Augmented
Reality Gaming
By Jack Morgan
What if I told you that there is an innovative tool that you can use to assign any form of virtual content (3Dgraphics, animation, entertainment, and more) to any physical object using just your hand and voice actions? I am here to tell you that this tool already exists and will drastically change every major industry. Having the ability to buy and sell virtually any content has been in the gaming industry for years, but now we can expand all of virtual games, models and animations onto actual physical objects. We can use this by using an emerging break through technology called Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality (AR) is a term for incorporating a live view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. In order to gain a better understanding of how this technology actually works, I attempted to divulge into the topic in depth. Emerging from the depths, I feverishly began to scribble down the numerous ideas I had that could be incorporated into nearly any major industry. Sitting down at my computer for countless hours I investigated major topics including the creation, development and future of Augmented Reality, and how it pertains to gaming. This paper demonstrates AR’s future as a technology that will help bring us together instead of constantly driving us apart. Augmented Reality will be the main driving factor behind the next web revolution driven by creating digital experiences that merge the virtual world with the physical environment using cloud based connectivity.
Boeing engineer Thomas Claudell originally coined the term AR in 1992, however the idea has been around for much longer. Augmented Reality based weapons and interfaces have been projected in films and literature for years. For example, movies like Terminator and Predator both utilize basic AR weapon systems. This technological advancement enabled the aliens and machines to efficiently track and kill humans in sci-fi thrillers only years before it was actually tested and developed in the early 1990s. In 1992 L.B. Rosenberg developed one of the first functioning AR systems called Virtual Fixtures for the military The United States invests a large portion of their budget in their military, allowing them to research and develop their technology. As a result, the U.S. Military has the most cutting-edge set of AR technologies enabling them to provide soldiers information. This equipment has proven extremely beneficial (life-saving) information such as: instructions, maps, enemy locations, thermal graphics, and distances in real time.
Augmented Reality did not reach the commercial market until 1998 when ESPN programmer Greg Mortenstern produced the 1st and 10 graphics system. This system allows any viewer of a live football broadcast to see a yellow virtual first-down line. This radically improved the value of the broadcast because viewers were finally able to track the progression of the games and the requirements of achieving the next stage in the possession. This idea was then applied to other sports to help visually depict records, advertisements, and informational statistics onto live video broadcasts. Augmented Reality began to expand into the mobile space through the introduction of AR based games such as AR Quake in 2000 by Bruce H. Thomas. However, AR applications began to really surge with the discovery of Yelp’s Monacle application in 2009. Robert Scoble discovered a hidden software feature in an iPhone app allowing users to access yelp.com reviews. The intriguing part of the find was not the reviews themselves, but how the reviews were displayed. Once Monacle, yelp’s name for the application is activated, users looking through the iPhone camera displayed the reviews and other information about the restaurants, stores and other businesses based on its geographical location in relation to the direction of the camera. This application of AR provides a new and fun way of finding information about the places around us. Furthermore, it also expands the uses of the mobile phone and camera from just a communication device into a new form of exploration.
Since that time companies like Qualcomm, Metaio, and Layar have been offering their AR mobile sdks for developers to build and tag physical objects with games, video, questionnaires, 3D graphics and other virtual content. These open source communities focused on AR development are working on some of the most innovative service and sales solutions to help improve efficiencies. In addition to improving efficiencies, AR creates new ways of interacting and spreading information. With the improvement in mobile technologies such as, pattern recognition, optical tracking, navigational tagging, and social networking, our mobile phones are now capable of searching and interacting with almost anything in the world around us.
Qualcomm runs a yearly competition ($200,000s in prizes) where they give out their mobile sdk to the open source community. This starter kit also incorporates the unity programming system to allow developers to utilize their AR technology to create cool interactive games on a platform they are already familiar with. The games uses the mobile phone along with a game board that acts as the physical pattern the game runs on. The user then opens the app and points the camera at the board at which time the AR content is then fully interactive and viewable. Five Graduate students at the USC CTIN program actually received 3rd place in the 2010 Developers Challenge for a game called Danger Copter. This game used a 3D model of a city and allowed the gamer to put out fires from the copter above gaining points for saving civilians. It created a view of a city from the cockpit of the helicopter and had different buttons that would connect to different actions within the game. The perspective and view of the copter would depend totally on the location and position of the player. Graphically the game could be a lot better but it does expand the possibilities of gaming.
