Update: we are porting to Minecraft (see MC Render 360 and experiments at: https://github.com/shaunlebron/flex-fov)

Blinky

<img src="readme-img/blinky-rocket.png" align="right" width="220px"/>

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:

<img src="readme-img/windows.png" height="16px"> Download for Windows
<img src="readme-img/apple.png" height="16px"> Download for Mac
<img src="readme-img/linux.png" height="16px"> 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:

• Create a Globe
• Create a Lens

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: shaun.e.williams@gmail.com
• twitter: @shaunlebron

License

• The Lua scripts and fisheye.c are released under the MIT license.
• TyrQuake is released under GPL-2.