Holographics: A Possible Future Evolution of Gaming?

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings All,

While reading the thread on Historical Wargaming I was suddenly struck by a very interesting thought and was wondering what your opinions of it might be.  My thought is namely this:

Given that at some point (one assumes) we may develop holographic technology how do you perceive a actual dynamic table-top 3D environment might affect the evolution of role-playing and wargames?  

Thus instead of heavy lead miniatures it would be a single heavy table that could have programmed into it just about any character profile needed.  Yet there would be controls of some sort that allowed only the players to control their characters, sort of like the multiplayer coinops allow for now.

Just imagine if it was possible to have a table that gamers could sit at where everyone literally had some control over the environment yet, at the same time, could also be overseen by a GM (or AI) in real time face to face play?

Rather than sitting in dark rooms in front of a screen, anonymously connected to servers to play games with people, it seems to me that this might be like the 'good old days'; only much better.  (If anyone remembers the BBS game Tradewars try to imagine what it would be like if you could have played that on a 3D holographic viewer with your friends.  Be neat, eh?)

Or do you think the time will ever come where we have technology like that in our lifetimes?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Mike Holmes]

Hmm. I've always found that predicting technology is fraught with pitfalls. For one, we assume that because we've theorized of the technology that it will be what comes to pass. This is true to an extent, actually; once people could send audio signals through the air (radio) the idea to send a picture seemed a logical conclusion and people began working on TV. But just as often technoloy we're sure will arive does not.

Where's my robot to do all my chores, damnit!

What happens often is that unexpected technologies come along and become economically viable replacements long before the expected technology is even feasible.

Even just looking at available technologies, what's more likely, holographic tables, or electronic images beamed to your optic nerve? Right now, people with some sorts of blindness are being enabled to see paritally by signals being radioed to thier optic nerves. Presumably, if this technology is refined, 3D images would be simple to project.

But that's still off in the future a bit. What about VR headsets? Given binocular operation 3D images are easy to create. This would just be an improvement of very currently available technology.

Hell, 3d glasses and a compter gives you 3d space. And that technology has been around since the fifties.

The question is not whether or not we can do something like what you describe Kester. Like all questions of technology just over the horizon, it's merely a question of what it takes to make the technology economically viable. The home robot is actually not too far fetched in some ways, but takes a back seat to much cheaper automation such as self-propelled vaccuums and dishwashers. If/when it becomes cheap to make appropriate robots, then we'll see the chore robot.

But more liklely we'll see living spaces designed to further promote automation. It's simpler to design.

So, will virtual spaces come to dominate gaming? Maybe. What prevents us from all being Everquest addicts? Whatever that missing element is, that's the only thing that'll stop us from all playing in the virtual environment all the time. If they fix that factor, then, yes, all virtual, all the time for RPGs. Why not? You can always just display yourself as you are if you don't want to effect a costume, and that's pretty close to being there.

Mike

[Drew Stevens]

Actually, holographic (as in, it looks like a fricken crystal ball that you can walk around and see the image in full 3D, full color, with a refresh rate high enough to seem choppy) already exists.  I'll see if I can find the article I read on 'em again.

Now, when they'll replace my 19", that I don't know :) (I think the maximum viewing size was 8" diameter...)

[Mike Holmes]

Bionic eyes: http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1544

As for holographic displays, flat ones can be gotten that are pretty damn big, and for not much more than a plasma display of the same size. Yep, like 72" for less than $10,000.

Any day now...

Mike

[contracycle]

I can't help but go COOL!  Hmm, didn't Gibson predict Russian pop music too?

Man, if I had a holographic projector I'd use it do special effects rather than necessarily a fully VR walkabout game.  Too much real time to script, far too much.  The other alternative is of the Uber-LARP, which might be much more the kind of thing you meant, but this would probably require a fair sized building and hence be playing in the same ballpark as things like cinemas and theatres today.

Assuming we had "holographic technology", what we build a TOOL to do, might be a more productive question.

[Mike Holmes]

The other alternative is of the Uber-LARP, which might be much more the kind of thing you meant, but this would probably require a fair sized building and hence be playing in the same ballpark as things like cinemas and theatres today.

