henke on 8/6/2010 at 16:18

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AKA THE FUTURE OF GAMING!
(and, most likely, annoying popup 3D commercials once we all have this technology implemented in our EYEBALLS)

Augmented Reality is a technology that displays (interactive) 3D models through a digital camera, like your cellphonecam or web-cam. The positioning of these models in the world around you is done either by GPS or, if greater precision is required, through black and white symbols that look something like (http://cellagames.com/artd_man/manual.html) this.

I just downloaded an AR Tower Defence game called (imainatively enough) "Augmented Reality Tower Defense" for my Nokia N95. ((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyWVH6jkDHg) YouTube video / (http://cellagames.com/artd.html) Download link) It works with all Symbian 9.2 phones and it's free. I don't have a printer though so I just had to play it by pointing my camera at my monitor, which wasn't optimal. Will have to print it out on paper tomorrow at work and try it properly.

We've been testing this stuff out a bit at the animation studio I work at and I know TTLG's own TJKeränen works with this stuff as well, hopefully he'll swing by and give us his take on this exciting new technology.

Here are some more reference videos:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNu4CluFOcw) ARhrrrr - AR zombie shoot em up
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfp8id6bpDU) Gizmondo - some kind of RTS game
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6Ayc5Tb9vI) Nissan Cube Brochure
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWNi0ly0TU8) Real-Life Pac Man

addink on 8/6/2010 at 17:06

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I don't know. It has its uses, sure, but mostly it is extremely gimmicky. Less so for mobile devices where you can add layers of additional information on top of the real world to explore.

For a project I've played around with AR and programmed some test apps within Flash (granted not the the most efficient platform frame rate wise). But in the end it just boils down to being a rather cumbersome controller. We canned the project because the marketing concept asked for a simple action game, AR would only add its 'oh look what cool thing I found on the web' novelty value while at the same time really frustrating the gameplay itself.

Given the right content some cool games can be created using this tech, but those games must fit virtual within the real for a good reason.
The Gizmondo example looks cool but that's where it ends. Now if they expanded it to actually incorporate the desk top items, it would actually augment reality instead of rendering a 3D image onto a marker.

The augmented PAC-man may be onto something though. Getting kids to get off their fat behinds and play tag. Or play cops and robbers. Or like Ostriig's proposition augmented paint ball, that could rock.

SubJeff on 8/6/2010 at 17:35

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Yeah, goggles for augmented paintball or go karting would be really cool. In fact you could have live action RTSs in the park.

This will end up being the uber-LARP, you wait and see.

Phatose on 8/6/2010 at 18:28

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No chance of being the future of gaming. The first time someone does this while driving and crashes - which, given the number of games directed at the young and the general irresponsibility of that age group, is a certainty - they'll come down hard on it, and that will be that.

That said, it's got plenty of uses - just that some of them are more safe then other, and gaming will likely be one of them, but RTSes in the park seem like the kind of thing certain to cause injury.

gunsmoke on 9/6/2010 at 00:25

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People crash everyday while texting...yet somehow that remains legal.