Augmenting the reality of games

Augmented reality has been around in one form or another for the last decade. There have been some interesting concepts but in the main they've stayed just that, concepts.

The idea behind augmented reality is to take a scene from the real world, typically via a camera, and overlay computer-generated imagery in order to 'enhance reality'. For example a recent application on the Google Android platform allows you to hold the camera up to a group of buildings and the app will overlay information about those buildings, such as what each is used for, and where they are.

There have also been some example of the use of augmented reality in gaming, although very little has made it into the commercial domain.

One such project overlays graphics on a car passenger window  and uses the swooshing scenery outside as a backdrop of a shoot em up game. The scenery provides obstacles the player must avoid.

Another concept takes the classic Pacman, adds a third dimension and uses streets as the maze through which the powerup-loving hero must navigate. Yet another game allows players to hold their mobile phone up to a table and see fuzzy characters sitting on it, with which they can then interact.



So it seems the exploration into augmented reality is well under way, however there are two aspects so far where I see room for further development. Firstly, the IP being used is nothing new. Pacman has been reiterated to death - it would be great to see some ideas that are completely novel to augmented reality, in the same way that there are now games on the iPhone and iPod Touch that make innovative use of the touchscreen. Zen Bound is one example of this, making use of the touchscreen to intuitively manipulate a 3D object.

The second area where I'd like to see further development is multi-modal augmented reality. The concept currently relies heavily (if not, solely) on the use of cameras as the 'input for reality'. But mobile devices, particularly phones also tend to have another input device - the microphone. This could be used to tell you information about particular sounds, and use sounds within games. Imagine sitting on a bus and someones phone rings, the sound of which triggers an event in your game. The bus stops and the buzzers go off to let you know the doors are opening - triggering another, different event in the game because of the change in pitch or volume.

The advantage of these sorts of games is that it doesn't require the player to conspicuously hold their phone up in front of them to play the game.

There must be plenty of new ideas in such a new field, waiting to revolutionise the mobile game world, surely? Now that mobile computing power is reaching a point that can handle these kinds of applications I'm excited about what is coming next.