Gabe Newell talks wearable computers and why consoles should open up

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/valves-gabe-newell-talks-wearable-computers-rewarding-players-and-whether-w/all

by psykotic • 14 years ago

63 20 14 years ago

penny-arcade.com

repsilat• 14 years ago

John Carmack's twitter feed has focussed on head-mounted displays quite a bit as well. Seems like a popular next step if they sort out the problems. Latency's a big one, especially if you're doing head-tracking or augmented reality.

I wonder if we'll see an "i-Eye" from Apple in a few years' time.

psykotic2• 14 years ago

> Latency's a big one, especially if you're doing head-tracking or augmented reality.

From a coworker's Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/#!/rygorous/statuses/168173568889327616

Numbers: E2E latency of key press->VGA signal or keyboard LED toggle: both ~23.3ms. Measured with 100MHz analog oscilloscope+300fps cam.

For that experiment he used a little custom circuit for input (button) and output (LED) that was wired to the serial port of a computer running Windows. In addition to the output LED, the button was also directly wired to another LED so as to get precise measurements of the delay. If you were to have full end-to-end control of the system and you chose to make it a top property, you could obviously get much lower latency. But to even get those numbers I believe he had to use a special driver that granted his test program privileged access so he could do direct port IO with INB and OUTB rather than delegate the work to the kernel.

epaik2• 14 years ago

I think the big latency issue here isn't so much with analog input delay of the user as it is the speed of video processing algorithms.

Currently researched augmented reality solutions look great, but they're plagued by delay that make usability an issue. As processing power becomes cheaper and faster, it makes sense that we'll eventually be able to achieve almost-realtime augmented reality. At such a time in the near future, head mounted displays will definitely become popular.

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

Probably not, but we should be able to see Google's HUD glasses by the end of the year.

cma2• 14 years ago

Anyone have investment ideas in this area (virtual reality and/or augmented reality headsets/glasses and software) among publicly traded stocks? Google is supposedly coming out with a display this year. Sony has the best consumer microdisplay through investment in camcorder viewfinder tech... Whoever hits on this first could be the next Apple (or Apple may just do it like you say), ultimately software seems like it is going to be the key determinant. Microsoft has Kinect.. Sony, Google, Apple, Microsoft... anyone have some more underdog guesses?

rasur• 14 years ago

Steve Mann's Eye-Tap technology was IMO excellent.

valgaze• 14 years ago

Newell's reactive/empowering mgmt style: "We’re a very flat organization, so we expect everybody to manage themselves...[employees] need to know when to broadcast to me when something’s important...We’re optimized for people who are very experienced and have been working for a long time and don’t really need someone looking over their shoulder or second-guessing their decisions."

geoffpado• 14 years ago

The flipside is that this is the company that is 4.5 years late in shipping the conclusion to their flagship franchise.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

angersock• 14 years ago

And yet more profitable per-capita than Google.

throwaway64• 14 years ago

late according to who?

Lewton• 14 years ago

Team Fortress 2 took nine years from initial announcement to release and went through several designs throughout.

Based on the overall quality and success of Valves games I feel like this should be commended not criticized..

seclorum• 14 years ago

I wish Gabe would get behind the Open Pandora project, fund them for mass production and help get them out there. It seems like the perfect machine for their console needs ..

Gabe Newell talks wearable computers and why consoles should open up

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