AR games anyone?

[Julian]

[DuckReconMajor]

God forbid we put M&M's on the field.

[Bucket]

Oh shit I love the invalid parameters game too!

[TheeXile]

Throw in some GPS, increase the scale, and you could make a game with zombies chasing you instead. :P


I wonder what people would look like wandering around the streets freaking out over illusionary zombie attacks, though...

[Snarboo]

Reminds me of the old Oddysey console, and how you would use overlays on your TV for each game. Obviously, this is much more sophisticated.

TheeXile said:

I wonder what people would look like wandering around the streets freaking out over illusionary zombie attacks, though...

There's a good reason why that won't happpen: if someone were deep enough into the game, they might forget basic survival, and accidently walk into oncoming traffic or off a bridge. Such a device would probably create a large number of lawsuits and safety concerns.

However, you could repurpose old laser tag arenas and add augmented reality elements to them. Safety would still be an issue, but it would be much easier to control.

[leileilol]

I'd much prefer this

[Super Jamie]

What a fucking stupid idea.

I thought the idea of mobile gaming was to be portable? To play this zombie game, all I need is my Tegra, and a small table with enough room to walk around it undisturbed, and their special map piece of paper. That will be so useful on the train/bus or at class/work! Not to mention the trip to the chiropractor to fix my back after hours of bending over said table (lolwut).

I think nVidia are living in an "augmented reality" of their own. That company gets more irrelevant by the day.

[Maes]

Two words: Virtual Boy.

[exp(x)]

Super Jamie said:

I think nVidia are living in an "augmented reality" of their own. That company gets more irrelevant by the day.

You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? This is a project from the Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab and the Savannah College of Art and Design. Nvidia may have provided the hardware, but this is hardly their concept.

[Scet]

Yes, this is exactly what people will want to do after work/school. Bend over a table and play the same map over and over again on some tiny portable screen.

Hopefully this Tegra device will end the current motion-control/touch-screen nonsense in the same way that the Virtual Boy made people realize what bullshit virtual reality was.

[Maes]

I'm waiting for Zauldron to chime in and pwn us.

[Nomad]

leileilol said:

I'd much prefer this
[quake AR video]

I saw that waaaaay back in the day on The Screen Savers when TechTV was still around. It was kind of cool, but they had to wear these huge backpack things with a laptop and a GPS device, plus the viewing device. It was, of course, just a prototype, but it was incredibly unwieldy.

Still, AR gaming is going to be pretty cool when the technology is good enough.

[Khorus]

Such products wouldn't make me feel immersed in the game, but would actually remind me I'm in reality because I have to move around and shit.

[Maes]

Hadn't someone posted the pics of a cardboard model of "MAP30: Icon of Sin" ages ago?

Edit: Oh yeah, here it is: Cardboard Doom mod.

[DuckReconMajor]

I don't get it. No one is excited about this but people freak out about Project Natal?

[Sharessa]

DuckReconMajor said:

I don't get it. No one is excited about this but people freak out about Project Natal?

Just for the record, I'm excited about neither one.

[Scet]

Khorus said:

Such products wouldn't make me feel immersed in the game, but would actually remind me I'm in reality because I have to move around and shit.

Yeah, IMO a Virtual Boy style headset would be much more immersive since it blocks out the surrounding area. The problem with the VB was that the headset was way too big to be portable, and of course that it only displayed one color. Perhaps with todays technology a real VB style system is possible?

[Maes]

Scet said:

Perhaps with todays technology a real VB style system is possible?

Color dual-screen stereo vision goggles were already available in the mid 90s, and were even affordable. There was just one problem though: they had no serious application context and little software support.

Using them with "normal" software (such as Doom) made them nothing more than a couple of monitors stuck to your eyes, only more tiring and cumbersome to use.

A handful of games supported them and enabled special modes such as e.g. showing alternating fields of a frame on each eye etc. to achieve stereo vision, but they were mostly forgettable crap. Plus they felt nothing like "virtual reality".

I even tried a "virtual reality" set with a platform and everything in a local arcade...but the "experience" consisted of playing for 3 minutes in part of a random Duke Nukem 3D level, and having to use a hand-held joystick with a "move forward" button and a finger trigger.

As for the VB, if I'm not mistaked, it was crippled by design to be non-wearable, probably because Nintendo feared kids wearing it would not pay attention to that bus about to hit them....makes sense for someone who censored Wolf3D!

[Creaphis]

Nomad said:

I saw that waaaaay back in the day on The Screen Savers when TechTV was still around. It was kind of cool, but they had to wear these huge backpack things with a laptop and a GPS device, plus the viewing device. It was, of course, just a prototype, but it was incredibly unwieldy.

That should increase the immersion. Pretend you're wearing a backpack that contains, among other things, twenty entire crates of rockets.

[Maes]

Creaphis said:

That should increase the immersion. Pretend you're wearing a backpack that contains, among other things, twenty entire crates of rockets.

He could just sit on a chair and abstain from getting up ;-)