todd

What I'm doing over my summer vacation...OR How not to do a blog...

Yeah, it's been a while. 4, 5 months? Anyone still there?

First, a virtual world I've threw together learning how to use a prototype of a certain HMD, combined with a Polhemus motion/position tracker.

I programmed a little flock to chase one of the sensors, show here as a sword-Yes, the first thing I did with an immersive world was create high fantasy. I consider it a phase of adjustment. 'sides, I'm mainly seeing how the virtual reality display and trackers tick. Now with motion blur (another phase):

Still working on my "reverse shooter"-Finally decided on a name: "Eejiss":

One of my main focuses over the past few months has been doing various visual effects, mainly taking advantage of a few openGL calls that are generally ignored. One of my interests to to make visual formats that focus on motion, or at least exploit it. This often results in ugly screenshots, or at least ones that don't make as much sense. Consider this next one, a simple arcade game I've dubbed "Clash" (among other things, also an exercise in getting the .md2 file format working):

I have a simple walkthrough world that I usually test things visual effects and filters on. Here's a simple bas relief:

And the same world if it were miraculously rendered on an Apple ][ (the machine I learned to read on) in low resolution graphics mode:

And another version where the world has been rendered as if it were a matrix of LEDs (apologies to Jim Campbell):

None of these are actually shaders, and most tend to run at a decent framerate. I am slowly working my way toward shader methods. Procedural/generative/ALife work-I've been doing a bit on that as well, but the current stages are not as graphic-friendly. OK, "Clash" wouldn't really be called "friendly", but it's certainly pretty graphic.

That should be enough for now. At lot of these projects have a least a little to do with mastering different types of programming methods for my day job.