Living Your Life in 3rd Person!

Courtesy Instructables.com

Hardcore gamers have imagined this for years. I, myself, have wondered when this would be possible. Now, thanks to Instructables.com, you can finally start living your life in the 3rd person.

A lot of mainstream video games are played in 3rd person, where you can see the entire body of the character you are controlling in front of the camera. This is opposed to 1st person, in which you see through the eyes of the character.

We all live our lives in 1st person. However, if you are an avid fan of video games, you have probably wondered at one time or another if we would ever be able to actually live our own real lives in 3rd person.

The answer is simpler than you would think, and the instructions can be found at Instructables.com. Instructables is a site that provides a sharing database of “how-to” documents that will teach you anything from making biscuits to, well, walking around while watching yourself in the 3rd person. Instructables, according to the website, was created in the MIT Media Lab when students wanted to create place to share and communicate their work.

In a barebones summary, the 3rd person system includes a camera mounted to and behind you, and goggles that show the live feed from the camera. Other than that, you will need to mount the battery packs to your body. It’s as simple as that.

According to the article, the most expensive part of the design will be the video goggles, generally running over $200 for the cheapest versions. This is the key component, however, allowing you to view the live video feed from the camera mounted on your back.

The article at Instructables.com will not only tell you how to choose your goggle system and build your camera mount, but it also describes how they transmitted the video footage and recorded it on a separate computer. They even tried a gun-mounted camera that transmitted the view down the barrel of a paintball gun into the goggles, which the testers thought was much less disorienting than the 3rd person camera mount.

While the movement of the camera could be a bit disorienting, the experience of moving around in 3rd person seems exciting at the least. Depending on the mount you create, you might just be able to enjoy your entire morning jog in 3rd person. But be careful.

If you decide to construct your own 3rd person camera rig, please proceed with caution. The creators of this contraption at Instructables.com felt disoriented, sometimes sea sick, and had trouble not running into walls due to depth perception problems. Just watch the following videos, and let us know if you make your own 3rd person, video-game style point-of-view system.

Check out the full article, “Viewing Myself in 3rd Person,” by following this link. Also, watch the videos here for a better idea of what we’re talking about.

Testing the 3rd Person Camera Rig indoors

Testing the System Outdoors