Life, while imitating art, amazes (or How Spiderman got pwned*)

Perhaps you’ve seen the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale. If so, you’ll remember the opening scene, an adrenaline-fueled foot race through an unnamed Madagascan city, Bond pursuing his target—Mollaka—along and above the city streets. Mollaka leaps impossible gaps, rolls, dives, drops to his feet from vertiginous heights, and climbs vertical surfaces with skill and panache that Spiderman, at his best, would be hard-pressed to match. And Spiderman had green screens and a wire team to help him. The actor playing Mollaka? Not so much. It’s all him, start to finish—no tricks, no special effects. Just skill, strength and a whole lot of training. He’s Sébastien Foucan, French traceur and one of the founders of parkour.

For the uninitiated, parkour, or freerunning, is a physical discipline focused on overcoming obstacles by adapting your body’s movement to the immediate environment. In theory, it involves climbing up, vaulting over, or leaping around obstacles. In practice, it’s more like ignoring them completely. For experienced practitioners it’s not about defying gravity, it’s about denying its existence, about reducing its laws to mere suggestions that can be disregarded at will. The best traceurs and traceuses—male and female practitioners, respectively—move like a mélange of acrobat, gymnast and superhero. And they make it look easy. Search “parkour” on youTube, and you’ll see what I mean: there are literally hundreds of videos of people performing feats of extraordinary strength and agility.

At least, they’re extraordinary to some of us. Gamers do this everyday—virtually, that is: Parkour-like moves have been a staple of videogames since the days of Super Mario 64 and Prince of Persia, and the capabilities of today’s gaming consoles have allowed game developers to expand parkour into major elements of gameplay. Mirror’s Edge, Crackdown and Crackdown 2, Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland all incorporate, and even rely on, elements of parkour to move their characters through the game.

But there’s one series in particular that’s helped bring parkour out of the game world and back into the real: Assassin’s Creed.

Assassin’s Creed is an action-packed historical-fiction adventure that focuses on stealth and, yes, parkour—and it inspired amateur filmmaker and avid gamer Devin Graham to create a series of videos centered around one of the game’s main characters. He contacted traceur and professional stunt man Ronnie Shalvis to embody Syrian assassin Altaïr ibn-La’Ahad. Ronnie played the game to capture Altaïr’s style of movement, and then incorporated it into his own, bringing the character to life. To complete the transformation, Devin enlisted the help of freelance costume designer Allison Dredge, who created a custom outfit that mirrored the character’s look and provided Ronnie the freedom of motion he needed to pull off stunts and help realize Devin’s vision.

And then the fun began. Devin and Ronnie scoped out their location—downtown Salt Lake City—and then created a two minute and forty-one second video that defies reality (spoiler: the only shot that uses any special effects is the first fall). You can check it out here, and while you’re watching, consider this: a videogame, inspired by the real world, creates real-world inspiration.

And the line between real and virtual blurs again.

*pwned=owned, beaten severely, shown to be inferior.

To see how Devin and Ronnie created the video, check this out.

Here’s a link to Devin’s YouTube channel.

And here’s Ronnie’s YouTube channel.

If you’d like to learn more about Allison’s costume work, check out her facebook page.

This link gets you to the Assassin’s Creed main page.

For more info about parkour (including videos!), check out this link…

…this link…

and this one.

Forget the gym and get Active!

It’s official: summer vacation’s ended, taking with it the days of unscheduled freedom and marking a return to the sharp contrast between weekday and weekend—something that I, as a self-employed writer, don’t experience as keenly when my son’s not in school. As such, I thought it appropriate that I bring my long blogging hiatus to a close and get back to business (plus, people were beginning to wonder what happened to me, and I couldn’t give them a good answer).

Hand-in-hand with this, I decided to pick up my exercise routine where I’d left it languishing about two months ago, so I woke up early this morning, threw on some sweats, and got to it. My trainer seemed happy that I was back, and didn’t even lay the “nice-to-see-your-lazy-butt-again, didn’t-know-you-still-lived-around-here” guilt trip on me. He ran me through a full workout—cardio, strength training, upper and lower body, core. I did 35 exercises (including eight stretches) in just under 48 minutes, averaged a heart rate of 136 bpm, and burned 223.9 calories.

