Update: we are porting to Minecraft (see MC Render 360 and experiments at: https://github.com/shaunlebron/flex-fov)
Blinky
Proof of concept to put peripheral vision into games (without VR goggles). Explore this interesting space by playing the Quake demo with fisheyes, panoramas, and cartographic projections.
Latest Release - 1.4:
Download for Windows
Download for Mac
Building on Linux
(See also: Using with full version of Quake)
Videos
- Quick walkthrough (from 1.3)
- Speedrun montage (pre 1.0)
Why? The standard projection used in all games was never intended for wide-angle views, whereas the Panini projection was invented to be the best representation of your natural ~170º wide vision.
How? To use non-standard projections like Panini, Blinky first snaps multiple pictures around you to form a Globe of pixels. Then it projects all those pixels to the screen using a Lens. You can enable a Rubix grid if you wish to visualize the mapping. (Quincuncial projection shown below)
Try it: Blinky has shortcut keys for quickly trying several Globes and Lenses. If you want more control, use the console commands or even edit/create your own globes and lenses with Lua scripts.
360º vision: Blinky has many fisheye and panoramic lenses from photography, but it also has many map projections from cartography that will give you a full 360º view.
Performance vs Quality: Blinky has to render 6 views per frame when using a Cube globe. So we provide lower poly globes as a way to balance quality and performance. Fewer renders means each view has to cover more area with less resolution.
Technical Details
Blinky is a modification of the famous Fisheye Quake.
- adds a Lua scripting environment for defining:
- Globes (for capturing the environment)
- Lenses (for projecting a wide-angle image)
- uses the cross-platform TyrQuake engine for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Building from source
After some manual setup for your OS, you can build/play with:
$ ./build.sh
$ ./play.sh
Console Commands
Press ~ to access the command console. Use the Tab key for help completing
a partial command.
fisheye <0|1> # enable/disable fisheye mode
f_help # show quick start options
f_globe <name> # choose a globe (affects picture quality and render speed)
f_lens <name> # choose a lens (affects the shape of your view)
f_fov <degrees> # zoom to a horizontal FOV
f_vfov <degrees> # zoom to a vertical FOV
f_cover # zoom in until screen is covered (some parts may be hidden)
f_contain # zoom out until screen contains the entire image (if possible)
f_rubix # display colored grid for each rendered view in the globe
f_saveglobe # take screenshots of each globe face (environment map)Lua Scripts
To create/edit globes and lenses, check out the following guides:
Engine Code
- engine/NQ/fisheye.c - new engine code
- engine patch - engine modifications
Theory of Projections
>> Interactive visualization for how projections work
Future
I hope to apply this to modern graphics using frame buffers for environment-capturing and pixel shaders for projection. It would be interesting to see its impact on performance.
If this modern method is performant enough, I think Panini/Stereographic could easily become a standard for gamers demanding wide-angle video. But if it is not performant enough for live applications, I think it could still prove useful in post-processed videos using something like WolfCam. For example, spectators could benefit from wide-angle viewings of previously recorded competitive matches or even artistic montages.
Thanks
This project would not exist without these people!
- Wouter van Oortmerssen for creating & open-sourcing Fisheye Quake
- Peter Weiden for creating fisheye diagrams on Wikipedia
- Kevin Shanahan for creating/maintaining a cross-platform Quake engine, TyrQuake
Contact
- email: [email protected]
- twitter: @shaunlebron
License
- The Lua scripts and fisheye.c are released under the MIT license.
- TyrQuake is released under GPL-2.