For my final project, I’m teaming up with Jonathan Ota to expand on his earlier Kinect and Virtual Reality Project We have three major tasks:

• The design and manufacture of a new carrying rig
• Porting all the code to openframeworks
• Programming of algorithmic space distortions.

We’re planning on building a real rig that is self contained, has battery power, and lets us take it into the street. We also are going to build some sort of real helmet. (Sorry fans of the cardboard box). Jonathan and I were thinking we might do some sort of vacuum-formed plywood backback and maybe insert the VR googles into a motorcycle helmet or something similar (I might make something out of carbonfiber).

The key expansion to Jonathan’s earlier project is the addition of algorithmic distortions of the kinect space, as well as color data and better gamma calibration.

By subtly distorting the 3d models, we can play with users’ perception of space, leaving them unsure as to whether their perception of reality is accurate. This, combined with the third person view from the crane rig on the backpack, allows us to explore concepts in human perception of space.

Distortions we are looking to include:
Object stretch and scale
Space distortion through field stretch and scale
duplication of objects
removing objects
moving objects
transposing objects
transposing space (left to right)
inserting new objects (which we might not do)

Below you can see an interaction inspiration for some cool helmet stuff. Also incorporates a cool little arduino to do some panning.