A Couple of Things...

So a week away, ideas have moved on and also I’ve got some shiny new ideas, mostly inspired through conversations with people back home, when I was explaining the idea of this project. Very quickly the control system got a little out of hand, as well as a little out of my ability, but I was able to take away some ideas that I will be exploring this week.
1: I started looking at how an optical mouse works when I found this article that goes through step-by-step how a mouse works.

Hack'a'Mouse

There are also a few on how an optical mouse can be used as a scanner, but for the purposes of my plans I only need it be re-purposed slightly, I then started to think of the mouse a bit like the old roller balls on arcade games like Missile Command.
This coupled with directional controls that are still up in the air between being pressure pads and motion control (PIR) sensors, or even Infrared/ Phototransistor based.
There was even the idea thrown out of adding functionality with gestures, this I think could be worked out using tilt switches.
So at the moment the primary controls are looking a lot like being gloves/ gauntlet based, as the flatter the surface can be the better for the optical sensor. So the under side of these gloves will be reflective and made of pannels. On the top of the glove I will add a tilt switch that will allow the player a function (reload was one that was mentioned but the FPS elements might have to be dialled back in some ways) as well as a low resistance button near the thumb that can be used as a trigger. All of this would be set into one glove, and a second glove could be made to add even more functionality, using tilt and button switches.
The directional controls will either be a set of pressure pads on the floor or if I use motion detection, they will be mounted along side the optical element on a consol.
The secondary control system will still I think based on the giant harp idea, as I think that it can also be used to shape the look of the installation, but of course I could also create the secondary player a set of gloves with tilt and buttons to control the audio features.
Hopefully early designs will start coming out of my brain soon, or well that’s this week’s plan at any rate.

2: I’ve been feeding my brain with tasty, tasty Podcats this week, and the How Stuff Works podcast from Stuff You Should Know has really been a mental meal, the podcasters Chuck and Josh are knowledgeable and quite amusing, even if the article the podcast is based on is not one of their own they don’t just read out the article they do a lot of outside research highlight of the series for me was the episode on Quantum Suicide, as I am a nerd for that kind of thought experiment type physics. So a link to their blog and a recommendation.

Stuff You Should Know