Mandala (Amiga, 1986) - The First Motion Sensing (Eye-toy/Kinect) System
78Today, we imagine technology is at its very peak, with touch screens and wireless connections, but back in 1986, a small company from Toronto created an NTSC interactive VR system, which came as a package for $15,000. Only for the Commodore Amiga!
In this video I attempt to describe the product, and then we see it in action, with two videos released on the internet. The first shows the Tom Lee studios, and the art-effects they were playing with. The second clip shows production interviews from the kids TV show Eat a Bug, which was the first TV show to use interactive motion capture. Sadly, the demos and games for this system seem to have been lost. There was a harp, an image changer, a body paint program, and a game with two birds flying towards the screen.
I know this is a bit overwhelming perhaps, and it doesnt help that some words are mumbled, so I've included English Subtitles.
Production Notes:
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Edited: 13th-14th December 2018
The Amiga allowed the invention of many Firsts, and enabled the expansion in many new and existing ideas. During the long research for Amiga: Quantum Leap, I discovered many examples of very famous things, including the American Laserdisc Games, Virtuality, 3D with shutter glasses, and real-time trajectory and sensory equipment used in the Space Shuttle. I bumped in to a guy in my local computer store where I often hang out, telling me about the various movies in which Amiga graphics were used, and the TV shows, and he also mentioned Mandala. I'd never heard of it before, but looking on the internet, there were a couple of clips on youtube. Thank you AmigaNG channel for those videos! Do check out their channel for more!
https://www.youtube.com/user/amigang
Recently I decided to investigate more, and I found a magazine article you can pause and read, but also a newsgroup post, which explains how the system worked from a fan point of view, which I narrate. This can be a little confusing, so I provided subtitles for this one. As with A:QL, the narration was scripted, as thats the only way I could get the jargon to make sense. The guy in the local computer store went in to very technical detail about the system, but most of it went above my head. Basically it edge-detects an item in the camera, and uses this as collision detection, but also uses the movement and motion as you would use a mouse pointer. All very clever stuff.
Hopefully this video will inspire people in the community to dig up more of this story, and perhaps try out the software. I found the latest version of the Mandala software on the EAB file server. Just search for 'Mandala' or 'Vivid'. Hopefully there are people with the technology to get this running, so we can see how it all works. :) (e.g. Amiga Bill)