Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9. Games with Reality
Today, video games are an integral part of human leisure. People spend hours in vir-
tual worlds and in most cases, this is a very pleasant experience that makes them
glad and sometimes even happy. But what if the games and their principles began to
pervade into wider areas of human reality? What do you think about games being an
integral part of reality?
Seeing real unreal
Themeaningof
augmented reality
(
AR
)canbederivedfromthenameitself:areality
that is augmented (enriched) by some sort of digital media. The process takes place
in real time. It is interactive. The computer-generated elements are tightly connected
with fragments of objective physical reality and have some specific reactions to them.
The following figure provides a schematic presentation of AR:
Forexample,whenasystemrecognizessomelandmarksinthegamescene,itshows
a textual description, plays a video, or displays some sort of 3D content. This inform-
ation is strongly connected to a specific object, marker, or location.
To interact with AR, special devices are needed such as a computer system with a
mounted camera, and some additional sensors may be required. The most advanced
example is a heavy, head-mounted display. Most of them are pretty expensive and
not easy enough to use everyday, especially outdoors. Fortunately, there is another
example, that is, modern mobile devices that feature quite fast chips, good quality
cameras, and some special installed software meaning they can easily overlay a rep-
resentation of reality with some additional information. Moreover, they have given an
extra boost to the popularity of AR technology because it is very handy to look at and
use AR content on a smartphone rather than a personal computer. Because it is mo-
bile, users have greater freedom to move and tilt the smartphone device to examine
objects.
