Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Augmented Reality Metal Slug on Wii U?
If it's real, then wow, just wowBut it's probably a fake, uploaded to youtube by a user who has joined the video sharing site just yesterday, and have managed to upload leaked videos of Mario Galaxy DS and Star Craft 2. The F word at the end of the clip above is also a telling clue. But, an AR fan can be hopeful, no?As a bonus, in case this really turns out to be a fake, here's how an AR version Metal Slug should look like:
Georgia Tech's Spring 2011 Crop of Games - Nerds, Puppies and Asteroids
It was only five months ago when we reported about the first set of mobile augmented reality games coming out of Qualcomm Augmented Reality Game Studio. The studio, a partnership between Qualcomm and Georgia Tech's Augmented Environments Lab, gives students the tools to create AR games and gives us a peek their crazy ideas. Now, a new crop of games is out of the studio's doors, and here are my favorites:Dodger Dodger is a simple game where you are tasked with escaping falling asteroids. This game smartly harnesses the mobile platform to add another dimension to the game. Not only does the player needs to move left and right, he also needs to move the phone back and forth in order to avoid the asteroids:
Nerdherder is obviously the bastard step child of last semaster's Nerdferno. Instead of dodging asteroids, you need to avoid eye contact with girls in this one:
The goal of Puppy Plus is to teach your child basic math skills using a cute puppy living on a deserted island, surrounded by pirate ships. It makes perfect sense, trust me:
You can read more about these games and others coming out this spring on Qualcomm AR game studio site; Don't miss the narwal safe sex guide.
First Eggs Tracking Application Will Augment Your Easter
With Easter just around the corner, we are undoubtedly facing a round of festive augmented reality applications. While last year saw the creation of GPS based applications such as "AR Easter Egg Hunt", this year brings computer-vision based applications, and leading the pack is Irregular Apps' "Talking Augmented Easter Egg".
Using what seems to be a unique algorithm to identify and track eggs, Talking Augmented Easter Egg enables iPhone and iPad users to virtually decorate plain white eggs, poke them until they (again, virtually) break and even talk to them. People may think you are crazy, pulling an egg from the refrigerator, looking at it through your iPhone and then starting to talk to it, so maybe you should let your kids play with this one.
When I tested the application on my iPhone 3GS, it surprisingly worked well. The tracking was a bit jumpy (as you might expect), but it did identify my "test egg", even with a few decoys around (like a white charger). True, it's a gimmick, that will lose its attraction in a few weeks (unless you are an angry bird, using the app to track your stolen eggs), but it's probably make your kids quite happy for those few days.
More details can be found on Irregular Apps' website.
Popping Zits in Augmented Reality
Hands down, this is the weirdest augmented reality game I encountered. Clic&Spot by French company Clic&Gain, is a game that adorns your face with virtual zits and challenge you to burst them as quickly as you can. Who wouldn't this premise enticing?The game is based on Total Immersion's technology, and there's even an iPad to win. Of course, an iPad is a small prize considering the trauma this game can cause you, but at least it gives you something to touch, other than your face.
The Augmented Reality Sword Fight
Well, the following video is obviously not a show of augmented reality by any definition. The virtual entities are well orchestrated, and do not interact in real time with the actor. They are also projected on a screen behind the actor, so he can't really see them.However, this video is still amazing, and more than a million views on Youtube are evidence for that. It also serves as a reminder for one possible future for augmented reality, where fun packed, fast paced games are not bounded to a LCD screen. The Kinect was a big step forward, AR may be the giant leap ahead.
(via Geekologie)
Pac-Man Augmented Evolution
1980, the Japanese Namco corporation develops Pac-Man, making arcade history
2004, researchers from National University of Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab, led by Adrian Cheok, create Human Pacman, a first person version of the classic game, that lets you play the classic game with an augmented reality twist. This twist also means that you have to carry a laptop on your back and wear a HMD on your head.
