Kinematics, physical simulation and Brother Lee Love

Over at Rebang there is a post and video of some of the work Lucasarts are doing with their Kinematic and situationally aware character engines. For those of us who are software engineers, gamers and a little bit artistic we appreciate the depth of work that goes into producing systems like this.
Recently we have had several conversation relating to the lack of this sort of physics modelling in Second Life. Many of the more techie of us are busy building little skeletons and physics models that in normal game engines would be part of the middleware.
Now there is some element of intellectual challenge and coding and design art to this. However if we had the middleware for better simulations and physics modelling we could then spend the time on the valuable applications.
One example is a slow burn sideline project sparked by some of my collegues. One of being able to use sign language in Second Life. The basic avatar is not equipped to deal with the subtle movements required. So I have started to build some hands. Of course this then has led to having to start to build a joint structure. Anyone who has used poser of avmitor will know how usefull if is to be able to just position arms and legs allowing for the actual joints, aka kinematics

hands
The hands also can have another use, for those of you who remember kenny everett’s TV
shows

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About epredator

Director of metaverse and emerging tech consultancy http://www.feedingedge.co.uk Former IBM Consulting IT Specialist with 18 years at the company Games player epredator xbox live tag. epredator potato in second life

3 thoughts on “Kinematics, physical simulation and Brother Lee Love

  1. That’s a great idea… exploring alternative means of communications used by disabled people in a virtual reality simulator. How far did you get with the hands? Do you have a video of them doing the alphabet for instance yet?

  2. The hands and this approach was very early. However we have a few people who are following this up. I was initially seeing how much work it was to do.
    We have two options, manual position the elements for specific signs, or build a jointed mechanism that can deal with anything.
    I would prefer the latter as we could then learn through haptics and sending real life messages in.

  3. Pingback: eightbar » Blog Archive » Experiments with large hands and puppeteer

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