These combinations of technology packaged for consumer use are coming think and fast from E3. (I really must go next year!)
This time using a PSP with a camera and some registration markers to allow the collection and battling of multiple handheld views of individual pokemon style characters.
Now I have Eye of the Beholder an AR card game on the PS3 and the last few blog posts have been about Natal and Eye Pet. However this has a subtle extra point. The representation of a character via the magic window effect off a registration point can be done on anything, what they have done here though is use the connectivity of the PSP to allow more that one point of view or experience to be shared.
I see my view of the Augmented World, you see yours and we interact through it. Sounds like a metaverse to me, once we get from the single user experience (which is very cool but essentially a book or a movie) we then start to get to augmented reality virtual world brokered human communication.
In this example the kids are battling together in the same place, but as everywhere is local and distance does not exist on the web you can extrapolate how this could expand (as with Natal and the other tech) to a mixed mode virtual world or communication channel.
I bumped into this via the Guardian games blog feed on Youtube
Wow! Does this all work with Vuzix video eyewear? That would be awesome! Anyone know?
It looks to me as if the video out could be sent to anything. There might be a disconnect though as the PSP is acting as a magic window in AR terms. One that you hold up to look through. So there might be a disconnect experience wise in moving your head and not the PSP. I am sure there will be more headset based and headsup displays though. This AR marker recognition and movement recognition is getting very easy to do with the processing power on the devices.
Thanks. I don’t have a PSP, but do this sort of thing on a Nokia N95 with the Vuzix AV920 and it works well, but it’s all just experimental software annd markers. I think there could be lots of practical and fun applications for this. Vuzix is apparently coming out with see through video glasses with camera on board, but not sure if any portable devices have a ‘camera in’ port as does a laptop (USB).
The PSP camera is an add on that plugs into the top usb port. I suspect this game is not using any gyros in a special camera to spot movement for the initial hunt, but instead watching the pixels move by to determine movement. So…. if the camera is a standard usb one then another could be used as camera in. The new PSP’s have a component video out. (I still have an original release PSP so I cant try 🙂 )
http://uk.playstation.com/psp/hardware/accessories/detail/item63425/Go!Cam/