Human Pacman
posted November 17th 2004 9:12AM
Remember back in May when those crazy kids at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program were using cellphones to
play giant games of Pac-Man on the streets of Manhattan?
Yeah, well they just got one-upped by the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore, which is using
head-mounted displays, inertia sensors, GPS receivers, and Bluetooth to play their own real-life version of Pac-Man
(except they call it "Human Pacman"). Players can roam around the streets of Singapore gobbling up virtual pellets and
power pills. (Weird side note: the project was financed by the Singaporean military, which apparently is looking for
new ways to prepare for a ghost invasion.) They hope to have a version that you can play on cellphones ready within two
years.
P.S. - Could someone please work on bringing another retro Eighties arcade to life? We're just as super nostalgic for
Pac-Man as the rest of you all, but there are plenty of other games worthy of the attention of an entire university
department. Pitfall, anyone?
[Via Blueserker]
I prefer a human GTA instead of Pacman :)
Rush hour Tempest?
SUV Joust?
High Rise Donkey Kong?
so who are the ghosts.....the cops?
I think real-life frogger (for those who forgot frogger: http://www.lazyfrog.nl/het.gezelligste.STUDENTENCAFE.van.GRONINGEN/ on the upper left corner under 'froggygame') could be cool!
CNN is late. NUS demoed the technology in April at CIH 2004.
http://mixedreality.nus.edu.sg/news_events.htm#CHI04
DIG DUG! DIG DUG!
Back in the heyday of laser tag I had this idea too. Except it would overlay rockets and plasma guns and machine gun fire and explosions and character avatars, powerups, walls and lighting effects onto the vision to make lasertag more like an FPS game, but in real life!
Take it one step further-- network a bunch of these together so that you'll have a mix of virtual and real people-- take it the technology home and you can start having full on virtual battles in your own backyard!
Glad to see we are one step closer. I knew someone would do this eventually! Looking forward to fragging you in real life guys.
How about a game of Asteroids done with a laser light show That way, you could play it at the beach or at Burning Man.
Asteroids is a vector based game so it should be feasible. We would also need a big ass subwoofer for the audio.
I know the researcher and the project pretty well. It is funded by the Singaporean military as a way to provide battlefield data to soldiers. You can use the technology to see snipers highlighted or to give you directional arrows on where to go for urban combat.
neat stuff.
Frogger! There we go! Let's play that in downtown LA during rush hour!
Centipede, or Galaga please.
Do you get to kiss Ms PacMan after finishing a level?
We can beat that. :) Reality Quake:
http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www/
Tank! Does anyone remember that one? Vector 3D in its raw, primitive state. Everything since then is basically real nice cosmetic fluff.