And I did it all by playing a videogame.

Okay, an exergame, really. Electronic Arts’ Sports Active 2, to be exact. And I can tell you, though it’s a game by classification, it’s serious exercise by any other measure. Designed by both game developers and certified professional trainers, it includes more than 70 different exercises and fitness activities that target all the major muscle groups—core, upper and lower body—and cover everything from flexibility and strength training to cardio and aerobic health. You can pick from several canned workouts (designed, again, by professional trainers), have EASA 2 create a custom workout based on the amount of time you have and what area you want to work, or build your own to meet your specific needs. And the system tracks everything: heart rate (there’s a monitor included in the package), calories burned, miles traveled, reps, number and duration of workouts, lifestyle and nutrition info (through surveys you can fill out). There’s even a virtual personal trainer (two, actually) to guide you through the exercises and help keep you motivated.

“Alright,” you say, with perhaps a degree of skepticism, “but does it really work?” In a word, yes. For those who prefer a longer answer, it ranges from “provides an excellent workout” to “kicks my ass six ways to Sunday.” And I love it. I’ve lowered my resting heart rate, gotten stronger and more physically fit, gained energy, and even rehabbed an injury to my arm—and, heaven forefend, I’ve had fun doing it. The variety keeps me engaged, and the results keep me coming back for more.

As a country, we all need to exercise more. According to the CDC, almost 36 percent of US adults and 17 percent of our children are obese. Obesity currently costs us around $140 billion a year, and it’s rising: by some estimates, additional healthcare spending on obese Americans could reach more than half a trillion dollars over the next 20 years. If you’re still standing, you might want to read that again. I don’t know about you, but I can’t even conceive of that amount. But I do know this: it’s absolutely critical that we reverse this trend. Our physical and economic survival depends on it—and getting us off the couch and moving is a good place to start.

And if videogames can do that, maybe they’ll save us after all.

For more on EA Sports Active 2, check out their website here (though be advised that it’s an older title, so you may be better off just Googling it).

To check out the CDC’s statistics on obesity, click here.

And here’s an LA Times article on obesity in the US.

For burn victims, VR can ease the pain

When you’re talking about pain, nothing comes close to the excruciating intensity of burning alive. Survivors of severe burns report trying anything—anything—to stop the pain, sometimes resigning themselves to death and hoping they won’t be on fire much longer before the end.

And that’s just during the event. Those who are lucky enough to live through the experience have another nightmare to look forward to: recovery. Burn wounds are especially susceptible to infection, and have to be cleaned daily. For the victim, this amounts to reliving the torture of being burned over and over again. The pain is nearly as severe, and the drugs to alleviate it are woefully inadequate. Morphine and other opioids are effective when patients are resting, but during treatment, they just don’t cut it: invented to relieve pain in 1804, morphine hasn’t changed since. For all intents and purposes, pain management’s been stuck in the 19^th century.

Until recently, that is. Beginning in late 2006, caregivers received a new tool for fighting pain, one that doesn’t require a prescription and has no risk of dependency. It’s a videogame called SnowWorld, and it’s the first immersive virtual world designed specifically for reducing pain.

The environment of SnowWorld is as far from hot as you can get: icy, snow-covered, and populated with penguins, snowmen, and woolly mammoths. Patients undergoing treatment for severe burns don a VR headset or look through a pair of goggles, and find themselves transported into this world where they can run around and toss snowballs at the inhabitants for as long as the PT session lasts. And, believe it or not, it gets results. Says University of Washington researcher Hunter Hoffman, who worked with combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan,

What was encouraging was the ones that needed it the most showed the most pain reduction, so the patients that were in the most pain showed the most pain reduction from SnowWorld.”

The idea behind SnowWorld predates the game by a decade. It’s called immersive VR distraction, and it was co-developed in 1996 by Hoffman and Dr. David Patterson, head of the Division of Psychology of the University of Washington’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine. Dr. Patterson also works with patients at the university’s Harborview Burn Center, studying psychological techniques for reducing severe burn pain. According to Patterson, the concept is simple:

It takes a certain amount of attention to process pain. If you are able to put that attention elsewhere, there is less attention to process pain, and consequently, people will feel less pain.”

