Extreme Virtuality : Sweet Mode.
While I don’t know how to draw, I will try to make you understand with my words what I have in mind about the material equipment necessary to realize my great adventures in Sweet Mode.
So, let’s go for the Great Adventure of the Description – in English. For me, that’s two adventures at one go.
I had already said this when I talked about virtual reality equipment – I knew what I wanted when I saw, in China, almost all the equipment we need.
It’s about taking the basic fairground equipment that allows you to do fake bungee jumping: so a harness, and your bungee cords and cables, motorized.
For the moment, you hold your ropes and shout when well….it’s the : let’s go.
In virtual reality, you hold your ropes even harder and you scream really, really loud, because there is no more safety under your feet and no more harness around you.
So it would be something like this, with this feeling, for a show like this :
Do you see what I’m talking about when I talk about harnesses?
So that’s almost it.
This gives, for children in firefly mode, to be a few centimeters above the ground.
But I don’t want bungee jumping – cables that are not too rigid to accept the movements without hurting the person yes – elastic at first sight we won’t have the use and it would be counterproductive.
On the other hand, if there are always the two cables to hold on to, we will need more ropes around the young spectators, so that they can grab – climb – let themselves fall – intuitively, their eyes and their brains will be busy living in the imagination.
So I ‘see’ a kind of rope net – placed in a circle above the spectator, which will allow him to move intuitively – this net will have sensors that will allow him to act in virtual reality – and in particular to put his ‘hands’ where he wants to and to interact with the other participants.
And above all – as I remove the “elastic” side – I allow the participants to be placed much closer to each other, because it is fundamental that the children be able to hold hands during the adventure.
It is a base that cannot be circumvented.
Holding hands, in real life, while living a potentially terrifying adventure, is an absolute necessity in order to guarantee the children the emotional security they will need.
So I have one hand holding mom’s hand, and another hand grasping – if I can above me, if not at the side wiring.
Some children will never let go of mom’s hand.
Others will gain confidence and play with the net above them and even try to climb it – no, they will climb it.
It will depend on their age and character and we will need to be able to provide an unforgettable moment for everyone.
Are you still with me ? Tell me when I’m stupid, wrong or blind, please.
Because, you see, it’s not over – I can’t finish that fast.
I still have to imagine a group of children with their school teacher and their support staff.
The principle of holding hands remains the basis – but in a class, the children hold hands with each other.
This means – very clearly – having a grid above all this that allows them to be placed perfectly in relation to each other, according to their size, so that this silly and fundamental trick can be done every time.
There are these grids in every theatre – and the technicians who handle it like magicians, who crawl over them without being seen or heard – these people are extraordinary and nobody knows they exist.
Well, that’s my love kiss to all my technician friends who are really the unloved ones in our professional world.
So we have to imagine a space where the children are all holding hands – thus: they won’t have their hands on the cables – these cables are not there to ensure their balance – it’s silly, isn’t it? But we might as well have it in mind before we start.
An adult hand at each end – I hope teachers don’t need to hold another hand?
But here we’ll need a computer genius who will invent a cheat for the teacher, who has become a firefly like all the others.
She/he will already have to be bigger than the others – so that, in a virtual world, all the children can identify her/him very well.
And I would like each child, when he lets go of his hands to hold on to his cables, to be able to find himself – by magic – propelled virtually close to his teacher and be totally protected.
On each cable there should be a kind of button or pear to press that activates the: Teacher!!! and then the child is glued to her/him. And if all of them are glued to the teacher, then there will be a big firefly on the virtual stage surrounded by a whole bunch of other little fireflies of all colors.
By the way, this would make for a kind of fun “tutorial time” with the children and teachers – and before they start, each child will know how to do it – if their equipment works well – and will have been “saved glued” to the teacher.
For this “pear” – and this material intended to be touched, grabbed when terrorized – you need at least – at the very least – the engineers who built the Game Cube.
And if they are not them, their children.
Remember the Game Cube? The only video game console made to withstand every blow, every fall, every catastrophe in the world. I tested it – and even while playing that horrible game that was Jak II, I couldn’t manage to break it, nor my sons, who are no better than me on the subject.
It’s still there, it still works and it still looks new.
Thought and built for children, for rage, for extreme situations.
I want this state of mind to create Altair’s adventure equipment.
One last remark, for the road, to meditate on, as the old people in France say: I have only dealt here with the case where children find themselves transformed into a kind of firefly – thus fit to fly in the air.
Obviously, there will be shows where they will have to run, turn around, hide and flee: there, staying on the ground seems to me much more relevant.
Everything will play, in any case, on the quality of the motion sensors that will be integrated.
Of course, I can’t imagine children climbing up and over them: all they need is for the hooks to simulate a reality of movement for them – in short, for their movements in reality to be coherent with their movements in virtuality – but without forcing them.
Then, yes, yes, there will be a kind of “caving gear room” in Altair – close to the Extreme Rooms.
How much do you bet that, just by entering a kind of Ali Baba’s cave like this, children – and grown-ups – will already be impressed, with their eyes shining?
… well, let’s exaggerate – you’re there, you’re ready with the kids you love.
You’ve just been in the “weird caving gear” room – what’s next?
Frankly, the disappointment if you arrive in an ugly shed with cables everywhere.
… but, if you enter a huge cave, where you can’t see the ceiling? well, necessarily …. – with a floor that looks like so cold &weird water…. and that “creaks” to the sound when you walk on it – you’ll be quite happy to be a few centimeters from the floor and to hold the hands of your kids – who will be quite happy too.
The adventure, in my opinion, can and should start as soon as you cross the locker room threshold: setting up the virtuality equipment.
Now I can stop. So – I stop. Good night
ALTAIR - Concepts 