Goodbye, virtual environments. Hello, real environments.
With all the talk about virtual environments (virtual world is, after all, something of a misnomer), what if you could use the real environment and bring the virtual to you? That's been the fundament of Augmented Reality for some time, and the core of many a spirited discussion -- the overlaying of information, images, representation onto what we perceive of the real world. Information about products, places, people, directions to destinations.
What about games? What if you could layer a gamespace into your physical environment? Or a non-game virtual environment, like Second Life, for example? The Escapist's Howard Wen talks to Blain MacIntyre, Associate Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology who has been one of several researchers there hacking on the Second Life viewer, adding Augmented Reality features to the software.
 | Are you a part of the most widely-known collaborative virtual environment or keeping a close eye on it? Massively's Second Life coverage keeps you in the loop. |
MacIntyre's team has worked with a number of different technologies and identifies a number of distinctive opportunities that come from the AR-ifying (if that's even a word) of systems like Second Life and even more challenges that must be overcome before it truly becomes feasible (Lag, for example, and heavyweight rendering).
Coupled with technologies like Kevin Alderman's low-cost motion-capture suit, or Kapor's 3D camera, there's a lot of potential for more active integration of the real and the virtual, to the benefit of both. Check out the interview. What do you think? Is this just a pipe-dream, or is there something genuinely compelling here for you, the user?
