DreamWalker - A short walk closer to rejecting your reality and substituting a new one..

[modi123]

Microsoft researchers have made some leaps with VR with a project called 'DreamWalker'. These cats strapped on a VR head set, told it where they wanted to go, and the VR set navigated them to their destination but in the meantime the displayed information is a city and what not. The program inserts VR representation of obstacles you are seeing, and has an arrow pointing for the correct path.

About and hardware:

For those willing to place a bit of faith in technology, DreamWalker offers a solution if you would rather pretend you're walking in Manhattan rather than a dreary suburban landscape.
[...]
"The system adapts to a chosen route, making it possible to transform a walk to the grocery store or to a bus stop, say, into a walk through Times Square in VR,"
[...]
The demo DreamWalker kit consists of a Samsung Odyssey headset, an HP Omen backpack VR PC, a Xiaomi Mi 8 for GPS capabilities, a battery pack, two Intel RealSense 425 RGB depth cameras, and a Windows Mixed Reality controller.

The project is a demonstration of how Microsoft is exploiting mobile hardware and input sensors to push the limits of 'spatial computing',

Specifics:

the DreamWalker is guided through a virtual space by a yellow arrow that's informed by data from its sensors. The user would select a target destination on a map and then put on the VR headset to experience another location, such as downtown Manhattan, with traffic, other pedestrians, and the city's buildings.

"Behind the (VR) scenes, DreamWalker enables the user to reach their real-world destination through visual (re)direction at normal walking speeds, detecting obstacles along the way and presenting corresponding VR objects to prevent collisions," the researchers explain.

"DreamWalker fuses the data streams from two RGB depth cameras, optical inside-out tracking, and GPS position data in real time to detect the user's surrounding 3D obstacles and other people. DreamWalker tracks the user's 3D environment and continuously updates a map of walkable areas that is registered with real-world coordinates and landmarks, such as buildings and walkable paths."

Real obstacles are represented as virtual ones and the system predicts the path the user should take in alignment with the real world.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/dream...ps-your-real-walking-route-for-a-virtual-one/

It's a pretty nifty look at the first steps *cough* of reality replacement, and any number of Black Mirror esque possibilities. I wouldn't mind giving it a whirl as long as I am not distracted by a minecrafted reality and I fall in a construction hole in the road.

Plus the combat addition makes you a DreamWarrior and everything is portrayed as a never ending Elm Street!

Would anyone else try it out on a infrequent basis?
Suggestions on the reality they would impose? Hahaha

 

[westrock2000]

It physically looks ridiculous, that's obvious. But I do find the ability for the inside out tracking to stay functional interesting. It's an every changing environment and it's keeping the tracking.