The future is now: Augmented Reality shows camera-enabled handheld possibilities
- June 18, 2009 13:18 PM PST
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This year's E3 had a plethora of new technology, from Microsofts Natal to Wii MotionPlus, to Sony's motion-control remote....thingy. But one thing you might have missed was a new kind of portable peripheral system entitled Augmented Reality (AR) which is being used in such upcoming titles as Invizimals for the PSP.
Up to this point, Augmented Reality has remained a kind of research labs pet project, with occasional demonstrations on youtube and so forth. But recently, with Invizimals being demonstrated at E3 to wowed crowds, and a video demonstration for a tech demo game titled ARhrrr on youtube, Augmented Reality looks to be something we may be incorporating into our daily gaming lives in the very near future.
The above trailer for Invizimals gives us a taste of what's possible with the camera add-on, but at the Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab and the Savannah College of Arts and Design (SCAD-Atlanta), research has been conducted on even more radical possibilities that can be accomplished with Augmented Reality.
In the tech demo video below, a zombie shooter entitled ARhrrr shows a flat tabletop map which produces a full 3D cityscape riddled with zombies on the handheld device (for this demonstration, a prototype device from Nvidia). The handheld can be moved around at any angle to view the zombie onslaught, and the overlayed city responds and rotates accordingly. The handheld acts as a helicopter from which players shoot the aggressive undead from up above and use such items as skittles as weapons against them.
That's right, skittles = weapons of mass destruction. Watch it for yourself:
Of course this is just a tech demo with some limited capabilities, but nonetheless, the possibilities for such a device seem pretty astronomical. Who knows? If they manage to adapt games like Civilization or Command & Conquer to this kind of technology, we could have a whole new gaming world in the palm of our hands.
Original story here at Joysitq.
This technology is pretty rad. With Invizimals coming out for the PSP, no doubt the DS, and iPhone will be close to follow if the thing turns out to be a hit. I can only imagine Pokemon tournaments being fought this way in the future. But, for my money, I'm still waiting for that Star Wars holochess game played on the Millennium Falcon to become a reality and this looks like the closest alternative in the near future.
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- Jun 18 2009 at 12:27:55:PM PST
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Screw the game I've been wondering about the camera thing for PsP forever. I guess Sony don't wanna lose money on the Cybershot front.
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ChokaDaChicken wrote:
Screw the game I've been wondering about the camera thing for PsP forever. I guess Sony don't wanna lose money on the Cybershot front.
The camera thing is a device named the PSP Go! camera, and was released in Europe only a couple of years back. You can also get the PSP Go! GPS, and a bunch of other products similar to that. Oh, and the camera comes with image editing software for you PSP as well.
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This thing looks incredible! The only down side is looking insane while playing if someone who doesn't know what it is walks in on you. They see a person circling a map on a table while pointing a device at it and placing skittles on it in different places.
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This would be crazy if they did the same thing with those little platforms to create images on but you used goggles to see them instead of a handheld. That would be like virtual reality.
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Cool concept... kinda like that virtual pet game for PS3 w/ PSEye. Not really something I'm personally interested in though.
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