2011, now you can play a first person version of Pac-Man by just loading Layar on your iPhone, developed by GamePS
Nerdferno and 2 Other Augmented Reality Games from Georgia Tech
In late June, the establishment of Qualcomm Augmented Reality Game Studio was announced, a partnership between Qualcomm and Georgia Tech's Augmented Environments Lab, with the goal of "pioneering new advancements in mobile gaming and interactive media". Six months later, the first crop of mobile based games is coming out of the studio, and this blogger is far from disappointed.Shotgun Showdown is a two players western styled shooting game which utilizes two $20 bills as an arena/required marker. I wonder whether the winner takes both bills.
If you thought that tracking dollar bills was original, than get ready for Volcano Fever, a game that uses condom wrappers as a marker. It's more than just a weird artistic choice by the game designer. The goal of Volcano Fever is to teach proper condom use.
I understand the volcano metaphor, but what's the octopus supposed to symbolize? ... Anyway, next is, as promised, Nerdferno, a game that puts you in a God like position, determining the fate of cubicle dwellers. If you looked for original AR content, you've found it:
You can read more about these games and others, such as Spintopia and Bug Juice, on the studio's website, and about previous AR games from Georgia Tech here.
Super Augmented Mario Bros
Mario, probably the best known (fictional) plumber has already appeared in more than 200 games. No surprise that fans imagine an augmented reality game starring him. For example, here's Youtube user Kain the heartbreaker's vision of a Mario game on iPhone 10:I don't usually consider projection on buildings augmented reality, but this video from Madrid has a fine twist. Instead of scaling a virtual construction site, Mario fights Donkey Kong on a real building:
Finally, here's another video coming to us from Madrid, this time from Espada y Santa Cruz Studio. A bit more information can be found here (in Spanish).
super mario through an augmented world (TEST) from espadaysantacruz studio on Vimeo.
AR2D2 - Shoot Down Tie Fighters in Augmented Reality
Post update - the original video was pulled down, but luckily was uploaded again, and some of my questions were answered (in red)I have so many questions about the next video, and no answers -
Is it real? yes.
Is it an official Star Wars game? probably.
How can I get it? On the Appstore somewhere in mid November. Look for "Falcon Gunner".
I acknowledge that this game is probably not much better than the lurid Firefighter 360, but I feel compelled to try it out, attracted by some mysterious force.
How Augmented Reality is Changing the World Cup
Coming back from my vacation, I had to catch up with a lot of AR related news. One topic though was so prevalent that I had to write about it in my coming back post. Obviously, I'm talking about the world cup in soccer. No other sports event gained such an attention from the AR community, and here are the results (don't worry the last few ones are quite good):Zakumi in FLARToolkit
The good: It seems to be created by a single programmer. Cheers for the initiative.
The god-awful bad: The music. I rather hear vuvuzelas than this one hit wonder.
Kappa's "We Are One"
The good: The music is better than the previous video.
The bad: It's in Chinese, so it's hard for me to tell, but I think you need to download an application to play with it. Hello? This is 2010s, not prehistoric 2009!
Where: http://2010.kappa.com.cn/
Sony Ericsson World Cup Game
The good: You get to be a world famous soccer player while hitting soccer balls with your head in this game created by Total Immersion's partner CherryPicks.
The bad: World famous soccer players are not necessarily handsome.
Where: http://www.sonyericsson.com.hk/fifa-game/
The world cup in a shopping mall
The good: Nice game, showing there are still some innovative things to do with a marker on a piece of paper. Made by another partner of TI - InterAct 3d.
The bad: Couldn't they have the same application accessible through a webcam?
Junaio's virtual soccer field overlay
The good: A brave attempt by Metaio to show game statistics for fans in the stadium in an unconventional way.
The bad: You have to be in South Africa to see it, and no videos are available. I'm a bit skeptic.
More info: http://augmentedblog.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/kick-it-like-augmented-reality/ where you can read about another application assisting you to find a good joint to see the next soccer match.
Zugara's AR game in a banner
The good: Really cool creative, you need to "head in" corner kicks in this AD for AT&T.
The bad: AT&T. And people looking at you from behind while you're jerking your head around.
Where: http://www.espn.com
KickBall AR
The good: Much better than AR Boomerang, this is the only mobile application on this list.
The bad: Only available for Samsung's Bada operating system and the fact that Tom already wrote about it.
If I've missed anything (surely there's a Layar layer for the games, no?), please feel free to add a comment.
