Rock Band Difficulty Selection

This entry is a comment on Robert Wettach's September 27th blog entry on selecting difficulty in Rock Band. In Rock Band, you don't know how the difficulty varies between the different instruments until you actually try the song. This can be a frustrating cause of many failed attempts and restarts. Rock Band 2 improved upon that by adding a chart that shows the difficulty across various instruments during song selection, but Rob was still frustrated because this information is not available while you are actually selecting your instrument. This was finally cured in The Beatles: Rock Band.



Guitar Hero 5 has recently made and advancement beyond what Rock Band has been able to provide. Guitar Hero 5 allows players to dynamically change the difficulty of their instrument in real time without interrupting the song. You don't have to fail a song and start over in order to change your difficulty. You don't even have to pause the song. This is especially relevant when playing at a party with a large group. If only one of the four players decides they want to change their difficulty, they don't have to interrupt the other four. They can alter the difficulty for their instrument alone.



On top of that, Guitar Hero 5 allows players to drop in and out of the game in the middle of a song. If a new player comes mid-song or someone decides they want to stop playing, they don't have to ruin it for the other players by forcing them to restart the song. Instead you can drop in without stopping the music at all. You can even change instruments and have multiple people on the same instrument. The ability to change your difficulty, switch instruments, pause, and drop in and out of the game in real time without interrupting the song or other players gives players the opportunity to alter their settings without forcing an inconvenient restart on other players.

While it is not as clear as Rock Band on the individual difficulties of each instrument, the ability to change difficulty in real time gives Guitar Hero 5 the advantage over Rock Band.

Security

One thing that never ceases to frustrate me are the locks on doors at Notre Dame. The locks on the doors to the computer labs in the engineering building require a passcode to be typed in before unlocking. The problem is, there is no way to undo a mistake that is made while typing a code in. Instead, you have to wait for a few seconds before you can continue. It would be much more convenient if you could clear the entry you've made so far and start again. Of course, it is understandable that the manufacturer might want to force you to wait after an incorrect input. In the same way that online passwords sometimes force you to wait after a certain number of incorrect inputs, this pause makes the process of trying to guess a password much more time consuming, making it an unfeasable task. That said, even with a forced pause, it would be nice to have an indication of when you are allowed to try again. Following an incorrect input with a correct input too quickly forces you to wait again before you can try. This process can be frustrating, and it would be easy to fix by simply using the flashing light to indicate when it is okay to try again.



Some of the labs have doors that require you to punch mechanical buttons in rather than digitally entering a code. Turning the knob on these doors resets it, so that you can try again. This is a much less frustrating design. Unfortunately, the codes for these doors can be much harder to remember. These locks allow a combination to include two numbers being pressed at the same time in order to increase the number of possible combinations using fewer buttons. Unfortunately, this makes the passwords harder to chunk into easy to remember sequences such as a 4 number year. Instead, you not only have to remember the numbers, but also which numbers are pressed simultaneously. This does not work well with how the human brain remembers things.



Another type of door lock on campus that was poorly designed from a user interface perspective are the locks on the dorm rooms of the West Quad dorms. These locks take the form of small switches that are located on the side of the doors and can only be seen when the doors are open. It took me a couple of weeks into my freshman year to realize they even existed without someone showing me. Furthermore, "unlocking" the door with your key does not actually unlock it, but rather just opens it. However, the door remains unlocked from the inside, so if you beleive you've unlocked your door by using the key (because that's how it works on every other door you've used in your life) and choose to leave, you can easily find yourself locked out of your room.