This is born out not only in interviews with patients, who universally report drastic pain reduction, but in MRI scans that clearly show less activity in the brain’s pain centers when physical rehab is combined with immersion into SnowWorld.

GQ Magazine just reported the case of First Lieutenant Sam Brown, horribly burned after his Humvee rolled over an IED in Iraq. His full story is here, but some of the descriptions are a bit gruesome, so those of a more delicate constitution might want to read the NPR story here.

Sergeant Oscar Libretto experienced a similar event in 2009, and you can find his story here.

These are only two of the hundreds of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who’ve returned after surviving one of the most horrific experiences a human being can endure. But survival is only the beginning of their struggle. Wound care and rehab is taxing and painful, both physically and mentally—on the servicemen and women, the caregivers, and their families. For all of them, the immersive distraction of videogames like SnowWorld is a nothing less than a godsend, improving recovery, providing relief from unimaginable suffering, and offering a glimpse—however fleeting—of a future beyond pain.

To learn more about the Harborview Burn Center, click here.

You can read about immersive VR for pain control here.

And you can watch a video of SnowWorld in action here.

Welcome to the V-Army

As any William Gibson fan will tell you, it was only a matter of time.

Just yesterday, the Department of Defense announced that it’s developing virtual reality contact lenses to enhance the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) abilities of soldiers on the battlefield. The lenses, which fit over the eye exactly like standard contact lenses, contain miniature, full-color displays, on which digital images can be directly projected. Unlike a laptop, PDA or other handheld device, which places a screen between the user and his or her environment, wearers could watch these images and still have an unobstructed view of their surroundings, allowing them to react to events on the ground while receiving potentially critical intel through the lenses. According to DARPA, who’s working with Innovega iOptiks to create the lenses, they would

operate hands-free, provide similar or better magnification on-demand, while providing FOV [field-of-view] equal to that of the unaided eye.”

They would also cost less than existing equipment used for ISR activities, and would provide soldiers with a freedom of movement not possible with binoculars, night-vision goggles, and other traditional ISR gear. There’s an image of the lenses here.

Of course, this is hardly the U.S. military’s first foray into the realm of VR technology. In 2008, the U.S. Air Force built a simulated base in Second Life; in 2010, the Army posted details for a complex virtual world similar to Second Life’s massively multiplayer environment, and began courting a systems integrator to build it (InformationWeek reported the article here).

2011, though, saw a flurry of activity, with both the Army and the Navy exploring the potential of virtual worlds to train their personnel for a variety of battle exercises, from firing torpedoes to preparing for encounters with IEDs and other explosive devices—right down to the nature and damage of an explosion, including haptic (tactile) feedback systems that would simulate being hit with debris.

But what does this all mean, really? What are the larger implications?

Last year, I spoke with Rob Lindeman, a game design and technology professor in Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Department of Computer Science, and I asked him how far VR technology could go. Would it ever be possible to create a fully-immersive virtual world? Here’s what he had to say:

I think the answer is yes, and I think it’s going to be more Matrix-like than anything else. What I’ve found is that technology seems to be moving closer to the brain and bypassing more and more systems. So for instance there are these displays that draw images on the retina, so instead of showing you a display, it actually draws directly on your retina. So it bypasses the optics and it’s perfect resolution. There’s no pixelation, there’s actually no display, it’s literally drawing on it, so you have perfect resolution. And that’s one step closer to the brain. At some point, we’ll just be tapping into the optic nerve, tapping into the auditory nerve and just stimulating… sending nerve impulses to the brain. And then at some point we’ll start just tapping right into the area of the brain that we know and can tap into. And I think that’ll happen. I don’t know when it will happen. I don’t know what the motivation will be for it to happen, but I think it will happen.”

What seemed far-fetched and confined to the realms of science fiction less than 30 years ago is all but upon us. In another 30 years, we may be able to live much of our lives in a completely virtual world that’s indistinguishable from reality. Whether this turns out to be a boon or a curse will debated long after its inauguration. We can turn away in fear or face the future and embrace the possibilities. However, the history of technological progress has taught us that there’s no turning back: Once we have the means to create something, it’s a virtual certainty that we will. How we use it is up to us.