The main AR format that got some attention for a while was the zombie themed AR games that utilized the different SDKs to enable a fully interactive zombie game in your physical location. Players can shoot zombies in your room that are seen through the camera on your connected device. Applications also allow viewers to experience zombies through facial recognition and animation technology and the camera on the mobile phone. Developers were able to latch on to the zombie craze and enable players to fight off zombie infections in their own house. However, these games have yet to be fluidly implemented and have yet to become mainstream.
Augmented Reality games are pushing the boundaries for virtual gaming in physical spaces. Currently, there is not enough commercial support or familiarity with the technology or the idea to make it fully sustainable and scalable. All the reviews of the games that spawned from the 2010 AR challenges argue that the idea of AR games is really cool and intriguing, however the development of these applications are basic, gimmicks, and just not there yet. Although there are many critics of AR, I firmly believe the current problem with the AR gaming industry is that the platforms are not fully utilizing all of the different inputs and interactivity that AR enables you to use.
The furthest development in AR spawned from developers hacking Microsoft Kinect to create interactive and animated games in real world spaces. These developers were able to harness the optical tracking and body recognition hardware in the Kinect to create personalized superheroes (games that react to a person’s movement). The developers were able to not only create personal avatars based on their body type, but also enabled them the powers that they believed that avatar or superhero should posses. In the Kinect Seven video you can see the man on the screen activate the program through moving is arm upwards. He can then load up his dragon ball, or shoot his x-ray vision through different movements and actions. The Kinect hacks demonstrate that there is already technology available to enable fully functioning virtual communities and games implemented in real world spaces. People will soon be able to create their own virtual avatar by simply a wave of your hand. Once you build that avatar, people would be able to utilize facial recognition software, and GPS, to view your friends and countless others who joined the avatar community. (Companies like Metaio developed this idea for actual clothing and products through a concept known as “the virtual dressing room”. However, this would be more like creating a virtual image of you that is linked to your actual body type and image.
In 2011, it is projected that 1.23 billion dollars were spent on mobile ads in the US. The growth of virtual goods as a source of revenue for games has expanded the possibilities for profitable games enabling them to entertain and become a point of sale. Farmville has demonstrated that people are willing to pay for virtual goods and services that allow them to build their own world. Zynga made millions with just one virtual $.99 Christmas Tree that people could buy and give to others as a present In 2014 that number (1.23 billion) is projected to rise to 4.4 billion. Going even beyond just mobile adds, it is estimated that virtual goods netted approximately 3 billion dollars in revenue worldwide. That number is expected to grow rapidly to 8 billion dollars in 2016. The data proves that it is a sustainable and profitable industry that is still an emerging market.
Utilizing Augmented Reality platforms you can allow people to create their own world in different spaces in which they encounter on a daily basis. People can build farms, roller coasters, cities, fantasy lands, and much more through simple device connectivity Other people could also help build these worlds simultaneously, interacting in new and inventive ways using physical and real objects. Advertisers, cities, film studios, and others would all help subsidize the content by providing virtual goods that you can link your physical objects to. It would be taking the Sims game and embedding and tagging it to different real world objects and patterns. AR would allow them to push these virtual communities and games to new limits by adding additional sources for interaction based off of physical movement. This would radically change the way that people play games by expanding the realm of play to the entire world. People are now able to play games in any location through interacting with the physical objects around them. You could create fully interactive games that are referenced from different physical locations and objects throughout a certain city. It would be a whole new way of telling stories and fostering interactivity. Instead of people sitting in front of a TV or computer spending over 50% of their time attached to a screen, people will be able to play games with friends outside even if they are thousands of miles away.
