MiceArena
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Play against your pets in virtual reality
If you've ever wanted to play something more meaningful than "Fetch!" with your pets, this research project might prove just the thing. A collaboration between the Emerging Art and Architecture Research Group and the Mixed Reality Lab, Singapore, Mice Arena allows your hamster to chase you -- in a virtual reality.By using a tank with an elastic floor, which is manipulated to reflect the digital terrain, pets can experience the virtual world first-hand. It's an interesting idea, though we're hard pressed to see a practical side to it. Still, the researchers are hoping for "unexpected results", so you never know -- we just may learn something after all.[Via Engadget]
VR video game gets your hamster in on the action
Traditional playtime between humans and their pets has generally been limited to fetch, tug-of-war, and the occasional chase around the coffee table before bedtime. Well if researchers from the Emerging Art and Architecture Research Group, or RASTER, and Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab have anything to say about it, pet owners will soon be able to kick those old fashioned games to the curb in favor of video games that let their animals get in on the action. The group is in the midst of designing a game called "Mice Arena", wherein the human player is pursued by an on-screen avatar controlled by a real world hamster, which chases a piece of motorized bait corresponding to the human's position on the in-game map. What's more, the hamster's game space -- a specially designed tank -- actually adjusts its terrain to match the on-screen action through a series of actuators underneath the floor. Future games from the collaborative -- and we'll leave the jokes to you on this one -- will incorporate decidedly less pet-like animals in the fun, with tentative titles such as (we're not making this up): "Chicken Petman" and "Jellyfishtrone."
