Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant
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AUGMENTED REALITY GAMING

10th January 2005

Whilst Eyetoy placed the player into the game, EyeJOY could place the game inside your house. Augmented Reality (AR) has been looked at for some time, but it has never really been too practical, requiring heavy, unweildly gear. AR is realtime 3D graphics that are viewed through transparent glasses. The user can see both the real world and the generated 3D objects too. By putting a camera on the glasses a feedback loop is created. This allows the machine generating the images to perform all kinds of clever tricks, such as occlusion (the virtual objects can pass behind as well as in front of your sofa), correctly lighting the artificial object for the environment and even to generate collisions between the real world and the artificial object.

Now, several technologies are starting to make it tantalisingly close for the home gamer. Instead of carrying a bulky machine, WIFI links can send video both to the eyeset and from it via a built in camera. This is now fast enough to be useful: DVD players have a sustained transfer rate of 33mbps, and WIFI can do 54mbps and faster. Also, the processing power needed for image recognition is large, and the next generation of consoles will be much faster, allowing such complex object recognition to take place.

So what games can you expect to see? Well, I would imagine that for starters it will be simple things, like a first person light-gun style game with enemies jumping out at you from behind the sofa, the curtains, and bursting through the wall. Other simple games, such as track car racing, could happen around your seat, with simulated mud flying and your coffee table being knocked over by the cars. Eventually you will see games that take further advantage of the possibilities, inserting characters into your house to interact with. Imagine exploring your house anew, recast as a location in Racoon City, or City 17, as you run from room to room you are moving through the gameworld. The stairs become an escalator upwards and a fire escape down (or could that prove to be too dangerous!). Other applications involve augmenting everyday outdoor games, such as a hide and seek with giant 50ft ants that you must hide from, or cops and robbers with cartoon effect guns and your friends being digitally dressed up by the machine into costume.

Some interesting experiments have already taken place, from simple soccer on a PDA to full blown pacman on the streets. This blending of the real and the generated will come to permeate our lives completely. The current systems are very much experimental and years away from being something you can buy. It will be a while before we all sport glasses which condense our phone, PDA and internet connection into one wearable item. Then we'll be media-blogging our lives to a remote hard drive, providing us with a perfect memory, precise directions, context sensitive information, advice and help on where we are and what we can do there.

The possibilities for gaming under those circumstances are exciting and much different from current gaming. Watch the new twists on gaming that the wireless networking in the PSP and the DS bring, then add real world settings and hundreds of simultaneous players in the AR. Gaming is set to change beyond recognition.

 

Update 03/02/05: Just spotted this video (you need realplayer to view it). Seems that the car thing I talk about isn't too far fetched after-all :-)

Update 16/03/05: An article covering this topic has appeared on the MIT website. Nothing spectacularly new here, but interesting nevertheless

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