Virtual 3D pool

The equipment consists of regular pool cues, a cueball mounted on a concave felt-covered pad with a spring, virtual reality headsets, and a suitably powerful graphics processor.

The player sees the interior of a sphere. Six pockets and associated cushion "islands" are positioned symmetrically and equidustantly over the interior of the sphere at the vertices of a regular octahedron. The cueball starts at the "South pole" of the sphere which corresponds in meatspace with the position of the cueball input device. The "triange" is centred on the "North" pole.

The cue is mapped into the player's visual field by the graphics processor.

When the cueball is played, the system computes the path of the ball over the inner surface and displays the results in real time to the players. Momentum and friction are simulated; "gravity" is always normal to the playing surface.

After the balls have come to rest, the playing surface slowly rotates with respect to a fixed frame of reference to bring the cueball back to the "south pole" without causing disorientation* resulting in dizziness, nausea, staggering, falling over and projectile vomiting.

Walking "round" the sphere allows the game to be viewed from different angles.

*For added entertainment, it is possible to modify the "artificial horizon" parameters on a per-user basis.