Virtual Reality promised to create engrossing environments to fool the senses and transport the participant to amazing places and magical experiences. There are a few efforts still moving in that direction, but have drifted away from the head tracking helmets and input gloves used in earlier efforts and more into an externalized (from the perspective of the participant) infrastructure: surrounding the subject with lots of screens and integrating with more natural input modes. High-speed 3D has been a nice addition too, but the cost and inherent limitations of the infrastructure are still a limiting factor.

Enter Augmented Reality, stage left. This has been an interesting evolution, and is still in its early stages of development as the mechanics and utility of features are worked out. It started, interestingly enough, as part of VR directly - incorporation of real details into virtual environments and the reverse. It's migrated away from the high-cost infrastructure and the gargoyle-like wearable computing that promised to make it portable into handsets - now ubiquitous technology with increasingly powerful computing performance. These are capable of motion-matching the surrounding environment and overlaying positional, geographic, or interactive elements onto a camera-captured realtime view, or in some creative instances literally projecting an interface onto something else and measuring interaction that way. One of the common themes of the camera-augmented view is the attempt to create a 3-dimensional feel: the view has essentially been downsampled to 2D, so stereoscopy isn't an option, and instead other standard 3D presentation mechanisms are used such as shading, occlusion, distance cues, etc., positionally represented based on the relative angle between the view and the virtual object. This is an interesting hack of modest utility, and when combined with viewer tracking can create some very convincing effects.

This morning I saw an unlikely (or at least unexpected) implementation of the concept on my way in to work that has started me thinking. A 3D rendered scene (very simple, a few gift-wrapped packages) was shown on a digital billboard (in 2D of course, though given the distance the stereoscopy is essentially uniformly columnated anyway), and had a virtual camera shift on the display which corresponded roughly (and I do mean roughly) with the anticipated perspective shift of a driver moving at average speed on the freeway. There were some aspects that made it less convincing, such as the vertical offset being mismatched (the camera was looking slightly down on the package, as opposed to the driver's lower perspective) and the horizontal shift speed being off, but the gimmick caught my attention enough to get me thinking about the possibilities - especially the integration of time/condition aware presentation for lighting and shading, and what could be done with very little work to make it far more immersive. I'm not even sure that their use of the effect was intentional or if they were just happening to use fancy graphics while I was coincidentally driving by in a way to perceive it as such. No matter what, it was nifty and I'm sure we can expect to see more of it.

I was hooked, but couldn't do anything about it.  My budget at the time was less than meager, and I had other factors of budding bachelorhood to attend to.  I kept the idea in the back of my mind, every now and then checking on prices for used Yamaha WX-series wind controllers but otherwise simply sighing it off and going back to other things.  I was happy enough to have our Alesis QS 8.1 keyboard which I'd been introduced to about a year after the first EWI, and which Rachelle and I bought shortly after getting married on account of A) it's cheaper than a piano, B) easier to move up and down stairs (we were living in a 3rd floor apartment), and C) can be used with headphones.  At least, those were the official reasons: the prevailing one for me was the re-enactment of the classic Wayne's World "Oh yes; it will be mine..." scene I'd done when I'd first played one.  That, and how much possibility was potentially held within good studio equipment for the eager practitioner.

This was our musical mainstay for nearly 10 years, through 2 apartments and into our 2nd home (where we are now).  We were fortunate enough to "store" my aunt's old upright piano for a while, and enjoyed it immensely, but had to make other arrangements while we were trying to sell the house, returning it to its rightful owner who by that time had space for it.  During this time, in order to keep the place in a state of perpetual showability (or within 5 minutes of), Rachelle even had to keep the keyboard stashed away, and I didn't have room to take it with me up to Washington.  I did eventually make this all up to her by the way, with my "I'm so very very sorry for everything" / "welcome home" present: Her Baby Grand.

So then, we found ourselves mostly tuneless, at least of our own making, for many months while we were unwillingly separated and trying to make the best of our situations.  I briefly toyed with getting the flute out of storage (packed away in Utah), but I wanted to be a good neighbor - especially in the 2nd apartment I had in Seattle, where walls/ceiling/floors were as thin as they could be and still maintain structural integrity.  The keyboard still wasn't an option, since I didn't dare trust it to anyone to ship it nor could I very well bring it back with me from one of my visits, so I returned to the EWI idea after having a Homer Simpson Tom Landry's Hat moment: "I can't buy that. Only management-type guys with big salaries like me can afford things like that. [gasps] Guys like me! I'm a guy like me!"

I purchased an Akai EWI USB controller - a fairly cheap but eminently capable device, so long as you have a machine to hook it up to.  Which I did, so I did, and it was.  I used it to pass the time and play sad songs, practice scales, and improv along with classical music.

Now, whether or not the device is capable, it still relies on whomever is playing it to do anything worthwhile.  I don't know that I pass - I would like to think so, but I know I'm still a crude amateur next to any kind of real musician.  I offer a few samples below, which lose a little in translation through the tracker back through the VST filter from the original performance, but it's close enough (yes these are all me, and I'm sorry they're all me):

What's interesting is what prompted me to finally record at least a little bit of this.  I have other music projects under way (and geek projects), and have been letting the EWI gather dust since shortly after I returned from Seattle, but upon hearing yet another phenomenal cello performance in the background track of something or other wondered to myself... "How much does a cello cost, anyway?"  And have found myself once again bit by another instrument bug (there are more than just these 3, too).  The thought has even crossed my mind of making a steampunk style electric cello myself, in order to have something to play and practice extensively without offending others (works well with headphones), because steampunk is fun even if it is getting a little too close to mainstream, and because it would be musical and geeky at the same time.  I'd even make an interchangeable fingerboard, one with and one without frets, in order to support different styles of performance (or lever-actuated retractable frets, but imagination needs to give way to reality in terms of practical implementation sometimes).