Governments and cities could sponsor events that highlight different aspects about the city through promotion and interactive games. Imagine a fully interactive murder mystery game that is fully embedded into the physical landscape of a city. Currently, Layar allows people to see different perspectives of buildings and streets from different time periods. Theoretically, you could recreate an entire city from the 1900s at any point in time and allow people to explore it by walking through the actual location and the historical landmarks. You could then create a game in which everyone within it must interact and speak as if they were from that time period giving points on achievement and interaction. There would be different levels of interaction for the different types of gamers. Different achievements to unlock for achievers, new worlds for explorers, new interactions between players for socializers, and new ways for players to attack and hinder others in the real world setting would all be enabled through an interactive AR game. Fostering new interactions between people in a real world setting allows technology to pull us closer together instead of constantly driving us apart.
Another intriguing industry that AR and the merger of the virtual and the physical is the film and entertainment industry. Today there are new applications that allow you to see the different scenes from film and television in the location that they were filmed in. You can actually follow a character in a film as he walks the very same streets you do simply by using your phone. This idea will dramatically shift the way people make and distribute films in the future. Imagine the capability to follow a certain character throughout an entire city. You could even expand on that and allow a person to become a character in live digital performance in real world spaces. People could use existing characters and iconic figures to create their own spinoffs and stories using existing personalities. This would push film into a hybrid of a game and traditional film by adding different layers of interactivity. It would be extremely profitable for the film and television industry to predict this new form of mass media and to create new and interactive ways of using already existing film and information about popular movie and television characters. Consumers would then buy their virtual character that they can then interact with and modify. This would help them advertise for current as well as past film creating more viewership and therefore more possibilities for revenue. Creating virtual characters that can be fully customizable and linked to famous actors/actresses, comedians, game characters or friends will also be a massive industry on its own.
I can already picture it now, a 3D version of Siri that is augmented in your physical location that you can fully customize. It would be a fully functioning personal assistant without having to actually pay a real person or talk to a phone. The one thing I always hated about voice commands is that it is extremely awkward to speak into a phone and give it a command in comparison to an actual person. This specific artificial intelligence will allow you to have a personal assistant by utilizing soundboard and specific people (Morgan Freeman…etc) that could help you with all of your search and services and help you manage everything. As a back up I believe you could even have it be connected to an outsourced real life person that may be able to answer your question better than a computer. The consumer would not have to deal with accents or culture barriers rather the information would come from the personal assistant in a manner you predetermined.
I believe the future of AR is using the mobile phone to allow people to interact and explore the places, objects and people around them. In today’s society, people blindly walk the streets lost in an invisible cloud of tweets, status updates, texts, games, and applications. We should be looking up and exploring our actual surroundings instead of being imprisoned by our devices. I believe that this is an innovative way that will innovate and ultimately streamline the way we interact with our own technologies. The limiting factor from allowing this transition to fully take hold is that people currently can only view this type of information on their phones or iPads that they must constantly hold to view the virtual information. The development of AR glasses and contact lenses will make the transition from selective AR into fulltime merge of the virtual world and the physical one.
The University of Washington is joining forces with companies like Vusix and are currently developing AR glasses and contact lenses that will enable you to see AR without having to hold up a connected device or camera. These glasses utilize cameras with any type of recognition technology and enable people to interact with digital experiences at all times. These glasses for instance allow people to see predator vision, (a thermal image of a person), of people and animals around you. The implication of glasses like these will change the way we visualize our games, apps and services. The glasses and the contacts would then enable the merger of the virtual and physical to be available at anytime without utilizing an additional device. You could embed different layers of interactive content that the consumer choices and enable them to have access to it at all times. So a person could be doing any activity and see a notification from one of its many layers without the consumer having to activate anything. They could then visually interact with that notification or related content automatically and simply through hand motions.
People already walk around with glasses that cost hundreds of dollars. Imagine when there are commercialized AR glasses that are cheaper than your average fashion sunglasses. This will undoubtedly increase user experience. Imagine if those glasses could also work off your phone’s GPS and the camera placed in it and display meaningful digital content. This would allow you to see and interact with your virtual communities or games no matter your location. People wouldn’t have to take pictures or scan objects anymore; rather the glasses will track your eye movement and scan the objects you are looking at for additional virtual content. In essence people who are addicted to WOW could become their virtual character in the real world and have people view their virtual perception about themselves. This idea of course also can be applied for facial recognition and actually information provided on social networks like Facebook and Twitter to their actual human source.
