The inevitable infantile drawings aside, this game is a wonderful display of augmented reality. Honestly, I could easily see myself sitting around a display table, drinking beers and betting on our ships as they blasted each other off the map.
Each combatant is drawn by the player on a game card that is scanned into the game by a camera, and the stats of your ship are determined by the shape, size and colours used to create it.
It was nominated for the ‘Award for Technical Excellence’ at the 2011 FITC Awards, and won the award for ‘Best Experimental Flash’
Traveller AR is an upcoming iPhone AR RPG (whew, that’s a mouthful) that has released a beta and a brief video. The game is based on an old RPG, basically D&D in the stars.
Traveller-AR uses iPhone’s Augmented Reality to:
See a virtual 3D world over-layed on the real world through the window of your iPhone.
Allow you to move your phone around in real-space, and explore virtual space as though looking through a window to unreality.
Place you in the virtual world, near your actual GPS position.
Provide travel bonuses and trading bonuses based on your actual GPS position.
Discover and interact with other real players near your actual GPS position
It seemed like only last week we were clamoring for more games to showcase the power of augmented reality. Now I find it hard enough just to keep up with them all. Instead of trying to create a list, I’m going to just brain dump them into the Internet and let you all decide which ones you want to try. I’m sure I’ll miss some, so if I have, just add ’em to the comments section.
Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary
I covered this one a month back on the Future Digital Life. Great game and I loved that it got the kids and I out of the house on late night adventures and using our imaginations. Nice work, Ogmento.
Let’s count the whole suite of them from AR Shot to Fishing. The game system takes card based AR to a whole new place. Well, actually, it’s the same place you’re in, but with cool graphics overlain.
AR Soccer
Short and simple but can be addicting for at least as long as it takes your calves to cramp up.
The point of the game is to snap as many pictures as possible before the Star gets to pissed and decides to go Lindsey Lohan on your camera. Thankfully, the cracked screen is only part of the game. Will a Charlie Sheen edition be coming soon?
Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner
Epic space battles on your iPhone. New York City sold separately.
AR Basketball
Sorry, but swiping the screen on this game just makes me want to play a version of AR Angry Birds.
AR Pirates!
Created by Optricks Media to get you to say “ARrrr Matey!” for the rest of the day after you’ve played it.
AR Defender
Tower defense by Int13.
The AR Drone
Like having a quad-rotor hovercraft wasn’t cool enough, they had to go and add augmented reality.
Pringles Game
There’s a whole host of these product placement games out there. I’ll summarize them by posting just this one video. Fill in any number of other products that have jumped on the product as AR game bandwagon.
In my dream world, the Kinect system wouldn’t be tethered to the XBox 360. Instead, it would hook to the TV and have an extensive app library like the iPhone.
Sweet spot around 1:25 for a ninja vanish move. The Kinect makes invisibility so easy, it’s mind-boggling.
The year 2010 was marked by many important milestones and events for the nascent technology. Which one was more important? If I missed one that you thought was important, just add it to the comment section.
The last year the augmented reality movement has been accelerating at an ever increasing pace as new applications and companies are forming so fast it’s hard to keep up. The addition of the Kinect sensor has given the technology an even bigger power boost and now I can barely keep up with just the Kinect related news, even when I regularly check the Kinect Hacks site.
While I’m certain this list and content would be different in another month, I think there is enough Kinect related stuff to take a look at the top ten uses of the Kinect sensor for augmented reality. Here they are, in no particular order:
10. Play Music
Who says Tom Hanks should have all the fun? I could show you a number of Kinect hacks for playing the piano with your hands, but doing it Big-style is all the more awesome.
9. Graffitti Tool
With the world as your canvas let your artistic soul flow.
8. Lightsaber Battles
Embrace the dark side with your inner Jedi. Be the Star Wars Kid in real-time. Now we just need some game play around the hack.
7. Utilize the technology from the Minority Report
Besides bringing us couch jumping madness on the Oprah show, Tom Cruise also played a part in bringing AR to the big screen. Now you can utilize that same technology on your TV screen.
6. Puppet Shows
Puppets? Puppets are kids stuff right? Unless you’re not counting Chucky, Bride of Chucky, that alien thing that bursts out of your chest, etc.
5. Robot Sight
One of the biggest reasons why robots aren’t more widespread is because they can’t see the world like we do. The Kinect system now gives robot designers a quick and easy way to help their robot see. I’m even investigating using it for our automated logistics delivery vehicles at work.
