Virtual Reality and AI? - next challenge for a retiree

Well, it seems I know the direction of my future VR experiments meanwhile. It'll be Oculus Rift and SimLab Composer VR (400 + 200 p.a. Euro). SimLab Composer comes with a free dynamic Rhino3D plugin. It will enable me to move or fly smooth through my Rhino projects. Furthermore it's possible to add interactions. Sounds great to me. Now I need to talk to my wife about the money :-(

At least I will be able to inspect the grabbed EU geometry in VR.

 

Well, this is the day to start a new era.

In Gran Turismo VR you can go to a showroom and inspect your vehicles. But it's a very poor showroom. Fixed height, turning stepwise not smooth and black screen when you try to look into the vehicle. Even at my open roadster. Zero functionality like open doors or engine bonnet or sit down at driver seat. Pretty lame.

A few months ago I downloaded a 3D-model of my dream MX5. Today I imported it to Simlab Composer:

Perfect! This model is a Rhino3D-file. So easy! I sat in my small cabin and thought about talking to my wife. **grummel**. When I passed the living room to smoke a cigarette at the loggia she was watching TV about middle age castles. That was the point to say: I would like to walk through such buildings! But I need 600 Euro for that.

Finaly I got the approval :-))))))))

:: Buy Oculus Rift. Done!
:: Buy Simlab Composer VR. Done!

 

Crazy: I will be able to experiance all my old models made with 3DS Max during the nineties in 1:1 scale or whatever scale I want. I can scale LEGO to real life size - lol!
Simlab Composer VR offers some basic interactivity. If it works well I will probably move to Simlab Composer Mechanical later.

For now I just bought a yearly license of Simlab Composer VR for $199. Let's see where it'll lead to.

 

Yo, got the Oculus today.
Installation and adjusting was pretty easy. Took one hour all in all because I am so old. Had to buy an USB 3-hub for all the cables. They should deliver such a component as standard. You simply need it to run the set. (1 USB + 1 HDMI for the Headset and 2 USB for the sensors)
After inviting Jeff Bezos to my living room and kitchen via Echo and Alexa I offered all my data, activities, preferences, chats to Mark Zuckerberg now. I had to make an account at Oculus Ireland wich belongs to Facebook. Crazy!

BUT!

I hung out in orbit at ISS meanwhile. Inside and outside. 400 km above Earth. Quality isn't better than PSVR, probably a problem of my weak videocard. Doesn't matter much. VR is exciting. I do have both now: Oculus Rift and PSVR. And well, next step will be to enter my own creations. THAT'S the point! A job for the next days. For now I will check out Talinn and Venice.

 

Well, 360° videos arn't that amazing. Just videos in very bad quality. You can't do much or even nothing. Just look around. It's not 3D, just a flat 360° view projected to the inside of a hemisphere. So nothing for me. Forget the so called "VR"-videos of Talinn and Venice. Visit the places in RL instead. I noticed this with my PSVR already. To enjoy such videos the quality must be increased dramatically!

I better focus on figure out this Simlab issue!
And I need a controller for the Oculus **AHHHRG!**

A different thing is Google Earth VR! OMG, I flew over Narfi's home! Well, it all looks like a toy world and the steering is completely crackbrained. But it's still impressive.

 

HA! Got it!
I exported my not textured EU vehicles (including 4 2m tall Kristins) from Rhino

and imported the file into SimLab Composer VR. I made a start position, represented by the small textured man:

I made a VR file from it and DANG! I was IN the scene! All in all approximately 5min. Really crazy!

I like it.
One bad thing: The steering with Ocolus Touch is a mess. Turn in steps and move by teleporting only. I didn't find a way to change this yet. Probably I really have to buy a gamepad for it.

 

Oh man! I grabbed some old crap and made kinda quick'n'dirty showroom to walk around a bit and inspect details:

It is simply amazing!
Now I have to relearn texturing again after all this years. And I have to make cool new models and worlds. The old models are often very rough. I need good models.

 

An old off-road truck:

Our family kangaroo:

The mysterious gearbox:

WHITE Road Boss 2:

The excavator I once made with Giga CAD on my Commodore C64. Okay, it's a replica ;-)
LEGO-Ulla with Lion armor and Niflheim:

Kinda steampunk submarine:

A desert truck I once made for a comic. Sorry to Caterpillar for stealing the carriage ...

It's just fun to inspect all this in VR ...

 

Today an old dream became true. I was in Ullas apartment at Medusa's Head together with Ulla and Kristin:

 

Ooh, today it looks abandoned. Too sad. I spent so much good time there.

But hey, I got it back already for free with my VR and will make it cozy again. Probably bug-free yet! LOL!

A few new teleporters appeared at Medusa's Head. At least one can use the landing pads in front of the building now. I once asked MA to implement TPs at the pads as a service for the apartment owners who paid 5k PED for the ability to live in such a luxury place. They answered that it won't happen. I will put them into my old grab as well.


But I will implement teleporting to my old apartment from there. Only the best for a retiree please!

 

I lived there for so long ... it's a very special relationship. I will improve my model a bit and post a link than for downloading the SimLab-file ;-) SimLab Viewer is for free and works with several VR-devices.

 

Besides I entered one of the old spaceships:

I simply opened all doors in the 3D-model:

I could inspect the sleeping room of the crew

and the place where the engines should be

Hmmm ...
And I inspected the launch pad

 

Well, I was afraid all this wouldn't work with my three years old PC. Especially because a test at the Oculus site told me that my videocard is too weak. Sure, I don't have high performance. But everything was good until today. I decided to make another showroom with all the figures I printed during the last few years. I started with most but not all of them:

Saving as OBJ from Rhino: 12 mins
Importing into SimLab: 18 mins
Writing as VR package from SimLab: 15 mins ... 500 GB
Loading into SimLab Viewer: 10 mins ... no chance to move or rotate smooth, just a mess.

LOL okay, I will be more careful with high resolution models next time ;-)

 

My wishlist for VR experiance:

 

Winter is comming!

Well, in the middle of April the grand final of Game Of Thrones will happen. I think House Stark and Winterfell will play a main role. I bet House Stark will finaly rule the Seven Kingdoms. This should be worth to build a 3D-model of Winterfell and bring it to VR. I added it to my wishlist. In opposition to the list above I can do it by myself:

Winterfell deserves it!

Along with this it would be pretty cool to enter the throne room in King's Landing, Castle Black (imagine to look down 100 meters from the wall to the north) and the map room at Dragonstone in VR, wouldn't it?

I have been in such a world already in VR. In Tamriel, Province Skyrim, Whiterun:

When I start with it I will make another thread.

 

I played Skyrim with a flat 24"-monitor today a bit. That's really lame compared to VR.
But ... I got all this wonderful mods for the flat version. Ulla is at level 67 there, looks sexy and owns beautiful homes and clothes.
In VR she is at level 37 only and isn't visible because of 3rd person view. No good armors and weapons, no character configuration, no sex, no nice homes ... nothing ...
All the mods for Skyrim are real 3D-features. Would be cool to see them in VR as well. As long as it doesn't happen I will stick with the flat version as well.

Regarding VR I started to build a LEGO construction kit for my Oculus Rift. At scale 10:1.


I will do a LEGO TECHNIC-model first. Bets are welcome, wich LEGO-number it is ;-)