Comments on: 'Arcade Reality': iPhone 3.1 Opens Doors to Augmented Reality Games

By: aaronsullivan

aaronsullivan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:11:17 +0000

Yeah, don't write off this game by the visuals. The fun part is that your "input" is actually moving around and changing your perspective to aim.

I can think of a few good to great ideas for this basic tech. I think we'll see some clever stuff before you know it (faster than I can get it up there!).

It really is too bad the video cams aren't in the iPod Touches when you think about these types of games.

By: TomHandy

TomHandy — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:31:45 +0000

I remember when this came out for Palm OS, and I put it on my Treo. It really did blow me away at the time – and actually playing it was a fair bit of fun. Not great, but a cool demo of what's possible.

By: Peter Hirschberg

Peter Hirschberg — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:25:37 +0000

I can see the promise here. Looks kinda nifty!

Namco is going to come crush you though.

By: Matt S.

Matt S. — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:48:29 +0000

What about the fun game Seek and Spell? That is an augmented reality game that predates 3.1 (and 3.0) where you run around a real space (preferrably in a park), finding hidden letters in real time and space and spelling words with them.

Counts as augmented reality in my book!

By: Scott30

Scott30 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:15:17 +0000

Gimmicky at best, if not total crap.

By: Moist

Moist — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:44:31 +0000

This is what happens when programmers create video games without hiring a designer.

By: Munkie!

Munkie! — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:15:55 +0000

If…

The devs find a way to take the surround colors/boundaries and have them act as barriers or some other interaction in the gameplay itself, then we have something.

Other then that I do not see its current state and use in these TechDemos anything more than a moving background.

Color me not impressed.

Munkie!

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:09:22 +0000

TonyRockHorror is 100% correct. This game looks like crap, and then they made the background of the game whatever happened to be in front of your phone's camera. Pretty lame…

By: darkedhunter

darkedhunter — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:59:02 +0000

But these were not show casing the games themselves. That is why it is called a "tech-demo" something fun but not all that practical that could later be implemented into a cool project.

By: TonyRockyHorror

TonyRockyHorror — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:35:44 +0000

Of course I'm serious. It's not augmented reality if the reality isn't tightly integrated into the experience. Otherwise it's just a flat experience on top of but not "within" what the camera sees or the GPS locates.