See this is why I point to the VR goggles or the eye chip as the ultimate solution. It can be linked to kinesthestic sensors that tell where you are. So, you just get a big empty space, and LARP away, while it all looks like something else. As good as a holodeck, visually speaking.

Mike

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings,

Don't know where to start, save to say everyone has come up with unique takes on the idea.  Some (Mike) that just didn't occur to me at the time but, now that you mention it, yeah... wow.  Technology can be funny that way.  Some futurists projected personal flying cars by the 1990s and, here we are, 2003, and no flying cars.

Point taken.

That said I didn't really mean the immersive sort of VR ala a holodeck hologrid live action novel sort of thing so much as I meant holographic chess ala Star Wars (Episode 3, A New Hope, aboard the Falcon?) ... sort of like a holo display that allows for table top gaming with animated holograms, or something.  Maybe even voice controlled and activated.

Of course Mike is right the technology may never manifest since other technologies may become reality far sooner than the sort of thing I was talking about.

So, given the idea mentioned thus far, which do you think (want) to be more likely to actually happen?  And how do you foresee such technologies affected how we play wargames and RPGs?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Walt Freitag]

The holography is unnecessary. Just give me a plasma screen big enough to attach four legs to and use as a gaming table (image side up, of course).

Actually, I've been seriously considering for several years the more economical idea of using an LCD projector and a mirror or two to achieve a similar net effect.

No revolutionary effect on game play intended, just a crunchy gizmonic power boost for the old school stuff. Realistic dungeon lighting, anyone? Nice coincidence, just today on another thread I was talking about how areas of effect and miniatures play go hand in hand...

- Walt

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Just imagine if it was possible to have a table that gamers could sit at where everyone literally had some control over the environment yet, at the same time, could also be overseen by a GM (or AI) in real time face to face play?

There may be some kind of future in this, but I doubt if it'll be the future of RPGs at all. RPGs are an activity that require and take place mostly in the imagination. Whenever technology comes into play, it tends to take away at least a little of that imagintive content.  I mean, movies have not replaced books. Not by a longshot. So a holographic RPG environment will not replace tabletop RPGs because they are not the same thing. At least I don't think so.

[RobMuadib]

Kester

It seems to me that the main problem with these types of setups is not the graphics/iconics used, that is fairly trivial for which we have several options. What would really make this stuff go is some kind of expert system that could generate imagery and game entities given only archetypal or fragmentary constraint input, and do so in real time. And, insert those into the environment so they are scripted and such, to be able to react to other entities appropriately, based on their object type, or whatever. Then allow different people control over those elements as needed. Plus have databases and "information" path's associated with those entities, based on who is querying it and such.

You know, all the things that actual people can do in collaboration and cooperation. But then spit it back at you in awesome 3d graphics with resolution system support. Of course, constructing that expert system would be a truly awesome feat of engineering, or you could just jack a few creative gamer types for slave brains I guess:)

Now that would be truly cool to me. Kind of like the ultimate expression of my game vision for TMW:COTEC.

Oh well, at least I can finish the PPD version for use with the Mark 1 gamer brain:)

best

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings,

The holography is unnecessary. Just give me a plasma screen big enough to attach four legs to and use as a gaming table (image side up, of course).

Actually, I've been seriously considering for several years the more economical idea of using an LCD projector and a mirror or two to achieve a similar net effect.

No revolutionary effect on game play intended, just a crunchy gizmonic power boost for the old school stuff. Realistic dungeon lighting, anyone? Nice coincidence, just today on another thread I was talking about how areas of effect and miniatures play go hand in hand...

Isn't really the same.  I mean, way way back now, we're talking high school, I remember sitting in on a game of (well something Star Trek) that the astronomy teacher was playing projected onto the wall from a... liquid display thingy?  ANYhow the long and the short of it is, it was just a projection on a wall.

A chess board where the pieces move, in 3D, on my tabletop... that would be something.  Turn that into a tabletop environment where I get to watch my characters explore dungeonland... *smiles*

Of course it would also bring a whole new context to Napoleonic battles.  No more rolling dice, measuring distances, it would be like a computer wargame, only back to the tabletop where wouldbe generals can once more vye for world domination mono-a-mono as wargames were meant to be played!

