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Computer: Display: Large Area
The 13th Floor   (+8, -6)  [vote for, against]
what kind of bad luck is this?

I’ve never been in a hotel that didn’t have a 13th floor. I hear strange things happen there.

The doors open and you step out onto the floor, but is squishy and soft . You look down and see it is a plastic disk with red lights underneath. In front of you is a view to the whole sky, a bright glowing blue.

A voice asks you to "log in with your password". You speak, not knowing what to say, but when you hesitatingly say "ummmm" the view in front of you changes from sky to a 3-D projection. A horseshoe which floats in front of you, turns and wobbles just out of reach and fades away. As you watch in wonder your own favorite rabbit’s foot appears. You want to touch it and feel the fur, but just as you reach for it, it disappears. But then you see your lucky hat from Babe Ruth Baseball days float by; and after that a parade of good luck charms you have had since childhood. You feel happy, at peace and most of all Lucky.

OK you think, the 13th floor isn’t going to be bad luck after all. So you turn to go back to the elevator. You look for the button for the elevator. It’s gone, the elevator is gone, no wait, it's coming back, why did it do that? You turn your head to look side to side; and in your periferal vision you notice the projection has gone to a still blackness. As you turn your body toward it, the picture springs back to life and the charms begin floating across once again.

Searching the view you notice a tiny X in the upper right corner. If you can just reach it. You realize, at last, the projection is a computer monitor, and you are standing on the mouse. The slightest movement brings up the 3-D program. The elevator doors are just obscured for a moment by the light display and when the screen goes black you can find your way out. Thanks for visiting the 13th Floor.
-- dentworth, Feb 04 2005

Commercialized version of the CAVE http://www.fakespacesystems.com/
Immersive VR? You're soaking in it! [jutta, Feb 04 2005]

The Thirteenth Floor http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/
(Good film. Anyway, Vincent D'Onofrio + Gretchen Mol: what's not to love?) [angel, Feb 04 2005]

The CAVE VR System http://www.evl.uic.edu/pape/CAVE/
Ca 1992. [jutta, Feb 04 2005]

Virtual Worlds in Real Courts http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6870901/
Very tertially related yet interesting and perhaps a harbinger of things to come. [bristolz, Feb 06 2005]

double negatives are soo confusing...
-- po, Feb 04 2005


You been hitting the absinthe, [dentworth]?
-- AbsintheWithoutLeave, Feb 04 2005


[po] I take them away two at a time and try again. "I’ve always been in a hotel that had a 13th floor." "OK you think, the 13th floor is going to be good luck after all."
-- FarmerJohn, Feb 04 2005


Spoooky..[+]

"eh where did it go?"
-- skinflaps, Feb 04 2005


the trick is you have to log out.
-- dentworth, Feb 04 2005


The only time I stayed in a hotel that had a 13th floor -- in Quebec -- there was an earthquake.
-- theircompetitor, Feb 04 2005


a hotel room with no floor must be so inconvenient.
-- po, Feb 04 2005


Don't think I've been in a hotel with a 13th floor. They didn't have a 12th, or an 11th, or a 10th, either, come to think of it.

This would be a great place for a private social club, Salvador Dali-themed bar, or whatnot.
-- RayfordSteele, Feb 04 2005


this riddle/story is incomplete. To be fair I have put an X in the upper right corner.
-- dentworth, Feb 04 2005


I would just go for a drink in the Start Bar.
-- wagster, Feb 04 2005


"Based on records of buildings with Otis brand elevators, as many as 85 percent of the high rises in the world don't have a 13th floor, says Dilip Rangnekar, spokesman for the Farmington, CT-based elevator maker."
-- robinism, Feb 04 2005


You write any choose your own adventure books, dentworth?
-- yabba do yabba dabba, Feb 04 2005


What exactly is the idea here?
-- gardnertoo, Feb 04 2005


[robinism] thanks for the factoid

[absinthe] not tippling, just trying something different

[yabba] no, I guess it sounds like a c.y.o.a., but this has only one ending.

Once you realize you are standing on the mouse you can exit out.

I imagined using a giant wireless mouse, and a projection type monitor, and voice recognition for the password, you could create this effect. note change in category.
-- dentworth, Feb 04 2005


thanks for the links. Jutta, I notice the people are wearing goggles. In my idea the objects are just drawn in 3-d and move right to left but not 360 degree around you. wouldn't this be possible with computer graphics?
-- dentworth, Feb 04 2005


In a CAVE, people shouldn't generally be wearing goggles. If they are, it's probably just for head-tracking. Disregard them. (Getting rid of the stupid goggles is really the point of having a projection system to begin with.)

I'm not sure what you're asking about, or what it means to "draw something in 3D". In the end, there's light rays hitting an eye's retina. When you're projecting on the wall, and you're working without goggles, both eyes pretty much see the same image.

You can react to the direction of gaze (which means that you have some system that detects it, either by computer vision or by goggle-like things). There, you just hit technology limits - how fast, how many people, what latency - and pick whatever works.
-- jutta, Feb 04 2005


It would still be quite surreal if things only existed when they think that you're looking at them.

Cue Heisenberg joke.
-- Detly, Feb 05 2005


//"Based on records of buildings with Otis brand elevators, as many as 85 percent of the high rises in the world don't have a 13th floor, says Dilip Rangnekar, spokesman for the Farmington, CT-based elevator maker."//

Given that the term "high-rise" can be even applied to buildings with fewer than twelve floors, what percentage of the "high-rises" Otis surveyed had a fourteenth floor?

BTW, many buildings do have a 'mechanical area' between the twelfth and fourteenth floors, and I was in a hotel once with a double-high swimming-pool level on floor 12.
-- supercat, Feb 05 2005


so [supercat]the high dive WAS the 13th floor. heh
-- dentworth, Feb 05 2005


"Immersive VR? You're soaking in it!"

Heh. I assume Madge has been replaced by Jaron in this version.
-- bristolz, Feb 05 2005


No one is supposed to know this, but the 13th floor in all Hotels is the Hunter S. Thompson Suite.
-- Zimmy, Feb 06 2005


[Bris] interesting link. I wasn't thinking of role playing games when I wrote this. but I guess 2nd person narrative forever will be branded as such.

[Zimmy] I looked up Hunter S. Thompson, a sports writer? can't even imagine what the connection is here.
-- dentworth, Feb 08 2005


He used to write for Rolling Stone, in a very drug-addled, surreal, subjective, paranoid style.
-- robinism, Feb 08 2005


Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, The Great Shark Hunt, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign trail '72, Generation of Swine, Songs of the Doomed. And these are only the books that I have (I since have stopped aquisition mode). Worth reading In my humble opinion.
-- Zimmy, Feb 15 2005


thanks, [Zimmy]

might be worth looking him up at my favorite used book place.
-- dentworth, Feb 15 2005


I didn't rate Fear and Loathing very much, so I was extremely surprised when the film turned out to be so brilliant. I think it's one of those rare cases when translation to film improves the book. <awaits onset of angry literati>
-- wagster, Feb 15 2005


I notice today on google news that Hunter Thomson has had enough of life. I was very saddened by his decision to take his own life.
-- Zimmy, Feb 21 2005


I think it was due to [wagster]'s comment.
-- bristolz, Feb 21 2005


[zimmy] sympathy to his fans.

I read he was a student/protege of Hemingway's. some sort of curse there. irony
-- dentworth, Feb 21 2005



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