Augmented reality… what is it? In short, augmented reality,
or AR, “is a term used for a wide range of related technologies aimed at
integrating virtual content and data with live, real-time media” (Mullen,
2011). Those of us who remember the movie Terminator
will most likely remember terminator vision; the terminator would look at an
object or person and a display would instantly provide information about the
object currently in the terminators vision. For those of you who haven’t seen Terminator or need a quick refresher:
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Back in 1984 (when the movie was released), I’m sure a lot
of people would question whether or not such a thing existed, and, even if it
did, was some really fancy future technology. Well, fast forward 30 years
later, this technology is now available. The great thing about it: it’s free
(for the most part). Libraries have been made available to programmers;
allowing developers to come up with exciting applications and games for users.
Of course, with the exponential growth in the number of smartphone users as
well as rapid advancements in technology, most of us already have phones that
can allow us to do some basic AR.
Take for example, Aurasma,
an iPhone app demonstrated by Matt Mills during his TED talk. One of the cool
things about AR with Aurasma is that
it uses image recognition; this is monumentally helpful in many areas of our
everyday lives: advertisers can now have interactive ads from posters,
newspapers and pictures can now be interactive (remember seeing those in the Harry Potter movies?), and museums can
benefit through providing guests with information through the app, just to name
a few examples (Mills, 2012).
I’m sure by now most of you will figure out why I am doing
this blog post, but I will still ask the question for you anyways: why are you
writing about AR in games? The answer is simple: because that is my next
project! Over the next 2 months my group and I will be playing around with AR
technologies and turning it into a game prototype. The theme for the game:
change. Our task is basically to come up with a game demo that helps players
make changes in their lives, whether it is to go out an exercise more, to
recycle more, and to walk more often or even just to spend more time with
friends and family rather than sitting in front of the computer all day.
With that being said, here is my current idea for this
project: a game where AR is used to help identify various pieces of garbage and
help players be more environmentally friendly by reminding them to recycle more
often. The inspiration for this idea comes from the game Sort ‘Em Up
The game being proposed will take advantage of cameras that
are readily available on all of today’s smartphones; kids could walk around and
the game will pick up various common household items such as: pop cans, plastic
jugs, cardboard containers, egg cartons, scrap pieces of fruit, batteries,
newspaper, and glass, etc. The game should correctly identify which items are
recyclable and once the player is in front of garbage cans / recycling
containers, the game can animate the bins to help make it obvious which
container the item belongs in, and can also play animations if the player
correctly puts the right item in the right bin.
Based on what I have read so far in Tony Mullen’s Prototyping Augmented Reality book,
creating such an app will require using the phone’s GPS as well as
accelerometers, gyroscopes, and other sensors in order to help determine where
the phone is currently located, and which way it is facing, etc. so that it is
able to properly process the information on screen (Mullen, 2011). This is a
lot more work compared to a marker system, where markers are used as a
reference point, however, we must also consider that doing this game with a marker
would not make sense. We would have to tape markers all over the place just to
get this to work! Although a marker-less system is a lot more work and is still
an area of research, I believe that it will pay off and can be a good
educational game for kids.
To start wrapping things up, we’ve gone a long way in the
field of augmented reality. From an idea, to being an expensive gadget that
only companies with thousands of research dollars can afford, to being widely
available to everyday people like you and me; this is just the beginning of AR
and I can’t wait to see what others can do in the near future. One particular
project I am particularly interested in is Google’s
new AR game, Ingress. In Ingress, players play on one of two
sides: either the “Englightened”, a group of users who try to activate portals
around the world in order to be able to control people’s minds; or the “Resistance”,
a group of users that try to prevent the other group from achieving world
dominance (Newton, 2012). The game requires users to go around the city and
explore, looking for portals. Once found, they must “hack” the portal in order
to gain control. Here is the trailer for the game:
Personally, I haven’t played the game and will try it out if
I ever get my hands on an Android device. This game does raise several issues
though: are users okay with looking like a tourist when they walk around the
city with a phone constantly in front of their face? Are users going to get
sidetracked because they are so hooked onto the game and end up walking farther
away from the office on their way back from lunch? Can the game pose a possible
safety issue if a user is too glued to their smartphone screen and not paying
enough attention to the real world?
There is definitely room for improvement in the future as we
see more and more impressive uses for AR technology, but for now, I am still
fairly new to this technology but will be doing more research on this in the
next two months as I work on a game prototype for Dr. Nacke’s HCI class.
References
Mills, M. (Performer) (2012). Image recognition that
triggers augmented reality [Web series episode]. In TED Talks. Retrieved
from
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_mills_image_recognition_that_triggers_augmented_reality.html
Mullen, T. (2011). Prototyping augmented reality.
(1st ed., p. 1). Indianapolis, Indiana: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Newton, C. (2012, November 16). Inside ingress, google's
new augmented-reality game. Retrieved from
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57550819-93/inside-ingress-googles-new-augmented-reality-game/
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