Essentially, AR will allow people to expand their reality from physical objects but also implement virtual information that is connected to them. Gamers will soon be able to have a constant link to their own virtual avatar and assistant in every space. It will begin to blur what we think of actual physical interaction and virtual interaction. AR will bring all of the current major industries together fostering more innovation and communication between people. We will be able to teach kids about the stars and science outside providing them with the information they can find in a textbook in real life examples and objects. Games have always been a powerful tool of learning and now we can use technology to teach and improve the community and the world instead of making it more absorbed and isolated.
The missing link in the whole equation is that there is not an effective means of allowing consumers to create, buy, and sell virtual content in a functioning marketplace. A virtual marketplace that allows you to buy or upload virtual content or AR services and augments them personally using the physical objects around you. A consumer can buy/ download as much digital content as he or she wants and then can create his or her own world using those virtual goods. Then after he or she is done making his or her virtual world on top of the physical objects within their spaces they could then sell their world creation to someone else to build and grow further. This way people can buy virtual goods and create some sort of additional value by connecting them in interesting ways and allow them to then sell that to someone else. It would legitimize the virtual goods industry because then consumers wouldn’t just feel as if the things they buy will loose all value after they are bought.
This could be huge for cars and other actual products which people will then buy and resell after they have customized and added more virtual content to a 3D model or graphic. This market would also partner with a multitude of apps that allowed you to depict and interact with your virtual content depending on your physical and AR settings. For instance this marketplace could be an avenue for merchandisers and producers to gage interest in a potential product by allowing them to download 3D models and other related content that can be then augmented depending on the consumer’s setting.
People could then play games and build their own games using different virtual goods in the spaces they interact with on a daily basis. It would make a routine ride to work more enjoyable as you can now gradually build entire worlds from the bottom up over time expanding your virtual world of Bus 57 to Midtown with each new ride. You could grow an entire world in the corner of your room and utilize real objects that you assign virtual values to in order to, make a plant grow, build new worlds, interact with games, have an interactive media and news center, and much more. As a company we would create our own content and services to sell to consumers as well as managing the databases of content from our clients and the results of data mining and our own creations.
In Addition to buy/selling virtual goods remotely to your device, our marketplace will also allow you to purchase additional virtual content about physical objects and products in the store or in most cases allow you to download the virtual content related to the physical product simply by scanning it. Consumers could then pick and choose between which content they want to download for free, sell, modify, or buy with the actual physical product. We would then create a simple API for businesses so they can tag there virtual content easily and post it on the marketplace immediately.
Creating a marketplace were people could buy the virtual model or object and visualize the actual physical objects in real spaces using AR would also be even more effective for industries like construction, engineering, and interior design. Companies like IKEA could create virtual 3D models of all of their products and allow the consumer to preview what each product would look like in the actual space. A virtual marketplace for real estate and property development from an engineering perspective would be revolutionary. Consumers would be able to buy and sell their 3D models of certain houses and buildings and allow others to modify and build on top of. Engineers could also buy simulators and apply different conditions to the building to test it virtually and actually see what the possible problems or stress points could be. The marketplace would allow people to mix and match services and content to create their own custom world or in my view their own realities.
This marketplace would also be an effective tool for the new pixel sense interactive displays that recognize physical objects when placed on the screen. This allows people to interact with physical objects and the virtual content related to it on a multitouch display. One such product is the Microsoft Surface which uses the different pixels on the LCD and Gorilla glass screen to actually be able to read and scan and written media or object. This would effectively be a multitouch version of AR utilizing a similar idea of using physical objects and products and linking them to virtual content. So in essence any object that is tagged or referenced either by the consumer or in the database can be linked and scanned by any connected device (phone, tablet, glasses, contacts, and multitouch surface). This technology will allow us to visually interact and manage the virtual world through movements in the physical world. AR will change the way we perceive reality by expanding it and enabling us to explore the world around us in a manner in which we have never been able to do before.
