Laser games and first person 3D laser graphics

[Zoof]

The engine currently works with the Easylase DAC only, since that is what I have. It still needs to be transformed into a proper library and, in the future, support multiple DACs.

 

[Murudai]

Well, send over the source or whatever you have so far and I can help you develop this. It would be great to see some open source software for turning laser projectors into games platforms

Since I work in the gaming industry, this is certainly something in my interests. I'd love to make a game like this and showcase it at a game development convention

 

[Xer0]

The engine currently works with the Easylase DAC only, since that is what I have. It still needs to be transformed into a proper library and, in the future, support multiple DACs.

Doesn't it work with the LaserBoy - SoundcardDAC too, with Lava's modified Easylase driver or so?

 

[Zoof]

yep, drLava wrote a driver that acts like an easylase dac to the software and outputs to the soundcard.

 

[briankeys]

First off, these videos are insanely cool and I wish you took some footage of the projection with fog! Do you already have the blu-ray lasers built into your scanner? Welcome to the forums, as well! I personally love games like Geometry Wars... On a big screen LCDTV it's hypnotising. With a projector.. I can't even fathom.

3D laser graphics: Tesseract or Hypercube (4D cube) projected in 3D[/url]
Realtime interactive 3D laser rendering[/url] (awesome!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc3MsFzBEb4
3D laser graphics III: fading[/url]
Some fun with Space Fury on Mike's LazyMame[/url]
RGB laser setup playing ZoofScope[/url] (The scanner)
xmastree in laser[/url]

 

[Murudai]

I personally love games like Geometry Wars... On a big screen LCDTV it's hypnotising. With a projector.. I can't even fathom.

Really. The next Xbox 360 game I'm developing will look a little like geometry wars

 

[110100100]

[quote author=briankeys link=1232647184/20#20 date=1233125137]I personally love games like Geometry Wars... On a big screen LCDTV it's hypnotising. With a projector.. I can't even fathom.

Really. The next Xbox 360 game I'm developing will look a little like geometry wars
[/quote]

Nice, I'm a huge fan of Geometry Wars. I don't program, but I have been in video game QA for 3 years and am currently doing pre-certification testing at Microsoft.

 

[Murudai]

It's actually really easy to make a game look like that. I mean, take away the particles and the blur effect and it'll just look like asteroids, much like the asteroids game here

I love the grid through, in Geometry Wars. In the background. That's really cool, and amazingly simple to do. Give me 10 minutes and I can make an awesome, flexible grid like that as well Wish I thought of it first

 

[Zoof]

Geometry wars is nice. But those effects take up a lot of points in laser scanning slowing the frame rate down to a stop. Especially a grid like that.

 

[Murudai]

Oh, lol, you couldn't do Geometry Wars with a laser scanner You could make it look similar, but laser scanners can't do blur effects, and Geometry Wars uses them a lot.

You could make a pretty good game for a laser scanner that takes advantage of the effects it can do, but you'd need to make it from the ground up and not just make a scanner port of existing games that were never designed for such a constricting medium.

And I'd love to make that game, but I'd need to get a base engine that works with my DAC first

 

[Zoof]

noting to myself - to do:

support moncha dac
make library of engine code

 

[Murudai]

noting to myself - to do:

support moncha dac
make library of engine code

[smiley=thumbsup.gif]

 

[charliebruce]

I saw something interesting but I can't remember where it was - laser graffiti. It used a high-speed camera to search for a green point and fed that into a computer. In this case it was attached to a large projector, shining onto a building, but in your case it could be a brilliant way of controlling the games. Having pacman trying in vain to eat a laser dot wouldn't EVER get boring...

 

[Murudai]

I saw something interesting but I can't remember where it was - laser graffiti. It used a high-speed camera to search for a green point and fed that into a computer. In this case it was attached to a large projector, shining onto a building, but in your case it could be a brilliant way of controlling the games. Having pacman trying in vain to eat a laser dot wouldn't EVER get boring...

I know what you're talking about. That was pretty awesome, and it would be cool to have that in a game. If someone can work out how to do that, I can make the actual game

Here's the link: http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=76

 

[charliebruce]

From what I can see of it, all they have is a pretty standard high-ish speed camera pointing at the building, but I suspect you'd have some major issues if you are scanning with a green beam. Try using a webcam and a green pointer on a flat wall and see what results you can get using a simple image processing system.

You could then try it with a red/blue scanner and see what happens. If you really want a green scanner, you could use a negative feedback system (where the camera "knows" where the beam is scanning and disregards it) or a filtered module in the scanner and an unfiltered one in the pen - then using an IR camera looking for the 808/1064nm leakage instead. You may face issues when the CCD becomes over-saturated indoors or in the dark...

 

[Murudai]

Yeah, they get away with it because they use a green pointer and a blue projector to display the image. The best way I reckon would be a proper IR laser, not a cheap green spewing IR (which would probably have such diverged IR at that distance the camera wouldn't get it). A camera would pick up where the IR dot is, then the projector would put a 'cursor' in that point.

It would look just like a green laser (with maybe a bit of latency) and you wouldn't have any colour conflicting issues