I whipped out the EWI, set the VST to cello, and started playing that instead.  Maybe someday...

The specs are a little on the light side as far as the current offering of video glasses are concerned - 320 x 240 (old school VGA), equivalent viewing distance of 44" 4:3 screen at 9' (which, for my arm length, looks about like an 8½ x 11" piece of paper held at full reach). Nothing super-stellar or all encompassing from the viewer's perspective, but certainly comfortable for standard definition video. It accepts RCA video (and audio) in, making it versatile and accommodating for a broad range of devices and applications. It will also automatically demux field-sequential stereoscopic signals onto the independent screens, making full 3D a possibility (though poorly supported by available media).

There are Zero controls or configuration options for the main unit electrically speaking (though the individual lenses can be adjust by +2 to -5 diopters via focus wheels in the bottom): it turns on when it detects a video signal and turns off when it doesn't. No volume choices, brightness, contrast, etc. The speakers (not headphones) can be bent lightly into position above or near the ear in order to change the effective volume, but there are no options in-line. Given that many media devices output a fixed volume on their audio, this may be less-than-ideal in many situations, although what I've demoed so far seems to run too loud (easily corrected with position) rather than too soft. It's also possible to remove the speaker stalks, enabling head-phone use. This is helpful for those situations where whatever device has its own gain handling and separate headphone jack, which for the iPod is perfect and also very necessary for in-flight use with the high ambient noise and the high-gain audio required to overcome it.

The adjustable (and removable) nose piece has large soft rubber pads which make it not-uncomfortable to wear for extended use, but which will leave marks on a person's bridge. I don't recommend trying to use these for very long without the lanyard either, which helps to secure it to one's face and preserve the viewing angle (which otherwise can be tricky for reasons I'll get into later). It also helps prevent them from slipping - 4oz. doesn't sound like a lot, but when all of the weight is forward and on an inclined slope, physics does tend to take a hand and they will slip.

The image quality is good, although photographing it turned out to be one of the most technically challenging pictures I've ever attempted. The result here is a little blurry, but that's an artifact of the difficulty of maneuvering the camera into place and getting the focal depth set just right - the comparatively long shutter speed didn't help either. These were not designed to be photographed, but they do work excellently with the optics of the human eye (other species mileage may vary). Now here's the tricky part: these are based on high resolution LCDs (320 x 240 may not sound very high, but fitting 320 x 240 x 3 [RGB] addressable LCD cells within a ½" is not a trivial feat). LCDs have optimal viewing angles in 2 axes, which left the designers up to figuring out a balance between determining best average pupillary distance, or best main-unit tilt. The outcome of this decision dictates where the broadest axis will be placed and whether the displays will be addressed from the top or the side and the resulting structure of the interior and lay-out of the circuit. So let's take a look.

Several competing factors and decisions are illustrated in this image. First, nearly ¾ of the depth of the unit (and who knows how much of the overall weight) is dedicated to the optics in front of the actual LCD (little clear & white box under the yellow tape on the right). If there were ever an argument for high-resolution Fresnel lenses, this would be it (assuming that the etching resolution doesn't inadvertently turn it into a diffraction grating). They also chose to mount the displays symmetrically, with their input regions both oriented directly toward the main circuit board.

This is actually Bad News. While LCDs don't have a top or bottom per se, they do have common properties in terms of the breadth and bias of the viewing angles they support. Since they chose to put the widest range in support of the pupillary variation, that means the supported vertical tilt range is dramatically reduced. These are also identical displays - they were not manufactured in mirror image of one another, so essentially what's been done here is to rotate one of them 180° from the other and use some sleight-of-circuitry to render one display upside-down in order to correct for that rotation. This seems more costly in the development and design to me than simply running the generously long ribbon cable to the far side of one of the displays and using a combined signal wherever possible - I wonder what cost savings they actually realized from of the symmetrical physical assembly they chose instead, if any. The real reason this is a problem is that in the right-eye display, the bias angle to see the best contrast is a degree or two below horizontal, while the left-eye display is a similar offset above the horizon. If one wears the device perfectly level across the face, either A) both displays will be suboptimal and a little washed out in their contrast, or B) one image will appear brighter than the other, creating an uncomfortable viewing experience. From what I've read and personally experienced, B seems the more common option.

It is possible to correct for this in 1 of 2 different ways. First, the wearer has the option to arrange the glasses slightly askew - enough to better align the two disagreeing angles but not enough to throw off the stereoscopic reconciliation and produce a double image, or secondly: to tilt just one of the LCDs within the unit until it agrees with its sibling. The latter option is preferable but problematic, in that the displays are affixed to the frame with a mild adhesive. Glues and electronics are a nasty combination even without throwing optics into the mix - I might be able to perform the kind of delicate surgery required to correct this, but not with the few crude tools I brought with me to the apartment (the rest being left behind in Utah pending the sale of the best house ever and subsequent family move). So for now I'm opting to downgrade from "Nerd" to "Complete Tool" when making use of them by wearing them lopsided - and at these power consumption and battery specs, for 4-5 hours at a time.

Totally worth it.