Comments on: Impressive Augmented Reality Game Possibilities on the iPhone

By: loerchner

loerchner — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:20:57 +0000

I have started a facebook group petitioning Apple to open the API for video augmentation. This will allow agmented reality apps in the store! Please join and pass it on:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105162007611

By: Blake Patterson

Blake Patterson — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:45:05 +0000

Nice shirt…

http://tcritic.com/archives/incredible-augmented-reality-t-shirts/

By: lance

lance — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:07:06 +0000

Wow. This kind of stuff gets me so excited! I love your game project, can\'t wait to see the newer version, let us know when the new video is available.

I am a huge board game player and this fusion of real-virtual gaming environments seems to add so much to the experience. I\'d love to pick your brain just to get a taste of what is coming down the mobile AR pipeline. I am a forum member here under Johannvonstranovic if you want to PM me. I am wondering:

Is it possible to use an existing game board that people already have, like settlers for instance, and program the AR to recognize those tiles?

Would your game come with a stand? It would help out a lot in making it possible for one player to play. For a multiplayer game board I am imagining a circular board with a track on the outside edge that a stand holding the device could rotate around like a lazy susan. You could have turn based games or coop games where you must quickly rotate the device around to the person with the best view to complete a certain task etc… Or vice versa, the stand holding the device could be stationary, and the board could rotate around in a circle. This would be ideal for one player games.

Is the virtual sword/lightsaber possible? Can one 3d projection controlled directly by moving the marker effect the other 3d projected elements? Sorry about the poor wording, but hopefully you know what I mean.

Thanks for listening and for the great AR work you are doing!

By: blair

blair — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:33:56 +0000

Good idea … in fact, we just submitted a paper to the SIGGRAPH Games track on just such a game. We had a first version shown at ISMAR last year that used sketching on tiles (http://www.augmentedenvironments.org/lab/research/handheld-ar/artofdefense/). We've since changed it based on testing and design revisions to use tokens (circular, coin-like tokens) in conjunctions with the hex-based marker board. The game is now two-player coop. It's still a bit ugly, but the game was pretty fun. I showed video of it in my GDC talk, and we'll get the video on youtube after the SIGGRAPH review process is done.

By: lance

lance — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:45:42 +0000

That is the kind of thing I would love to see. I am imagining a tower defense game where you could have a set of tokens, one could be the spawn point and one could be the goal, and the others could be the tower placements. You could set your own difficulty depending on how far apart you placed the goal and spawn points respectively. This actually might require a board to define the paths, so you could use a board like settlers where you could rearrange the path available.
For that matter you could license out games like settlers, risk, ticket to ride, etc.. and create a stand alone iphone game with those. Then I assume you could use the existing boards of those games, that people already have to create a recognizable map for the AR, and have the easter egg ability to play with the actual game boards but without all the messy pieces. Then you could watch little risk armies actually doing battle across your game board and either pass the iphone around to take turns or network a few together so everyone gets their own view of the action.
There are so many gaming opportunities if the AR works fluidly. What if you could even have a thimble like token with symbols on all sides that would project a sword, lightsaber, etc.. from your finger and you could actually do battle with enemies on your desk? It will be exciting to see as this technology is improved if developers take full advantage of it.

By: Gadzooks

Gadzooks — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:14:53 +0000

Imagine walking down a street with your iphone, and stores and other things have these key object shapes in windows and such. Holding up your phone would let you see 3d advertising, product listings, or all kinds of creative things.

By: fluffy

fluffy — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:30:56 +0000

I'm surprised it's taken this long for phone game developers to rediscover this. Toyspring wrote some fun AR games for the Palm Treo, released in a collection called "Arcade Reality."

By: palapalooza

palapalooza — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:12:39 +0000

I can see a game where the players use coin-like tokens on any flat surface. You lay out your coins, wave your iPhone over them and their figures pop up on the screen along with a terrain map full of obstacles and objects. You move your tokens around to fight the other player, move the iPhone around to get a better view, etc. Kind of like that holographic chess game in Star Wars, but you can carry it around in your pocket.

I'd also like to see stickers that you could put on walls, or on your friends so when you turn the camera on them you see various augmented realities frolicking over their bodies.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:04:09 +0000

I've seen demos of this with web cam chat software but never games. I imagine you could do some sweet networked games of controlling little battling robots or something to that effect with the 3.0 software.

By: blair

blair — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:08:45 +0000

How can this be made available on the iPhone? There is no video api, and Apple won't let you release a game that uses undocumented APIs. The folks at Metaio have a few apps in the store that use images and their own tracking technology, but they would likely have done "real" AR if they could have.

Anybody know more about Kweekies? It doesn't really appear to leverage AR very much, just letting you have a little game on the desk around the marker. I'd be curious what else it does.