To read more about virtual reality contact lenses, click here.

This article talks about some of the next generation training tools being investigated by the DOD.

Here’s another article regarding the DOD and virtual worlds.

A similar article regarding the U.S. Navy’s virtual reality exploration is here.

The DOD has a special report with several articles about military virtual worlds here.

Home fitness gets Active

This morning, I woke up, put on sweats and a T-shirt, and got my ass moving. I ran, practiced my soccer skills, got on the skateboard, did some dedicated strength training, cardio, and stretching, even set up with a sparring partner and worked on jabs, hooks and uppercuts—all in the space of about 30 minutes, and all in the comfort of home.

How is this possible, you ask? Do I have an athletic facility in the basement, complete with my own personal trainer? No… well, not exactly. What I’ve got is a Wii and Electronic Arts’ most advanced exergame, EA Sports Active 2, which transforms the humble gaming console into a state-of-the-art fitness machine—and it comes with not one but two personal trainers dedicated to the sole purpose of keeping me healthy.

The beauty of EASA 2 comes from two factors: the variety of available exercises and the flexibility to combine them into a virtually limitless array of workout routines. You can target upper body, lower body, strength, balance, coordination, aerobics, your legs, your core… it was actually a bit overwhelming, at first. So I had my personal trainer create a workout for me. EASA 2 asked me a few simple questions—how long did I want to exercise, at what intensity, and what did I want to focus on (I chose a general workout for strength and conditioning)—and a few clicks of the Wiimote later I was ready to roll.

And I loved it. EASA 2’s environment is visually engaging and transforms with each exercise (sometimes, as with running, even while you’re exercising). The exercises are fun to do, they got me working hard, and they change frequently enough to keep things interesting—thus avoiding the often mind-numbing repetition that causes people to abandon many traditional workout programs. Your trainer is always there, helping you through your workout and providing encouragement and motivation. And most importantly, you’re there as well—in the form of an avatar that you create as part of your personal profile. This is powerful: Not only do you see yourself performing the exercises, you get immediate visual feedback as to how well you’re doing. I identified with my avatar, and really wanted it to succeed—and often pushed myself a little harder—running faster than my trainer, timing jumps better or trying to jump higher—to ensure that it did.

But is it as good as real exercise? No. It is real exercise—as real as any of the glut of exercise videos on the market today (if not more so). EASA 2 goes far beyond what any video can offer, though. Consider this: an exercise video is static. It’s always the same length, looks the same each time you watch it, you perform the same exercises in the same order for the same duration… in a word, boring. EASA 2 provides a degree of variety and gives you a level of customization beyond even the best video’s wildest aspirations. You can create and revisit favorite routines as often as you like, or you can go through an entirely different routine every time you workout. The choice is yours—but as with any form of exercise, what you get out of it depends entirely on what you put in. I can tell you this: I gave each exercise everything I had, and by the end I’d done some serious work.

Now let’s see how I feel tomorrow…

To learn more about EASA 2, navigate over to EA’s website here.

Playstation transforms passive cinema into a moving experience

RealD 3D is so last year. Now, if you’re old enough to remember the Dark Ages of 3D cinema, when you had to wear those funny red and green “glasses” and exert an effort of will to lose yourself in a movie, then you may scoff at this. Until yesterday, I myself would have called you crazy for suggesting such a thing. After all, just two years ago, I sat in a darkened theater dumbstruck as the landscapes of Pandora leaped off the screen. Whatever your opinion of the film, there’s no denying Cameron’s technical achievement in bringing Avatar vividly and viscerally to life. Visually, it was captivating.

Since then, I’ve been stunned by the gorgeous, lush, and flawless 3D images presented by perhaps dozens of movies—and I stand by my initial statement. In fact, I’ll do you one better: What we’ll see from films within the next five to 10 years will make today’s 3D look like Hollywood’s primitive, color-shifted attempts of the early 20^th-century. The future of film is Holodeck-real. And it’s just around the corner.