Course I also forsee those who might want to make this too 'realistic' and add in things like effects for horse spoor and dysentery, all to be played out in full animated sequences in 3D.  Who'd want to see that?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Jack,

Just imagine if it was possible to have a table that gamers could sit at where everyone literally had some control over the environment yet, at the same time, could also be overseen by a GM (or AI) in real time face to face play?

There may be some kind of future in this, but I doubt if it'll be the future of RPGs at all. RPGs are an activity that require and take place mostly in the imagination. Whenever technology comes into play, it tends to take away at least a little of that imagintive content.

In that case I say let's hope someone sells the idea to the military as a simulation aide for combat troops, or maybe for urban wargare training, and that after they bankroll the development of the technology it trickles down to us.

Preferrably in a compact, portable, bug free version free of any involvement with any comapnies whose names rhyme with micro or soft.

Speaking of which, are wargames strictly limited to re-enactments of battles?  Or would you say that a simulation of a corporate environment using chits to represent the workers fighting against the megacorp could be classified as a wargame?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings RobMuadid,

You really know how to rain on a parade.  As I read your post I was reminded of my vain and hapless efforts, in the long long ago of BBSland, to work on my own door program.  (Anyone remember Pascal?)

I had a heck of a time getting the dice game to work right in the casino.  (Too many 'tweaks' to the base code.  My own fault.)  But I did, eventually, then the menu's weren't working right.  (Again trying to get them to do something fancy when I should have known better.)  Fixed them, then the game wouldn't work for some people but would work for others and I never could figure out why.  Nor could I ever recreate the
exact same problems when I ran the game locally.

The long and the short of it being this:  It would involve a LOT of work to get it done up right, that's for sure.  Be nice if it could be done though.

We already have computer wargames.  And they've come a long way from the ones I remember playing on my C=64!  But I can't help but think it would be nice to get back to a gaming mode that actually put real life people in the same room to play against each other, rather than just over the internet, don't you?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[greyorm]

You know, Kester, I read your post and I thought to myself: "He's never played Neverwinter Nights." Because that is exactly what you're talking about, except adding the detail of 3D holography to the package.

Ultimately, that's not much of a change of the package. Would it change RPGing if it came about? Undoubtedly -- and emphatically -- no. Because it hasn't yet and it already exists on the mass market.

In fact, if Neverwinter Nights doesn't meet your criteria, there are a number of computer-based role-playing software solutions that would, and groups use them with laptops and projectors and such around a gaming table. Though, point in fact, my wife and I play Neverwinter Nights together...same room, facing one another...and play various 2-player games on the play station all the time (some of which meet your full criteria: an envrionment you can interact with via an avatar).

I'm afraid the technology has already passed your idea by, and even holography (of the sort you're referring to) doesn't add much to it or change it notably.

Full-scale immersive holography would certainly change simulated role-playing experiences and MMORPGs considerably, but as you've indicated, that isn't what you're talking about.

[contracycle]

Technology can be funny that way.  Some futurists projected personal flying cars by the 1990s and, here we are, 2003, and no flying cars.

http://www.moller.com/skycar/

I agree that immersive holography will probably not quite replace RPG as it is today, because unless we develope extremely intelleigent agents that can and will reliably create the holographic world on the fly as we move about, the sheer volume of detail to be processed will rapidly exceed the players ability to keep up the pace.  But I think there is a lot of room for then use of something holography-like, or multiple projectors, to raise the level of effects that the players can bring to bear to enhance their own experience.

Imagine a gaming table surrounded by a ring of white sheeting.  On the ceiling is the projector which swivels point to point.  This could be used to generate a horizon, just a sense of "whats in the landscape", a sense of place and placement.  Also, simpole automated cues could be used in much the way that many existing games do - when within X distance of the woodcutter, load "wood-chop.wav" type thing.

Another concept might be boards placed in such a way that only subsets of players can see a given board.  A villain sneaking up behind someone could be revealed to another player via their own display board.  Or, a table which is a plasma screen for the display of your top-down maps, for your equipment lists and the like, in fact for browsing the rule text.