I think I've read through all of the threads here related to the pspdif file. From the threads I've read that *.pspdat files are actually zip files. However, there doesn't seem to be anything new on the pspdif front. Anyone have any further leads in this area?
I work for a university archaeology lab (http://atl.ndsu.edu/). We investigate the use of 3D graphics for archaeological, cultural, and human heritage preservation and education.
We are preparing a proposal for providing 3D content at an archaeological site to tourists and visitors. One of the items we've been asked to do is perform a study to see if site visitors would actually like to have such an experience.
Anyway, long story short, we want to run a study, possibly using PSP's to deliver rendered video of 3D reconstructions of archaeological sites to visitors on the site through a wireless connection. The content we plan on using can be found here (http://onaslant.ndsu.edu/).
We're not sure how feasible this is at the moment. Not sure if the wireless signal would reach the PSP. The best case scenario right now, is to build a PSP WoP browser-freindly website, and make the content downloadable through HTML hyperlinks. So as you walk the site you click on different links to get relative content. Better than reading a boring sign anyway.
From what I read so far here on the forums, you really need to hava a pspdif file point to your pspdat. So anyway, if anyone knows anything more, that would be great. Post here, or shoot me a note privately.
Thanks,
Aaron
Content developer looking for more info on the pspdif
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archaeology
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Guest
I would say right now that the goals of your project are too large to be handled by the current state of the art of PSP homebrew, which is still in its infancy. That is, assuming you have no actual professional developer support .
I am going to assume that your hardware requirements are really something with the same general form factor and graphical capabilities of a PSP.
You should seriously consider many of the PDA's that are currently on the market. They have the hardware profiles that match you needs and that is much more open development tools available.
Or catch this recent announcement from Nokia, the "Wifi internet Tablet", which might be even better:
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,75023,00.html
Approached the right way, Nokia might even love an opportunity for such an educational way show off the capabilities of this tablet without your Univ having to spend alot of money. While its not yet on the market, I am sure anyone interesting in developing for it right now can get access to what they need.
Anyhow, the point I am making is that there may be far more suitable hardware platforms out there than the PSP at this point in time.
I am going to assume that your hardware requirements are really something with the same general form factor and graphical capabilities of a PSP.
You should seriously consider many of the PDA's that are currently on the market. They have the hardware profiles that match you needs and that is much more open development tools available.
Or catch this recent announcement from Nokia, the "Wifi internet Tablet", which might be even better:
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,75023,00.html
Approached the right way, Nokia might even love an opportunity for such an educational way show off the capabilities of this tablet without your Univ having to spend alot of money. While its not yet on the market, I am sure anyone interesting in developing for it right now can get access to what they need.
Anyhow, the point I am making is that there may be far more suitable hardware platforms out there than the PSP at this point in time.
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archaeology
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Thanks
Thanks for the link. The 770 appears to be well suited for at least an initial study of having media content in the palm of your hand as you walk a site. And at around $350, it's price is comparable to the PSP, especially when you consider that Wipeout and a decent size duo stick would be needed.
Of course, the advantage of using the PSP would be that families are much more likely have a PSP (or DS) in the car on a summer vacation, than they would anything else, except for maybe a mobile phone. By using a PSP, we could capitalize on this. Also, a long range goal of ours is to go full interactive 3D with the user's viewpoint updating via GPS as they walk the site. Again, that's a long range goal.
Anyway, I'll take a closer look at the 770. It's seems to better suited for this type of user study. But in the meantime, I'll keep checking back here to see what the status of the pspdif file is.
Thanks,
Aaron
Of course, the advantage of using the PSP would be that families are much more likely have a PSP (or DS) in the car on a summer vacation, than they would anything else, except for maybe a mobile phone. By using a PSP, we could capitalize on this. Also, a long range goal of ours is to go full interactive 3D with the user's viewpoint updating via GPS as they walk the site. Again, that's a long range goal.
