Odyssey
In Summer '10 an idea was thrown out to a group of friends: What if we could make a holodeck? Thus was the inception of what would eventually become Odyssey. In those two years since, the project has been worked on by an Innovation class group and as a personal side project, before finally being taken on by our New Media Team Project group, Upstate Freshness, in Fall '11. Since then, the scope of what is now called "Odyssey" grew dramatically; from a simple proof-of-concept to an entirely new multimedia platform.
Odyssey won first prize at RIT's Winter 2012 Research & Innovation Symposium. Our team planned to further develop our software to take advantage of the innovative properties of the Odyssey platform, and refine the motion controls to deliver the most intuitive control scheme possible. We also intended to develop a permanent mounting system for our installation, and presented a near production-quality iteration of Odyssey at 2012's ImagineRIT Festival. After graduation of the team members in 2012, however, future development of Project Odyssey was put on hold.
In Summer '10 an idea was thrown out to a group of friends: What if we could make a holodeck? Thus was the inception of what would eventually become Odyssey. In those two years since, the project has been worked on by an Innovation class group and as a personal side project, before finally being taken on by our New Media Team Project group, Upstate Freshness, in Fall '11. Since then, the scope of what is now called "Odyssey" grew dramatically; from a simple proof-of-concept to an entirely new multimedia platform.
Odyssey consisted of a 12-ft tall, 16-ft diameter cylindrical screen, 4 short-throw projectors, surround sound speakers, a PC and a Kinect. The screen and projectors provided 360 degrees of immersive visuals and audio- breaking through the paradigm of the "flat screen" that modern visual media has been subjected to for over a century. The Kinect-based motion controls offered free movement in all directions, as opposed to the narrow field of motion offered by a traditional TV screen.
Odyssey won first prize at RIT's Winter 2012 Research & Innovation Symposium. Our team planned to further develop our software to take advantage of the innovative properties of the Odyssey platform, and refine the motion controls to deliver the most intuitive control scheme possible. We also intended to develop a permanent mounting system for our installation, and presented a near production-quality iteration of Odyssey at 2012's ImagineRIT Festival. After graduation of the team members in 2012, however, future development of Project Odyssey was put on hold.