[Bf-gamedev] Using the Blender Games Engine for immersive training in a 360 projection dome

[Arnaud Loonstra]

On 10/07/2014 03:23 PM, James Sheridan wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I've been doing some research into getting the Blender Game Engine
> working in one of our domes
>
>   * www.igloovision.com
>   * https://www.dropbox.com/s/k81iquleisiocsd/Igloo%20St%20Pauls%20Draft%203.mov?dl=0
>
> Our domes use a cylindrical (or spherical....we just chop the top and
> bottom off) panoramic projection that is ideally 8000x1100 but anything
> above 6400x950 looks ok.   We do all of the image slicing, warping and
> edge blending in a custom app but need a way to get the image out of the
> BGE and into our app.    In unity we use 5 cameras oriented around the y
> axis each with a fisheye effect to approximate a cylindrical camera - we
> then use syphon <http://syphon.v002.info/> under osx and spout
> <http://spout.zeal.co/> under windows to output these camera textures to
> our warping and edge blending app.   Where looking to do a research
> project with Loughborough University and where we build an immersive
> training scenario in the dome and we're after some help advice with this.
>
> As Syphon and Spout are both open source and widely used adding in
> support for them would mean not only support for our (and others) domes
> but also a wide range of other tool and uses like VJing, museum
> installations etc and is something others have already been asking for
>
>  1. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?345832-Syphon-support-in-the-game-engine
>  2. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?298055-Live-Real-Time-Output-of-Animation
>  3. http://pyppet.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/pyppet2-audio-analysis.html
>
> In this regards to getting syphon and/or spout added into the BGE we
> were wondering
>
>  1. Where in the codebase should I start looking to share the render
>     texture produced by the spherical dome render via syphon and/or spout?
>  2. Would anyone (preferably one of the BGE module owners) be able to
>     provide timely support for this project for a small consulting fee?
>  3. Would anyone be available to do this work and do you have a ball
>     park figure for what it would cost?
>  4. Does anyone have any feelings about what the performance differences
>     might be for a large (100,000+ vertex) textured model between the
>     spherical panoramic renderer and the approach we have done with
>     unity which is just 5 normal renders oriented?
>
> Regards James
>
>
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Hi James,

It would be great to have syphon, spout support into the BGE. I'm not 
sure where in the codebase this should be done, probably the rasterizer.

http://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender.git/tree/HEAD:/source/gameengine/Rasterizer

Are you aware the BGE already has some dome support?
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Game_Engine/Camera/Dome
http://paulbourke.net/dome/BlenderiDome/

It could be of use or a starting point?

I would be interested in any progress of this work. I'm not sure if I 
can be of any help time wise. We are using the BGE for spatial 
projections as well but using a distributed approach.

Rg,

Arnaud

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