What if I told you that there is an innovative tool that you can use to assign any form of virtual content (3Dgraphics, animation, entertainment, and more) to any physical object using just your hand and voice actions? I am here to tell you that this tool already exists and will drastically change every major industry. Having the ability to buy and sell virtually any content has been in the gaming industry for years, but now we can expand all of virtual games, models and animations onto actual physical objects. We can use this by using an emerging break through technology called Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality (AR) is a term for incorporating a live view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. In order to gain a better understanding of how this technology actually works, I attempted to divulge into the topic in depth. Emerging from the depths, I feverishly began to scribble down the numerous ideas I had that could be incorporated into nearly any major industry. Sitting down at my computer for countless hours I investigated major topics including the creation, development and future of Augmented Reality, and how it pertains to gaming. This paper demonstrates AR’s future as a technology that will help bring us together instead of constantly driving us apart. Augmented Reality will be the main driving factor behind the next web revolution driven by creating digital experiences that merge the virtual world with the physical environment using cloud based connectivity.
Boeing engineer Thomas Claudell originally coined the term AR in 1992, however the idea has been around for much longer. Augmented Reality based weapons and interfaces have been projected in films and literature for years. For example, movies like Terminator and Predator both utilize basic AR weapon systems. This technological advancement enabled the aliens and machines to efficiently track and kill humans in sci-fi thrillers only years before it was actually tested and developed in the early 1990s. In 1992 L.B. Rosenberg developed one of the first functioning AR systems called Virtual Fixtures for the military The United States invests a large portion of their budget in their military, allowing them to research and develop their technology. As a result, the U.S. Military has the most cutting-edge set of AR technologies enabling them to provide soldiers information. This equipment has proven extremely beneficial (life-saving) information such as: instructions, maps, enemy locations, thermal graphics, and distances in real time.
Augmented Reality did not reach the commercial market until 1998 when ESPN programmer Greg Mortenstern produced the 1st and 10 graphics system. This system allows any viewer of a live football broadcast to see a yellow virtual first-down line. This radically improved the value of the broadcast because viewers were finally able to track the progression of the games and the requirements of achieving the next stage in the possession. This idea was then applied to other sports to help visually depict records, advertisements, and informational statistics onto live video broadcasts. Augmented Reality began to expand into the mobile space through the introduction of AR based games such as AR Quake in 2000 by Bruce H. Thomas. However, AR applications began to really surge with the discovery of Yelp’s Monacle application in 2009. Robert Scoble discovered a hidden software feature in an iPhone app allowing users to access yelp.com reviews. The intriguing part of the find was not the reviews themselves, but how the reviews were displayed. Once Monacle, yelp’s name for the application is activated, users looking through the iPhone camera displayed the reviews and other information about the restaurants, stores and other businesses based on its geographical location in relation to the direction of the camera. This application of AR provides a new and fun way of finding information about the places around us. Furthermore, it also expands the uses of the mobile phone and camera from just a communication device into a new form of exploration.
Since that time companies like Qualcomm, Metaio, and Layar have been offering their AR mobile sdks for developers to build and tag physical objects with games, video, questionnaires, 3D graphics and other virtual content. These open source communities focused on AR development are working on some of the most innovative service and sales solutions to help improve efficiencies. In addition to improving efficiencies, AR creates new ways of interacting and spreading information. With the improvement in mobile technologies such as, pattern recognition, optical tracking, navigational tagging, and social networking, our mobile phones are now capable of searching and interacting with almost anything in the world around us.
Qualcomm runs a yearly competition ($200,000s in prizes) where they give out their mobile sdk to the open source community. This starter kit also incorporates the unity programming system to allow developers to utilize their AR technology to create cool interactive games on a platform they are already familiar with. The games uses the mobile phone along with a game board that acts as the physical pattern the game runs on. The user then opens the app and points the camera at the board at which time the AR content is then fully interactive and viewable. Five Graduate students at the USC CTIN program actually received 3rd place in the 2010 Developers Challenge for a game called Danger Copter. This game used a 3D model of a city and allowed the gamer to put out fires from the copter above gaining points for saving civilians. It created a view of a city from the cockpit of the helicopter and had different buttons that would connect to different actions within the game. The perspective and view of the copter would depend totally on the location and position of the player. Graphically the game could be a lot better but it does expand the possibilities of gaming.
