The Quest for the Perfect ExerGame

I was able to call in yesterday to the 3D lab at University of Michigan and meet with the staff there. I jumped at the chance to experience their Virtual Reality “Cave” and get immersed in a spooky wooden room with a stairway in the corner. Stereo images project on 3 walls and the floor are combined with polarized glasses to give me a very realistic experience. Calibrated position trackers attached to the glasses I was wearing were used to change the perspective of the projections as I moved around so the system responded to my movements and where I was directing my gaze as I moved around the room.

This first shot shows the stairs with the lights off. It is a bit blurred as my camera obviously couldn’t pick up the stereo images properly.

This second shot is with the lights on and the stairs have almost disappeared from sight.

The whole experience was very realistic and I became fully immersed in the room as I moved things around and also knocking a few things over. Climbing the stairs was okay on the way up, but on the way down it got interesting. Towards the bottom I peered over the broken hand rail and sized up a jump to the floor. It was only a small drop but as I tried to move, my legs froze. Part of my brain seemed to be telling me that I was already on the ground yet it didn’t certainly didn’t look like it!