Open Source App Merges SL Interactivity to RL Interfaces

From the folks what brought you the Twitter Fountain and the Google Earth-powered 3D Air Traffic Display, here's another mixed reality mash-up rife with potential: the ability to control objects and avatars with a USB interface-- i.e. via light switches, toggle buttons, sensors, and other non-computer controls.  Developed by the UK company Daden Limited, it uses the open source client from libsecondlife (of course.)  What do you suppose the first compelling practical application for this will be?

Comments

[Shep Korvin]

They've invented a device which you plug into a USB socket, and when you press buttons on it, your avatar does "stuff"?

Sounds suspiciously like a keyboard to me ;)

[Ninoramai Hax]

Hook up some Wii controllers and you have motion-controlled avatar!

[Gary Hayes]

C'mon we all know the killer app ;-) - assuming some feedback the other way...

Defined on wikipedia

[Moriash Moreau]

As Shep said (in jest- hope he'll forgive me for taking it seriously), you can do quite a bit with a keyboard, sure. A keyboard is just such a USB interface, with a hundred-some-odd switches bolted onto it. But it would be nice to have a canned interface, set of drivers, etc. to play with, instead of having to solder more exotic switches in the place of your Page Up key and improvise everything upstream of that.

I would love to have something that would be able to easily do, for example, "Under eight signals a second, press Page Down. Over twelve, press Page Up." Voila, you've just created a basic helicopter with speed control, suitable for flying from stationary bike: one signal given each turn of the pedals, pedal fast to rise, pedal slower to fall, maintain medium speed to hover. That can be done, badly, by script. But a solution outside of SL would be much more robust and less dependent on the vagaries of lag and sim resources.

That kind of thing is a pain in the rump to do from a hardware standpoint, however, and decidedly non-trivial through outside software in a way that will communicate with SL. Something with a decent user interface (as opposed to "here's the hardware, here's LibSL, go at it") would open up interface design to hobbyists and the virtual equivalent of shadetree mechanics, as well as hardcore programmers and electrical engineers. I'd love to see what would come out of that.

[Hiro Pendragon]

http://channel3b.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/real-life-control-panel-for-second-life/