Fortunately, there are some much more user friendly security systems such as fingerprint readers. Fingerprint readers are ideal from the user's perspective because they are fast, intuitive, and don't require the user to remember any numbers or passwords. Unfortunately, they are also much more complicated to set up because you need prior knowledge of the fingerprint of the person being granted access. You cannot easily and freely distribute fingerprints as you do passwords, so in a setting like Notre Dame where the users are changing from year to year or in the case of a home where you might want to grant a friend or neighbor access, it is inconvenient to give new users the ability to unlock the system. Retinal scans tend to be popular forms of security in movies, but they tend to be less convenient to use than fingerprint scanners. Until retinal scanning becomes as convenient as it is in Minority Report, where Tom Cruise can simply walk off the subway and have his eyes scanned without having to pause even for a moment, we will just have to make due with keys and keypads.

Smart Glass

Now that mobile phones can connect to the internet, people can get information from the internet almost anywhere around the world. One useful resource on an internet enabled phone is a search engine. If at any time, someone wants to know more about something, they can take out their phone and search for the information they need. This connectivity will get faster and more pervasive over time. Smart glass is a theoretical use of this connectivity to allow us to gather information about our surroundings in real time.



Unlike a search engine in a mobile browser, smart glass does not require you to encode what you are looking at into words before searching for information about it. You simply send the image over the internet and receive the information you want in return. If this worked well, it would greatly simplify the process of searching the internet for answers to your questions. The use of glass also allows you to see the data you want overlaid on top of what you are looking at to organize it in an intuitive manner.



Unfortunately, this technology would require huge advances in artificial intelligence before it could become practical. It is unclear how this concept would allow you to specify what to do next if it returns irrelevant data. It is hard enough for a search engine based on text to return relevant data. Using images would only make it that much more complicated. Also, image processing technology is far from good enough to identify a lot of objects from every day life, such as a flower or an apple. There may however be a few specific cases where this would not be too difficult. Processing the image of a clear night sky might in order to identify constellations might be practical if the image capturing technology is precise enough.



Additionally, the use of additional technology such as a GPS system might compliment the search technology well enough for specific applications to work. For example, if the smart glass knows the precise location and orientation that it is being held in, it could potentially calculate how to draw an arrow along a road to direct the user in the style of Google Street View.



While this technology would be difficult to implement - particularly with the image recognition and the issue of returning relevant results, it would certainly make for an intuitive way to gather information on the world around us.

Racing Game Controllers

Racing video games have been around for a long time, and they have evolved with the advent of the analog controller. Originally, racing games that utilized digital controllers only had one level of gas control. Either the gas was being floored or it was completely released. Additionally, the steering was limited to left, right, or straight. This does not bode well for racing games that are attempting to create a realistic, immersive experience.



Fortunately, the use of an analog stick on the Nintendo 64 controller allowed for multiple degrees of freedom when steering. Eventually Sony released its original Dual-Shock controller that contained two analogue sticks which allowed for even further control over the steering. Unfortunately, gas was an all or nothing affair.



With the Dual-Shock 2 controller, Sony implemented analogue buttons in addition to the sticks. This allowed the user to control the flow of gas with more precision. An even greater step towards a realistic driving experience was made with the "trigger" style controls used on the top of the Dreamcast and Xbox controllers. This not only gives the player control, but it also simulates the movement and force feedback from the gas pedal.



Of course, to simulate a real racing experience, a quality racing wheel is needed. Some of the better racing wheels not only come with pedals, they also include a gear shifter and force feedback from the wheel. A more hardcore setup can even include multiple monitors, a fixed chair, and a sound system.



Motion controls have also made for an interesting advancement in racing controls. The Wiimote has been used as a steering wheel in games such as Mario Kart. Holding the Wiimote sideways while rotating it like a steering wheel is one way to simulate the rotation without the need for extra controllers. Project Natal is even being used to simulate the racing experience without the use of extra peripherals. One of the Project Natal demos involves playing the game Burnout: Paradise with no controller. You simply move your left and right feet to step on the gas and brake, move your hands through the air to steer, and reach down with one hand to shift. While this has the definite advantage of not requiring any extra peripherals or setup, it also lacks the feedback of being able to feel the wheel as you turn it. Reports have said that the motion controls feel natural, so it may be a good alternative for those not willing to clutter up their room with extra gear.