I had a dream this morning that this guy I work with, a big dude about 500 pounds, made a popular youtube series based off a perpetual roller coaster. He promised 5 videos a week, just blogging from this coaster. It was more than just a roller coaster at the time, but as a dream character explained to me, it was essentially just a roller coaster. After a few days, he got bored of said coaster, and switched his videos to focus on oculus rift games. He showed the potential of the oculus, shared his experiences, and made very good tutorials to provide the best experience with the device. Me and my dream brother got so into his videos that we got our own rifts and played some games designed for the device. This was set a few years into the future as brother also had a rift, and there was also motion tracking included. We scoured a forest looking at how realistic everything seemed. We found this alcove in the woods and decided to camp there for a bit. I noticed some rocks sitting in a corner, and to my surprise each of them could be picked up and dynamically tossed about anywhere. I peeked around a corner and noticed a cabin up above and to the left. I threw the rock I was holding and it landed inside the cabin. Brother started tossing rocks inside too. I tried getting them in a specific spot inside and kept missing. I eventually got up and went inside the cabin and saw a camera up where I was throwing rocks before. I mentioned this to my brother, and he looked outside the cabin on the other side from where we were before, and he said he found the camera mother load. I followed and saw like 27 cameras all pointing in different locations. Me and brother then ran back to a main camp of sorts feeling like we were being watched. The dream transitioned smoothly out of the oculus rift experience and suddenly I was really there in this forest on the way to this camp. We were about to go to bed, when suddenly there is this loud POP outside the cabins. I go out and ask a friend who appeared to be the culprit, and she said she "Caused the birds to suicide." I found she had just set off a ton of fireworks and caused the woods around us to start catching fire... I see flames start creeping up the trees immediately above the fireworks and start saying "Fire...Fire guys!" I looked back at the cabins and one was already engulfed in flames. I ran back to the cabin I was sleeping at and everyone was already evacuating. Everyone was so nonchalant and calm while I was panicking. Nobody seemed to care that everything was burning around them. The flames burned brighter and hotter as the dream faded out of existence and I woke up.
I'm working on the prototype for a video game I intend to create with a good friend of mine. The game will require fast AI pathfinding over dynamic terrain for a large amount ( >1000 ) of enemies. My current navmesh/A* approach is working fine, but I'm a little worried that it's not going to scale well if we want to add even more enemies. I remember that one of my friends did her masters thesis on swarm AI, so I decide to call her on Skype to get her opinion on my situation. Unfortunately I'm having trouble navigating my contact list. The names don't seem to be sorted alphabetically... I hear the door bell go off, so I go downstairs to check who's at the door. A man in his early 20's offers me a package addressed to "Hyu". Huh? Did I order anything using my nickname? Why would I do that? I accept the package and the man just leaves without asking me to sign anything. What the hell? I go back upstairs and open the package. OH MY GOD. It's the Oculus DK2 I ordered! I am so excited! I unpack everything as quickly as I can, tossing the empty package into a corner of my room. Once I've plugged everything in I notice that my computer is now running Elite: Dangerous. That's not right, I was working with Unity3D before... hmm.... I try to increase my awareness, going through the last few minutes in my mind. Yup, I'm definitely dreaming. I'm so disappointed. I got all excited for nothing. Then again... I wonder what happens if I... I sit down and hold the device in front of my eyes, trying to see if the displays in it are showing anything. The device just straight up vanishes from my hands as soon as the screens cover my entire field of view. I'm left completely immersed in the game, sitting inside the cockpit of a Sidewinder, which is the ship you start out in in the game. Huh, that's kind of a neat trick. Also I'm in a spaceship. Did I mention I'm in a spaceship? I'm super excited and get going immediately. Fortunately the controls are identical to the joystick setup I use in waking life, so I have no trouble maneuvering the ship. I use the lateral thrusters to lift off and to get to the center of the station. The moment I let go I immediately feel the weightlessness, which makes me feel a little sick initially, but the feeling quickly subsides. As I maneuver out of the station, I notice for the first time how tight the entrance actually is. You don't really get a sense for it on a computer screen. Unfortunately I don't really remember much else. I faintly remember feeling the heat of a sun radiating into my cockpit as I dropped out of frameshift, but that's about it. The experience got me thinking about how virtual reality is going to affect dreams though. I wonder if it'll make it easier to incubate dreams about video games. I imagine it could also make such dreams more immersive. Usually when I have video game dreams, it feels like I'm merely an observer. I'm not really in the dream, it's more like I'm viewing it on a monitor that happens to cover my entire field of view. Perhaps this is going to change with regular usage of VR.
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