Anyway, I'll take a closer look at the 770. It's seems to better suited for this type of user study. But in the meantime, I'll keep checking back here to see what the status of the pspdif file is.
Thanks,
Aaron
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Guest
Well, of course I assumed that a site would be taking complete responsibility for the user experience, including having a specified quantity of hardware on hand to provide for said experience. This gives the most flexibility, where the solution can be designed around what is easiest and most economical to develop.
On the other hand, you could design around what visitors may or may not have chosen to purchase on their own, and may or may not have chosen to bring with them. You still could have some extras on hand for those who didn't and didn't. Obviously you would including these issues in your plan.
In any event, if you want to include GPS, other handhelds already have GPS solutions that "plug in" as opposed to "dangle out" with respect to the as-yet-unavailable-and-who-knows-if-it-will-ever-come solution for the PSP.
And there is still the issue of developing for the PSP.
Its a fantastic concept you have. My only concern for it is the current appropriateness of the PSP considering the many other platforms that are already available and the means by which units of hardware would be available for visitors.
On the other hand, you could design around what visitors may or may not have chosen to purchase on their own, and may or may not have chosen to bring with them. You still could have some extras on hand for those who didn't and didn't. Obviously you would including these issues in your plan.
In any event, if you want to include GPS, other handhelds already have GPS solutions that "plug in" as opposed to "dangle out" with respect to the as-yet-unavailable-and-who-knows-if-it-will-ever-come solution for the PSP.
And there is still the issue of developing for the PSP.
Its a fantastic concept you have. My only concern for it is the current appropriateness of the PSP considering the many other platforms that are already available and the means by which units of hardware would be available for visitors.
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archaeology
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Valid Points
Of course, everything issue you bring up is a valid point.
When our last proposal to develop a 3D mobile wireless system for archaeology site was denied, the reviewers pointed out that we had no evidence that the public would want to use such a system. To move forward on the concept of a "3D museum kiosk in your hand", we decided that we had to perform an on-site study. Well, the problem is that you can't do a study on the use of a hand-held 3D graphics system until that system is developed, and of course, you can't develop that system until you have the funding. Which meant that we were stuck in a catch 22.
However, as we had a rendered 3D version of the On-A-Slant site, we decided to try implementing a "multimedia kiosk in your hand" solution, in the hopes of getting the study participants to make the leap to "wouldn't it be nice if it was interactive 3D" when they filled out the post-experience survey.
We began looking at the PSP when we learned that it could play Mpeg4 video. Currently, the PSP has many limitations if you do not have the official development tools. However, moving the entire MACH-3D project to the PSP is not something we plan to do yet. MACH-3D stands for Mobile Augmented Cultural Heritage in 3D.
Anyway, we feel that if we could get a the multimedia kiosk working on a PSP: 1) the study would receive more publicity than if we had conducted it on a PDA; 2) people, especially children and teens, would be more likely to make the jump to "wouldn't it be cool if it were a video game" in their survey responses than if the kiosk were implemented on a PDA; 3) As Sony is eating much of the cost of the PSP, the PSP is cheap enough where we could buy several for the study; 4) vacationers who visit the On-A-Slant site could use their own PSPs as part of our study; and finally 5) the fact that we did the study on the PSP might get Sony's attention, and get us some sort of corporate software donation as in the case of our use of Maya and the Alias Research Donation Program.
Our thoughts: "Maybe Sony might see this use of the PSP as a whole new market". The original MACH-3D proposal had both the state and federal park systems involved. Imagine every site you visit in the U.S. having a 3D intractive environment where you could interact with people who lived/worked/died at a site. With a GPS-enabled PSP in hand, a person could charge the Federal defenses at the battle of Gettysburg in the US civil war, running the actual ground the soldiers ran across. Or talk to villagers at a Plains Indian, and see what it was like to endure a raid by nomadic warriors. Should a MACH-3D system ever be developed, it could very well be placed at many federally controlled sites around the US. That's millions of visitors each year. I should be telling this to Sony. :) Hard to get them to pay attention though.