The main AR format that got some attention for a while was the zombie themed AR games that utilized the different SDKs to enable a fully interactive zombie game in your physical location. Players can shoot zombies in your room that are seen through the camera on your connected device. Applications also allow viewers to experience zombies through facial recognition and animation technology and the camera on the mobile phone. Developers were able to latch on to the zombie craze and enable players to fight off zombie infections in their own house. However, these games have yet to be fluidly implemented and have yet to become mainstream.
Augmented Reality games are pushing the boundaries for virtual gaming in physical spaces. Currently, there is not enough commercial support or familiarity with the technology or the idea to make it fully sustainable and scalable. All the reviews of the games that spawned from the 2010 AR challenges argue that the idea of AR games is really cool and intriguing, however the development of these applications are basic, gimmicks, and just not there yet. Although there are many critics of AR, I firmly believe the current problem with the AR gaming industry is that the platforms are not fully utilizing all of the different inputs and interactivity that AR enables you to use.
The furthest development in AR spawned from developers hacking Microsoft Kinect to create interactive and animated games in real world spaces. These developers were able to harness the optical tracking and body recognition hardware in the Kinect to create personalized superheroes (games that react to a person’s movement). The developers were able to not only create personal avatars based on their body type, but also enabled them the powers that they believed that avatar or superhero should posses. In the Kinect Seven video you can see the man on the screen activate the program through moving is arm upwards. He can then load up his dragon ball, or shoot his x-ray vision through different movements and actions. The Kinect hacks demonstrate that there is already technology available to enable fully functioning virtual communities and games implemented in real world spaces. People will soon be able to create their own virtual avatar by simply a wave of your hand. Once you build that avatar, people would be able to utilize facial recognition software, and GPS, to view your friends and countless others who joined the avatar community. (Companies like Metaio developed this idea for actual clothing and products through a concept known as “the virtual dressing room”. However, this would be more like creating a virtual image of you that is linked to your actual body type and image.
In 2011, it is projected that 1.23 billion dollars were spent on mobile ads in the US. The growth of virtual goods as a source of revenue for games has expanded the possibilities for profitable games enabling them to entertain and become a point of sale. Farmville has demonstrated that people are willing to pay for virtual goods and services that allow them to build their own world. Zynga made millions with just one virtual $.99 Christmas Tree that people could buy and give to others as a present In 2014 that number (1.23 billion) is projected to rise to 4.4 billion. Going even beyond just mobile adds, it is estimated that virtual goods netted approximately 3 billion dollars in revenue worldwide. That number is expected to grow rapidly to 8 billion dollars in 2016. The data proves that it is a sustainable and profitable industry that is still an emerging market.
Utilizing Augmented Reality platforms you can allow people to create their own world in different spaces in which they encounter on a daily basis. People can build farms, roller coasters, cities, fantasy lands, and much more through simple device connectivity Other people could also help build these worlds simultaneously, interacting in new and inventive ways using physical and real objects. Advertisers, cities, film studios, and others would all help subsidize the content by providing virtual goods that you can link your physical objects to. It would be taking the Sims game and embedding and tagging it to different real world objects and patterns. AR would allow them to push these virtual communities and games to new limits by adding additional sources for interaction based off of physical movement. This would radically change the way that people play games by expanding the realm of play to the entire world. People are now able to play games in any location through interacting with the physical objects around them. You could create fully interactive games that are referenced from different physical locations and objects throughout a certain city. It would be a whole new way of telling stories and fostering interactivity. Instead of people sitting in front of a TV or computer spending over 50% of their time attached to a screen, people will be able to play games with friends outside even if they are thousands of miles away.
