiian setting, overlooking the Pacific. He prefers the inner-city midnight hard court with boom boxes blaring. You both get your wish… at the same time.

Basketball is a game that doesn’t translate well in full VR mode. You can’t bump into virtual players, or pass the ball to, steal from, or be fouled convincingly by players who aren’t there, at least not with this technology. You’d need a brain hack for that, and you’re not quite ready to take that step. With this form of VR, contact sports require actual players. So you and your son play one-on-one basketball in AR – augmented reality. You see each other, the basketball you are actually playing with, and the goal – all virtually unchanged. But the surroundings change.

It’s different with tennis. Only half the court is real. No jumping the net to shake hands after playing here. The “net” is located half a meter in front of the back wall. Of course it’s a virtual net. A real net catches tennis balls as they are served. Usually the ball is simulated too… only on serves is the ball real. The racquet you hold is real enough – real with force feedback built in. It convincingly simulates the feel of hitting the ball. Sometimes you play simulated players. Other times you play other human players via the Internet – most from their own VR gyms.

You’ve golfed the most exclusive courses in the world from this room. But your ground prosthetic isn’t perfect. It’s a 2 meter square synthetic grass platform that can be inclined in all directions to about 30 degrees. The false grass can “grow” to simulate the green, the fairway, or the rough. You’re a bit dissatisfied with this model lately. Your buddy bought the recommended upgrade last month and it’s much more realistic – variable grade simulation with realistic sand trap emulation. But you’ve read the feature set of the next upgrade that’s coming out in six months. You’ve decided to wait. No need to keep up with the Jones’s when you can leap ahead.

You love bowling in here, especially with the 1979 package. Somehow bowling with the Steve Miller Band on the jukebox and smoke in the air just seems right. You don’t play many other sports. Your friend with the better golf ground likes to play racquetball. But racquetball screws up your tennis game. “One racquet sport at a time” you say.

Many people hunt in VR. You’ve even heard that one VR vender will ship you meat – cow meat of course – equal to whatever kills you make in their environment.

You’ve found that the VR gym is limited only by the prosthetics you can afford. You’ve purchased three major packages: golf, bowling, and theater seating. Tennis just requires the racquet and a ball catching net. The 6-person-row of theater seating rolls in robotically from the side closet when called for – just like the golf ground, and the bowling apparatus. Most movies are available pay-per-view the same day they open in the cinemas. When you put on your goggles the IMAX screen is larger than the room it replaced.

As the lights turn out while you leave, you remember you were worried that you wouldn’t use the gym enough to justify the expense. Instead, you’ve found that other rooms in your house go unused. Your den, dining room, home office, and even (you smile) the bedroom gets used less.

As you go in to help your son on his homework you ask your spouse, “Why can’t our next house just be a big VR room?

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Phil Bowermaster

    I think I’d go for the baseball option. Pitching to some of the greatest hitters of all time and getting hits off some of the greatets pitchers of all time. (I’d have to tunr the dial to Slow to do that, but what the hey.)

    Also, you could really do some fun stuff with a semi-stationary bicycle with this kind of a garage.

  • Karl Hallowell

    Or direct the Prussians at Waterloo. With the gore level set to mild, of course.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Phil and Karl:

    A lot of VR activities wouldn’t require a large space. Racing the Tour de France on a stationary bike would just require room for the stationary bike.

    Now, directing the Prussians at Waterloo – that might require a few acres and a horse to do it right. You’d want to carefully augment reality there – you don’t want to be completely cut off from the real world if you’re really on a horse.

    Pitching and batting would work well in the gym described. Looking at the dimensions, it looks like you could fit the pitcher’s mound, homebase, and even first base in an 18 meter square facility (you’d have to do it diagonal). A full game of baseball would require a baseball field – unless you had Star Trek holodeck technology. That technology would allow you to simulate large spaces because it would always be moving you back to the center of the room. Trickier was how it would allow others to interact with you in that space. Some guy that’s only a few feet away could be made to seem like he was miles away. Now how was that supposed to work?
    :-)

    I’m sure the producers of the show would answer, “very well, thank you.”

  • Karl Hallowell

    Now, directing the Prussians at Waterloo – that might require a few acres and a horse to do it right. You’d want to carefully augment reality there – you don’t want to be completely cut off from the real world if you’re really on a horse.

    I don’t see why you would need that much space nor a real horse. This is intended to be virtual reality after all. While such a simulation isn’t for everyone, it does allow you to simulate better the idea of the “fog of war”, the problems of communication and coordination in a bygone era, and mass troop tactics and strategy.