Anyway, our plan is to do an outdoor hand-held multimedia kiosk study to demonstrate that site visitors would like to use such a device while touring archaological sites. Then we plan to use this data in future proposals to develop an OpenGL-ES enabled 3D graphics system for mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, to demonstrate the feasibility of the project. Get 100,000+ users/year, and then approach the hand-held gaming companies. You can only really get the attention of the Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft if you can show that your idea has the possibility of having a very large number of users.
As far as the GPS thing for the PSP goes, well we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but we have contacts with a company with the technology to make such a device and the interest in moving forward with something like that... just no funding to do so... but isn't that always the case.
So I think we'll just start easy on this one and use something like the Nokia 770 for the hand-held kiosk study.
Thanks for your comments. They're very much appreciated.
Aaron
When our last proposal to develop a 3D mobile wireless system for archaeology site was denied, the reviewers pointed out that we had no evidence that the public would want to use such a system. To move forward on the concept of a "3D museum kiosk in your hand", we decided that we had to perform an on-site study. Well, the problem is that you can't do a study on the use of a hand-held 3D graphics system until that system is developed, and of course, you can't develop that system until you have the funding. Which meant that we were stuck in a catch 22.
However, as we had a rendered 3D version of the On-A-Slant site, we decided to try implementing a "multimedia kiosk in your hand" solution, in the hopes of getting the study participants to make the leap to "wouldn't it be nice if it was interactive 3D" when they filled out the post-experience survey.
We began looking at the PSP when we learned that it could play Mpeg4 video. Currently, the PSP has many limitations if you do not have the official development tools. However, moving the entire MACH-3D project to the PSP is not something we plan to do yet. MACH-3D stands for Mobile Augmented Cultural Heritage in 3D.
Anyway, we feel that if we could get a the multimedia kiosk working on a PSP: 1) the study would receive more publicity than if we had conducted it on a PDA; 2) people, especially children and teens, would be more likely to make the jump to "wouldn't it be cool if it were a video game" in their survey responses than if the kiosk were implemented on a PDA; 3) As Sony is eating much of the cost of the PSP, the PSP is cheap enough where we could buy several for the study; 4) vacationers who visit the On-A-Slant site could use their own PSPs as part of our study; and finally 5) the fact that we did the study on the PSP might get Sony's attention, and get us some sort of corporate software donation as in the case of our use of Maya and the Alias Research Donation Program.
Our thoughts: "Maybe Sony might see this use of the PSP as a whole new market". The original MACH-3D proposal had both the state and federal park systems involved. Imagine every site you visit in the U.S. having a 3D intractive environment where you could interact with people who lived/worked/died at a site. With a GPS-enabled PSP in hand, a person could charge the Federal defenses at the battle of Gettysburg in the US civil war, running the actual ground the soldiers ran across. Or talk to villagers at a Plains Indian, and see what it was like to endure a raid by nomadic warriors. Should a MACH-3D system ever be developed, it could very well be placed at many federally controlled sites around the US. That's millions of visitors each year. I should be telling this to Sony. :) Hard to get them to pay attention though.
Anyway, our plan is to do an outdoor hand-held multimedia kiosk study to demonstrate that site visitors would like to use such a device while touring archaological sites. Then we plan to use this data in future proposals to develop an OpenGL-ES enabled 3D graphics system for mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, to demonstrate the feasibility of the project. Get 100,000+ users/year, and then approach the hand-held gaming companies. You can only really get the attention of the Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft if you can show that your idea has the possibility of having a very large number of users.
As far as the GPS thing for the PSP goes, well we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but we have contacts with a company with the technology to make such a device and the interest in moving forward with something like that... just no funding to do so... but isn't that always the case.
So I think we'll just start easy on this one and use something like the Nokia 770 for the hand-held kiosk study.
Thanks for your comments. They're very much appreciated.
Aaron