Hi everyone, Most of you may remember reading a thread a few weeks ago about the See Munkey, a revolutionary new 3D motion tracking headset that Aprone is designing and coding for use in upcoming game titles. I received my headset in the mail yesterday, and I am amazed beyond comprehension at what Jeremy has put together. First, let me say, as people start firing up their spell checkers and splitting the subject lines, See Munkey is not spelled like the packets of brine shrimp we used to get as kids. It's "see" as in to understand or to take in visually, and "monkey" like the animal only spelled with a "U" instead. See Munkey. And now to the amazingness! There were two pieces of gear in my See Munkey box: a reinforced headband and a small rubberized box fitted with a clip and trailing a USB cord. The rubberized box is the actual See Munkey. It's designed to clip onto the top of your headphones if they run across your head. If you wear ear buds, or if your headset, like mine, wraps around the back of your head, you clip the box to the headband and slip that on over the top of your head. The See Munkey is designed to sit on top of your head in order to track your movements. The See Munkey currently tracks your head on 3 major planes: *Horizontal rotation: turning your head side to side, called yaw *Vertical rotation: nodding your head up and down, called pitch *tilt: tilting your head side to side and stretching out your neck, called roll The software is still being developed, but it was amazing to see it in action; I'm practically drooling to play with it more, but I want to put this email out there first to give Aprone the credit he so richly deserves. I downloaded a mapper program to calibrate the headset to my particular movements. Once the mapper is launched, you move your head through a series of gestures and press letters to teach the program about yourself. The more times you perform these gestures, the more the mapper learns about your movements and the smoother it translates your gestures into actions. Currently the See Munkey supports playing in Swamp as a means of turning your character, but this will change very shortly. But it using it to play Swamp, I've already seen the true genius the See Munkey is going to be. I was walking through the abandoned hospital today, one hand on my keyboard, the other on my mouse, and I heard a zombie in my left ear. Instead of moving my mouse so my character was facing him, I simply looked at him. I mean I quite literally turned my head to face the noise and looked directly at the zombie. As I turned my head, the sound panned with my movement until I was staring the zombie square in his rotting face. It was the easiest thing in the world to pull the trigger. You will not truly be able to appreciate the amazing ground the See Munkey is not only going to break, but shatter, until you get your hands on one--and you must get your hands on one. My understanding is that the devices, once commercially available, will retail for $50 plus shipping, and they will be worth every penny. If you don't have $50, save your pennies, ask a friend, or mortgage Vermont Avenue. This is something you truly must experience. Aprone, you are a gentleman and a scholar. And now, zombies. Ryan
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