From: mg@munnari.oz.au (Mike Gigante)
Subject: Re: VR in art - medium or instrument? (sculpture)
Date: 30 Nov 90 05:13:59 GMT

brucec%phoebus.labs.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Bruce Cohen;;50-662;LP=A;) writes:

>In article <11890@milton.u.washington.edu> mg@munnari.oz.au 
  (Mike Gigante) writes:
>> 
>> Robert Owen is a sculptor here who has experimented with conventional
>> CG modellers in our lab. Conventional modelling tools are still
>> very clumsy compared to physical (i.e. using your hands) for a large
>> class of models.

>Bet your life they're clumsy!

yes, I have been using such things for quite a while and before I even
knew about VR tecnology I have wanted to just "reach in and grab the
damn thing".

>> 
>> With a pair of gloves, eyephones and lots of software, we hope to make
>> a really neat equivilent to clay modelling in VR space.

>I'm salivating already.  That's almost everything I want.  The last little
>item is something I forgot to mention in my original posting: haptic
>feedback (including what we've been calling force-feedback in postings in
>this group) in the gloves.  You can sculpt without feedback (at least
>I think you can; can't say I've tried it), but I bet it feels like trying
>to mold air with wooden paddles.  Mike, do you have plans to investigate
>feedback?  The basic support in the original Dataglove, piezo-vibrators on
>the fingers, might be enough to make a big difference, even if you can't
>distinguish textures.
>--

This of course is the big question. I have though of surrogate methods
for feedback. One of them is a superposition of a regular grid in the
working space. Anytime part of the object or hand passes through the
any of the cell walls, a projection of the wall is superimposed on the
object/hand. (Is this clear? it is sort of like passing your hand through
a `force-field' as in sf movies.) If these cell boundaries are of
different colours, you can at least tell proximity. It doesn't help as
much as physical feedback, but I don't know much about that area.

One of the other possibilities is little nodules that can be inflated/raised
(or whatever) when you `touch' some VR object. I saw a mouse at siggraph
that had something like that.

UNC's system of active force feedback doesn't seem quite so relevent in
the sculpting case. I dunno, maybe we need an active `straight-jacket' that
you wear. using inverse kinematics, you could constrain the hand position.
yet still allow elbow movement etc. In fact I like this idea...

>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Speaker-to-managers, aka
>Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab        email: brucec@tekchips.labs.tek.com
>Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc.                phone: (503)627-5241
>M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR  97077

Mike Gigante, RMIT Australia
mg@godzilla.cgl.rmit.oz.au