CMU School of Drama


Thursday, November 06, 2014

Unique Perspective

CMU: Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, size is just an illusion in "Museum of Simulation Technology," the mind-blowing new video game created by the members of Pillow Castle.

Though still in development, the game has garnered a stack of awards for the team of students studying at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).

The graduate students hope to become another successful CMU startup.

7 comments:

Tom Kelly said...

I think this game would be a great mental exercise to those dealing with any space or environment. Perspective and how it works is a very hard lesson to learn because we try to visualize a space in our heads and then effectively draw it on paper for others to see. if we do not understand perspective it could throw off ones entire idea. It could be because they think the space is small due to a large door or chair or that the room is too long due to a small door at the end of the hallway. If we use this game from an early age maybe in a drawing class then we would all hopefully understand each others ideas more effectively.

Sasha Mieles said...

It's always wonderful to see other people in the CMU community succeeding and exploring the boundaries of their own field. I think that this game is extremely intriguing from the computer graphics side. The changing of perspectives at such a degree is a fascinating concept to me as an artist, and a person in general.

Alex Reed said...

as great as it is to see people using CMU to develop their ideas and creative minds. I do wonder, Whats the point of this game? the article didn't go very much into it and I'm not really seeing the great contribution this will be making to the community as a whole. Do they hope to have therapeutic uses for it or is it just another game going to the app store? Ingenuity is great just give it a purpose.

Zara Bucci said...

I believe that this will be the next big 'start-up' to come out of CMU. The grad students worked extremely hard to plan this exhibit inhabiting the unique outlook of forced perspective and optical illusion. The game that they created is a puzzle and has so much detail and thought. I would love to get a chance to play or take part in this game. I love that I am surrounded by so many talented people at CMU that have so many different interests but are all striving to be successful at each of them. I am very blessed for this environment. I wish luck to this 'unique perspective' idea and hope that it develops further in the future.

Monica Skrzypczak said...

I think this is an interesting game. I love reading about people at CMU creating cool and successful things. However, I am still confused as to what you do in this game. I understand that it has to do with perspectives, but is there a plot or is it one of those mindless games that sucks you in or is it a game to help you learn something new? Why is it important that you can enlarge or shrink the objects? The more I think about it, it seems that maybe you try to match what your screen shows to a picture the game generates or something since it is a puzzle game. But I can't see that being very interesting and the article made it sound like it was this amazing game. I wonder if there is some way to try it out since we are CMU students because now I'm getting curious as to what this game is.

anna rosati said...

Firstly, I would like to point out that the articles on our own school's website are always to coolest. Although I'm not much of a gamer myself, I've done my fair share of watching my little brother play video games. There is one game in particular that he used to play, "Mario Galaxy," where Mario could walk around the entirety of a planet in 3D, really playing with perspective and creating an environment that is intriguing, even just to watch! Reading about "Museum of Simulation Technology," makes me think that its virtual environment is going to be truly delightful. I tend to think it's hard to create magic on a digital interface the same way you can in live performance, but this game may disprove that theory. Usually, when using with digital interfaces, the working of things are do hidden that we ignore how exactly the "magic" happens. However, by creating illusions on a screen, the audience is bing actively tricked and engaged, creating that feeling of magic! I really hope I get the opportunity to play this game. If more like this start to come around, who know, I may at last become a gamer!

Cathy Schwartz said...

Ok, so I remember seeing a video of this a while ago. From what I remember, it was sort of similar to Portal, in that you had to try to manipulate the environment in order to get to another place. The perspective comes into play because that is how the objects are shrunk or grown. If you want an object to be big, you move it up closer to the camera and if you want it to shrink, you move it away from the camera. This causes to object to become the size it appears to be when you change the position. There didn't seem to be must of a plot, but the video I saw was more to showcase the mechanics. All in all, the whole thing rather reminds me of how portal was created, with the idea of how the gameplay came far before anything about the story or characters.