Governments and cities could sponsor events that highlight different aspects about the city through promotion and interactive games. Imagine a fully interactive murder mystery game that is fully embedded into the physical landscape of a city. Currently, Layar allows people to see different perspectives of buildings and streets from different time periods. Theoretically, you could recreate an entire city from the 1900s at any point in time and allow people to explore it by walking through the actual location and the historical landmarks. You could then create a game in which everyone within it must interact and speak as if they were from that time period giving points on achievement and interaction. There would be different levels of interaction for the different types of gamers. Different achievements to unlock for achievers, new worlds for explorers, new interactions between players for socializers, and new ways for players to attack and hinder others in the real world setting would all be enabled through an interactive AR game. Fostering new interactions between people in a real world setting allows technology to pull us closer together instead of constantly driving us apart.
Another intriguing industry that AR and the merger of the virtual and the physical is the film and entertainment industry. Today there are new applications that allow you to see the different scenes from film and television in the location that they were filmed in. You can actually follow a character in a film as he walks the very same streets you do simply by using your phone. This idea will dramatically shift the way people make and distribute films in the future. Imagine the capability to follow a certain character throughout an entire city. You could even expand on that and allow a person to become a character in live digital performance in real world spaces. People could use existing characters and iconic figures to create their own spinoffs and stories using existing personalities. This would push film into a hybrid of a game and traditional film by adding different layers of interactivity. It would be extremely profitable for the film and television industry to predict this new form of mass media and to create new and interactive ways of using already existing film and information about popular movie and television characters. Consumers would then buy their virtual character that they can then interact with and modify. This would help them advertise for current as well as past film creating more viewership and therefore more possibilities for revenue. Creating virtual characters that can be fully customizable and linked to famous actors/actresses, comedians, game characters or friends will also be a massive industry on its own.
I can already picture it now, a 3D version of Siri that is augmented in your physical location that you can fully customize. It would be a fully functioning personal assistant without having to actually pay a real person or talk to a phone. The one thing I always hated about voice commands is that it is extremely awkward to speak into a phone and give it a command in comparison to an actual person. This specific artificial intelligence will allow you to have a personal assistant by utilizing soundboard and specific people (Morgan Freeman…etc) that could help you with all of your search and services and help you manage everything. As a back up I believe you could even have it be connected to an outsourced real life person that may be able to answer your question better than a computer. The consumer would not have to deal with accents or culture barriers rather the information would come from the personal assistant in a manner you predetermined.
I believe the future of AR is using the mobile phone to allow people to interact and explore the places, objects and people around them. In today’s society, people blindly walk the streets lost in an invisible cloud of tweets, status updates, texts, games, and applications. We should be looking up and exploring our actual surroundings instead of being imprisoned by our devices. I believe that this is an innovative way that will innovate and ultimately streamline the way we interact with our own technologies. The limiting factor from allowing this transition to fully take hold is that people currently can only view this type of information on their phones or iPads that they must constantly hold to view the virtual information. The development of AR glasses and contact lenses will make the transition from selective AR into fulltime merge of the virtual world and the physical one.
The University of Washington is joining forces with companies like Vusix and are currently developing AR glasses and contact lenses that will enable you to see AR without having to hold up a connected device or camera. These glasses utilize cameras with any type of recognition technology and enable people to interact with digital experiences at all times. These glasses for instance allow people to see predator vision, (a thermal image of a person), of people and animals around you. The implication of glasses like these will change the way we visualize our games, apps and services. The glasses and the contacts would then enable the merger of the virtual and physical to be available at anytime without utilizing an additional device. You could embed different layers of interactive content that the consumer choices and enable them to have access to it at all times. So a person could be doing any activity and see a notification from one of its many layers without the consumer having to activate anything. They could then visually interact with that notification or related content automatically and simply through hand motions.
People already walk around with glasses that cost hundreds of dollars. Imagine when there are commercialized AR glasses that are cheaper than your average fashion sunglasses. This will undoubtedly increase user experience. Imagine if those glasses could also work off your phone’s GPS and the camera placed in it and display meaningful digital content. This would allow you to see and interact with your virtual communities or games no matter your location. People wouldn’t have to take pictures or scan objects anymore; rather the glasses will track your eye movement and scan the objects you are looking at for additional virtual content. In essence people who are addicted to WOW could become their virtual character in the real world and have people view their virtual perception about themselves. This idea of course also can be applied for facial recognition and actually information provided on social networks like Facebook and Twitter to their actual human source.