4. Playing Games
Pretty obvious one, eh? Could find a good dozen games to show you, but I’m a fan of the classics. Besides, there’s that whole Xbox thing you can purchase that has a ton more Kinect games on it. Who knew?
3. Invisibility
Not very useful until AR glasses are in widespread use, but to look like the Predator in your very own living room is spectacular.
2. Projection into Virtual Worlds
Lightsabers, remote projection, space stations; this hack has everything and more. Even more fantastic is that the two people in the video are projecting from separate location. Could Kinect sensors make telepresence more usable?
1. Sign Language Recognition
One of technologies more profound benefits to humankind is the ability to give those with disabilities more access to the world. Just like a translation software, the Kinect sensor can read sign language and convert to human speech. Or teach deaf children how to learn sign language.
Special thanks to Kinect Hacks for continuing to catalog the many wondrous uses of the Kinect sensor.
AR door has teamed up with LG Electronics to create the Facebook 3D Movie Maker Contest.
Through advanced features LG 3D Moviemaker is pushing the boundaries of reality. Trendsetting technologies bring the immersive 3D experience where instead of just watching scenes you can actually be part of them. The contest allows you to become the main character of a movie and get valuable presents for your skills and efforts.
To participate in the contest you should first go to the application on Facebook http://apps.facebook.com/lgmovie/, choose any genre you like (or all of them) and shoot a video. There are 4 genres to choose: horror, animation, fantasy and action. Choose the genre, print out the markers. Make sure you face fits the marked shape on the screen. When you are ready, press the rec button. When the video is done, don’t forget to send it to the contest.
Playing games is intrinsic to our nature, so naturally, gaming is a great introduction to augmented reality. Below are three different ways augmented reality is being used to get our gaming fix.
AR Invaders
Shooter games were the first breakout, relatively speaking, for the nascent technology. Yet I haven’t yet seen one that eliminates the “floating target” problem and makes the game feel immersive. Let’s hope AR Invaders gets us further along that path.
Eclipse AR Card Game
The video could use some production value and the game play appears to be a little clunky, but they have the right idea. I still believe Magic the Gathering and a console maker like PlayStation should team up to give their game a little 3D magic, but maybe that’s just me. Check with Mo0n-Studio if you want to learn more about their game.
World of Warcraft Armor Project
Let’s face it, WoW is a force of gaming nature with around ten million paying subscribers. Giving players a way to embrace their character just a little more interactively just makes sense. You can guarantee that if AR glasses were viable and widely sold that Blizzard would be selling the service for a pretty dime. Go here for more information.
While Microsoft denies that the Xbox has been hacked, pure semantics I tell you, the new Kinect system has been unleashed for uses other than the ones planned by the giant of the redwoods.
Adafruit Industries offered a $3,000 prize which was collected by “Hector” for completing the task. The hacking was important enough to get noticed on CNN.com.
Now a Google software engineer is offering two different $1,000 rewards for: writing the coolest “open-sourced” program for the Kinect, and for doing the most to make Kinect easy to use (via TGDaily.)
An open Kinect system, given the power of its motion capture, could make for a wide range of uses. Personally, I was saddened that I didn’t have an Xbox (I have a PS3 and a Wii) to try Kinect out when I details about the product came out, but these new hacks for the Kinect give me hope. Using Kinect and a computer or web-enabled TV could open up tons of possibilities for home use beyond gaming.
A Kinect-enabled house could allow ubiquitous control of anything within range, though I’m thinking most of these will be for hardcore modders. A more likely result would be that Xbox would see the possibilities from the mod community and co-opt those uses into the official software.
On the AR game front, assuming the tools created were easiest enough to use, we could see some creative home grown games that utilize the Kinect. However, the price of a Kinect sensor is pretty steep to play these types of games, especially when people are becoming used to the cheap prices for app games, so I doubt we’ll see much more than research projects. One can hope, though.
The production values on these indie game trailers boggle my mind.
The game initially reminds me of Conquest, but with a lot more bells and whistles. Clover Studios has brought together location based gaming and tower defense, which makes for a good peanut butter and chocolate combination. Though with any multi-player strategy game, off-time balancing will be an issue.
I’ve only just started messing with the game, so I’ll be sure to report back next week with a longer term impression of the game play. So far it appears to be a step up from the other AR games we’re used to seeing these days, but we’ll see.
Games Alfresco 