So how AR is changing the world cup? Well it's not, but for my first post in nearly three weeks, I had to try a title inspired by the linkbait generator. Anyhow, the usual "Weekly Linkfest" will return next week and as usual be sure to follow me on Twitter.
Looking for an Augmented Reality Casual Game
Looking at the list of best selling applications for the iPhone, I started thinking (usually a dangerous habit). On the one hand, augmented reality wants to be mobile, and the best avenue for mobile AR we currently have are smart phones. On the other hand, we often imagine augmented reality (and surely AR games) as immersive experiences - if you haven't seen it yet, checkout Roku's reward.The thing is, I believe that currently "mobile" and "immersion" are conflicting goals. Our mobile platforms are way too limited to enable immersion:
- Battery capacity is very restricted
- Screen size is quite small
- Processing power and sensor accuracy are low (but I expect these issues to be alleviated soon)
As augmented reality enthusiasts we can ignore those problems, and just wait for them to go away once head-up-displays, powered by fuel cells, become wildly available. But this is a counter-productive approach, and still targets gamers. There is another approach - casual games. They fit the character of most smart phone owners and play nicely on the current available hardware. Most importantly, casual games are amongst the most purchased applications on the various app stores (here's WSJ covering the phenomenon called Angry Birds).
We need to explore casual augmented reality games. Smart phones are on the brink of making such games plausible (if they aren't already) but we still have to tackle the hardest problem - designing a compelling gameplay. Obviously, games that only use the camera's input as a backdrop to a game, such as Firefigther 360, won't cut it.
I asked on twitter what could such a game be, and skry suggested: "On your daily walk/run, some of the course offers a round of DDR, hopscotch, or calisthenics". Frogger across real roads is another interesting proposition. What do you think? Will there be an AR equivalent of Tetris, Sokoban and Angry Birds?
To get your creative juices flowing I've attached two casual AR games that I really like, though both are not based on smart phones. The first is Carcade, a game you can play while riding a train by students at Berlin University of the Arts. The other is Candy Wars by students of the Augmented Environments lab at Georgia Tech (though it's cheating a little bit, since it requires additional objects).
Locatory - Play with Gamaray
Editor note: OOPS!Originally this post was scheduled for early December, but somehow I forgot to publish it. Sorry Locatory guys!
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As veteran readers of this blog surely know, official development of Gamaray, an AR browser for Android was terminated, and its code has been open-sourced. Recently I've learned about an interesting project by a team from the Open University of the Netherlands, named Locatory, based on Gamaray's code.
The game's premise is admittedly not that exciting -
The concept of game is rather easy. Players can compete with each other and gather cards that are hidden in augmented reality. Once a card is taken, it can be dropped at a physical location (figure 3, B). When a card is dropped at the correct location, the player receives a point. (source)
but it's exciting to see that one can create (semi) augmented reality games in relative ease (especially since Locatory's own code is freely available). After all, how far is a game such as Locatory from a geo-caching game? If I were a student these days, I would have a go at it (adult life is full of compromises :/).
Learn more here.
ARGO - Learn Go with Augmented Reality
Go. A game with such simple rules, that is surprisingly hard to master. It's the last bastion of humanity against the rising power of game playing artificial intelligence. And now, there's a cool projected AR board that will help you hone your skills in the game.Presented by a group of researchers from Japan and Finland, ARGO uses a projector to show game situations, concepts and problems on top of a regular Go board.
As shown in these modes, the advantage of our approach is to allow players to get information through the original interaction offered by the Go board and the stones. By superimposing information onto the board, players can concentrate on the match at hand or self-training without fragmenting their attention towards an instructional book and etc. This is important to make it possible for the players to allocate enough cognitive resources for recognizing the situations in the game. Using original game items as the basis preserves Ma and traditional look-and-feel, such as distance between players, touch of a wooden board and sound of stones.
I really like how they used the stones to control the menus. Nice touch, and a cool project as a whole.
More information here.
Sportpong - It's Fun Being a Paddle
In Switzerland you can play Pong. Yeah, I know, you can play Pong for about 30 years all around the world, but you could never play it like this - outside, with your legs serving as paddles.3 vs 2 Rorschach kids… from Sportpong on Vimeo.