Essentially, AR will allow people to expand their reality from physical objects but also implement virtual information that is connected to them. Gamers will soon be able to have a constant link to their own virtual avatar and assistant in every space. It will begin to blur what we think of actual physical interaction and virtual interaction. AR will bring all of the current major industries together fostering more innovation and communication between people. We will be able to teach kids about the stars and science outside providing them with the information they can find in a textbook in real life examples and objects. Games have always been a powerful tool of learning and now we can use technology to teach and improve the community and the world instead of making it more absorbed and isolated.
The missing link in the whole equation is that there is not an effective means of allowing consumers to create, buy, and sell virtual content in a functioning marketplace. A virtual marketplace that allows you to buy or upload virtual content or AR services and augments them personally using the physical objects around you. A consumer can buy/ download as much digital content as he or she wants and then can create his or her own world using those virtual goods. Then after he or she is done making his or her virtual world on top of the physical objects within their spaces they could then sell their world creation to someone else to build and grow further. This way people can buy virtual goods and create some sort of additional value by connecting them in interesting ways and allow them to then sell that to someone else. It would legitimize the virtual goods industry because then consumers wouldn’t just feel as if the things they buy will loose all value after they are bought.
This could be huge for cars and other actual products which people will then buy and resell after they have customized and added more virtual content to a 3D model or graphic. This market would also partner with a multitude of apps that allowed you to depict and interact with your virtual content depending on your physical and AR settings. For instance this marketplace could be an avenue for merchandisers and producers to gage interest in a potential product by allowing them to download 3D models and other related content that can be then augmented depending on the consumer’s setting.
People could then play games and build their own games using different virtual goods in the spaces they interact with on a daily basis. It would make a routine ride to work more enjoyable as you can now gradually build entire worlds from the bottom up over time expanding your virtual world of Bus 57 to Midtown with each new ride. You could grow an entire world in the corner of your room and utilize real objects that you assign virtual values to in order to, make a plant grow, build new worlds, interact with games, have an interactive media and news center, and much more. As a company we would create our own content and services to sell to consumers as well as managing the databases of content from our clients and the results of data mining and our own creations.
In Addition to buy/selling virtual goods remotely to your device, our marketplace will also allow you to purchase additional virtual content about physical objects and products in the store or in most cases allow you to download the virtual content related to the physical product simply by scanning it. Consumers could then pick and choose between which content they want to download for free, sell, modify, or buy with the actual physical product. We would then create a simple API for businesses so they can tag there virtual content easily and post it on the marketplace immediately.
Creating a marketplace were people could buy the virtual model or object and visualize the actual physical objects in real spaces using AR would also be even more effective for industries like construction, engineering, and interior design. Companies like IKEA could create virtual 3D models of all of their products and allow the consumer to preview what each product would look like in the actual space. A virtual marketplace for real estate and property development from an engineering perspective would be revolutionary. Consumers would be able to buy and sell their 3D models of certain houses and buildings and allow others to modify and build on top of. Engineers could also buy simulators and apply different conditions to the building to test it virtually and actually see what the possible problems or stress points could be. The marketplace would allow people to mix and match services and content to create their own custom world or in my view their own realities.
This marketplace would also be an effective tool for the new pixel sense interactive displays that recognize physical objects when placed on the screen. This allows people to interact with physical objects and the virtual content related to it on a multitouch display. One such product is the Microsoft Surface which uses the different pixels on the LCD and Gorilla glass screen to actually be able to read and scan and written media or object. This would effectively be a multitouch version of AR utilizing a similar idea of using physical objects and products and linking them to virtual content. So in essence any object that is tagged or referenced either by the consumer or in the database can be linked and scanned by any connected device (phone, tablet, glasses, contacts, and multitouch surface). This technology will allow us to visually interact and manage the virtual world through movements in the physical world. AR will change the way we perceive reality by expanding it and enabling us to explore the world around us in a manner in which we have never been able to do before.