Entertainment Case Studies
Animazoo's IGS-190 System Draws Swords at Roman Expo
Visiting public will bear witness to the fact that Rome really wasn’t built in a day, being virtually transported back in time at the ‘Building Virtual Rome’ World Expo in the city’s Markets of Trajan.
Using state-of-the-art technology, including Animazoo’s IGS-190 motion capture systems, visitors to the site will be fully immersed in a 3D stereoscopic view of the Roman Empire and Ancient Rome as part of the crowd from within a virtual coliseum.
The showpiece, a fight sequence performed by gladiators from Rome’s famous Gladiator School , was captured using two IGS-190 motion capture systems. The fight, shot over an area the size of a basketball court in one continuous 3 minute take is a "first" for motion capture technology.
The IGS-190 is a revolutionary way to capture human motion. InterSense worked closely with Animazoo to provide an OEM solution using 18 InterSense InertiaCube3 inertial orientation sensorsbuilt into a comfortable, full body motion capture suit. The 18 InertiaCube3 sensors are connected to a central transmission point sending the motion capture data wirelessly to a processing and display computer.
The gladiator models, created by Past Perfect Productions and the University of Salerno, have been recreated from remains of actual gladiators found in Pompeii, using skulls, DNA samples and skeletal remains.
"The gladiator sequence was very complex with a lot of movement - it was a very aggressive fight as you can imagine," said Joel Myer’s CEO from Past Perfect Productions and co-founder of the project. "The Animazoo system was fantastic – it withstood all that we threw at it."
"The IGS-190 was critical to the project," Myer said. "It is both cost effective and efficient – we shot all the action in one day. Other options were highly intensive in comparison."
The gladiator fight is shown as a prelude to the Virtual Rome Project, which will offer Italy its first virtual reality theatre, based in the heart of Rome next to the Coliseum. The project will give visitors an opportunity to relive a day in ancient Rome, through a three-dimensional stereoscopic and fully immersive show, expected to launch in the Spring of 2006.
The ‘Building Virtual Rome’ World Expo in association with UNESCO and the Rome City Council is on display from 15th September to 20th November 2005.
Microsoft Flight Simulator
With the release of Flight Sim 2002, Microsoft has allowed an expected 4 million users to become fully immersed into the "world's most successful PC game".
InterSense worked with the Flight Sim team in Seattle to integrate the InterTrax inertial head tracker directly into both Flight Simulator 2002 & 2004. In the Flight Sim "Virtual Cockpit" mode, the InterTrax controls the pilot's visual point of view. With the combination of a HMD, the user becomes fully immersed in the cockpit and views the world as a real pilot does in a full 360 degrees.
Along with the consumer market, numerous military departments and pilot training schools utilize this program as a cost efficient training simulator for beginning pilots. The combination of the InterTrax and a SVGA HMD will allow them to take the simulation one step further without a great deal of cost.
Contact InterSense for information on using the InterTrax with Microsoft Flight Simulator.