It's nothing new either - you could have rent the setup for the game for at least a couple of years. The company behind it writes:
The setting is very simple: a reflector on each foot is the only physical tool to interact with Sportpong. The interface is integrated in the field which is projected on the floor. The players control the game with their feet, nothing else. This control is intuitive, naturalistic and very direct.
I really, really, can't wait to try it out. Last year I had a session of Atari Pong (the first in twenty years) and enjoyed it immensely. This looks even better. Would be great having it on ARE or ISMAR.
More details on sportpong.ch via SwissMiss.
Spads and Fokkers - Brainy AR
I always enjoy featuring a hobbyist augmented reality project, and Davide Byron's (aka @Need2Revolt) game "Spads and Fokkers" is especially pleasing. On the face of it, it doesn't look anything special, two virtual planes having a dog fight, using a marker for easy augmented reality:The twist is in the method the user may exploit in order to control the planes, using a brain-computer interface. Writes Byron:
As for the control mechanism, we actually have some devices that are able to read brianwaves and infere what the user is thinking about, so the choice was easy. The newest and most promising headset for thought control is the epoc, not yet on the market, but with a free SDK I can play with. With this technologies I was actually able to develop something that works and doesn't need any special stuffs you can't buy off the shelf. In the story, the players controls 3 airplane each, but in practice it was too hard to simultaneusly control 3 airplanes, so I reduced the number to a single airplane for each player. Furthermore, since the airplanes are not projected into the real world, it's suggested you wear a HMD.
You can download the binaries and source code and learn more about this interesting project here.
Yummy Cereal by Dassault Systemes
Yes, the following video is nothing more than a demo for Dassault Systemes AR campaign for the feature film "Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard". I usually don't give such videos a full post, especially when there's no site I can link to, but it seems like a cute game, and what happens at 1:25 surprised me.Maybe I'm too jaded with AR campaigns that such a trick surprised me, but it made me smile, and that's good enough.
(via @lavalvirtual)
Space Invaders in AR
Arcade Reality is a game, originally developed a couple of years ago for the Palm Treo, by Szymon Ulatowski, the man behind ToySpring, which has an interesting premise. For years, space invaders were slaughtered in video games by arcade dwellers around the world. Now, they stage their revenge in real world and the player must shoot them down via his/her mobile phone:Recently Ulatowski has ported the game to the iPhone. While on the Treo it used some basic video registration to place the invaders around you, on the iPhone it takes advantage of the compass and accelerometer. Although it does make the alien spaceships a little wobbly, it still looks like the best game of its type currently available for the iPhone and a lot of fun:
It will cost you $3 on the appstore. More details can be found here.
Future of Social Networking and Games
As you may have noticed, I took some days off blogging. Can't get myself to blog about yet another AR browser (YAARB™) or some run of the mill augmented reality campaign.However, futuristic concepts still excite me. Check out Matthew Buckland's latest post. With the help of designer Philip Langley, Buckland has conjured a series of illustrations giving us a peak into social network turbo-charged with augmented reality. Below is one such illustration, showing you what's going on in the neighborhood.
Can be quite useful when looking for a new home. You can find the other illustrations (and this one in far higher resolution) here.
Another interesting concept that popped today is PlayboxAR, which is a glimpse to what can become the future of augmented reality games:
This is actually a new video of a rather old concept by one Soho Marky.
The disparity between these concepts and reality reminds us that we are still at the very beginning of a long road. Maybe AR is hot right now, but in the future it's going to be fabulous.
(via @abc3d and The Future Digital Life)
Pseudo AR Games FTW!
A short post to keep you warm while I'm working on a longer series of posts I hope you all find interesting. Anyway, just two days ago I wrote about Acrossair new shooting game, Virus Killer 360:And I also mentioned iPhone ARKit, an interesting open source project to facilitate augmented reality development for the iPhone. What happens when you merge the two together? this -
It was created by a Japaneses developer going by the nickname mswar, by forking the iPhone ARKit source code and adding OpenGL and GPS geo-positioning. I don't call it augmented reality, because it has nothing to do with our reality, but I do think it has a potential to supply some moments of fun.
More details here (in Japanese).
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