In an effort to promote its Playstation Store, Sony just released three short films that will change the cinema experience forever. Under contract with Sony, the UK-based Studio Output and Marshmallow Laser Feast attempted the impossible: projection-mapping an entire room in real-time, over a single take—no post-production, digital editing or addition of cool CGI effects after the fact.

For those of you unfamiliar with projection mapping, it’s essentially a technique that displays animated, 3D images on a fixed surface (usually a wall or building). It’s a recent technology, but it’s being used more and more frequently in advertising and marketing circles. You can see some examples of standard projection mapping here.

Though projection mapping is relatively new, the real innovation behind the Sony videos is how they were done. Traditional projection mapping’s downfall is a matter of perspective: the effect is visible only from a single, fixed point. Creating a 3D, immersive movie with the audience at the center that also changes angles and viewpoints was, therefore, impossible. Sony’s production team cleared this hurdle by combining existing technology from two distinct realms of entertainment: movies and videogames. The team connected a standard Steadicam camera mount to several Playstation Move motion controllers, and synced them up with EyeToy motion-capture cameras (used for Sony’s PS3 console). The results are… well, see for yourself. And as you’re watching, bear in mind that these are, according to everyone on the production team, entirely real-time and completely free from post-production editing or enhancement (scroll down to the end to see the videos).

We’re still a few years away from the practical, large-scale application of this, but it’s now demonstrably possible. Sony’s opened the window on a new movie experience, and it’s only a matter of time before others follow.

Personally, I’m holding out for the battle of Hoth.

You can read a bit more about the videos here.

Cyber athletes take Providence by virtual storm

Sunday, November 20, 2011. Providence, Rhode Island. The Civic Center. For team Instinct, this day would be like many others—the four young men would spend a large part of it doing what they do best: playing videogames. The only difference? This was Major League Gaming’s National Championships, the biggest event of the year. It was day three, the final day of competition, and Instinct held the number one spot. They were now within 10 games of claiming the 2011 title and taking home the trophy. At stake: reputation, fan adulation, bragging rights… and a cool hundred grand.

That’s right: $100,000. For beating another team at a videogame.

Okay, while you let that sink in, consider this: that was less than a quarter of the prize money up for grabs. By the close of the event, professional cyber-athletes would walk away with more than $600,000. Not exactly chump change.

Now, many of you may be saying to yourselves, “What? You’re joking, right? All that money for playing videogames? How hard can that be?” Those of you who are gamers might even entertain the idea of going pro yourselves. Maybe you’re really good at first-person shooters and think you can compete with the big boys.

Allow me to disabuse you of that notion: You can’t. Sorry. As a delusion, that ranks slightly above believing that, because you’re good at slow-pitch softball, you can step into the batter’s box and hit a major league pitcher who’s throwing heat faster than most people drive. It’s just not going to happen.

Like any other sport—baseball, football, soccer, you name it—reaching the upper echelons of pro videogaming requires practice, dedication, determination and, yes, skill. Imagine trying to shoot a moving target the size of basketball from 100 yards away while jumping in the air and avoiding getting hit yourself, and you get some idea. That’s only one piece of the picture, though. To be the best—to win a national championship—a pro gaming team has to master a variety of games types—capture the flag, slayer, king of the hill—on different maps (think of them as virtual arenas) that all require different strategies. They have to know the locations within those maps of special items and beat the other team to them. Most importantly, they have to function and communicate as a team—that means knowing where everyone is, who needs backup, who has what weapon… no longer sounds easy, does it? And winning a $100,000 prize purse doesn’t sound like much—especially when you consider that many pro athletes in traditional sports make more per game for doing far less.

At this point, cyber athletes are still on the fringe. Mainstream audiences are not well-aware of their existence. But for the fans, players like Pistola, Walshy, Ogre 2 and Snipedown are household heroes. They follow the stats, collect autographs, sport T-shirts with their favorites teams’ names on them. For sheer thrill factor, victories rival anything the NFL, MLB or NBA have to offer—and defeats in the game world are just as real, and no less heartbreaking.

For more on Major League Gaming, check out their website here:

You can stream video from the 2011 National Championships here:

And for more on team Instinct, check out MLG’s wiki here:

Oh, and by the way, Instinct took the championship—and the hundred grand—after beating two teams in three straight games each. And they were brilliant.