Its like playing 'Quake', but in the real world

Despite my skepticism about head-mounted displays, I remain enthusiastic about the possibilities of ‘augmented reality’ – it is just too cool for words!  Here you see a research project that lets folks run around a (real not virtual) college campus, and shoot at monsters from the game ‘Quake’ that are superimposed on their vision.  The game knows about the real geometry of the campus, so it can present or hide the monsters appropriately.

There are so many interesting directions this technology could go – games, information about real-world objects and events, even replacing a real object with a different representation of it.  In theory, for example, you could make everyone you meet look like a dinosaur.  (Not sure why you’d want to, but hey – different strokes for different folks!)

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 23, 2004
  One thing that came to mind was for tours of famous places. Imagine going to see the colleseum in Rome.. and then the "presentation" (as you're listening and watching) manifests real people in the center, and renders the rest of the walls, etc, etc.. you could kind of show the place as it used to be..
  
  All that aside, there is no hiding the nerdiness of how those guys look.. :-)
• Anonymous
  July 23, 2004
  Can you make everyone look like Keira Knightley?
  
• Anonymous
  July 23, 2004
  In theory, I suppose - in reality we have a ways to go before computer graphics are good enough and fast enough to make a real-life "Shallow Hal".