{"id":72160,"date":"2015-02-14T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=72160"},"modified":"2015-02-13T14:01:23","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T12:01:23","slug":"augmented-reality-the-future-of-gaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/72160-augmented-reality-the-future-of-gaming","title":{"rendered":"Augmented reality – the future of gaming?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prepare to open your wallets, ladies and gentlemen, for the\u00a0augmented reality<\/a> (AR) headset called HoloLens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although having been announced only a fortnight ago, tech media are already dreaming feverishly of the potential applications<\/a> for such a device. Meanwhile, Microsoft\u2019s own press images seem to promise a benign utopia replete with living room Minecraft<\/a> games and attractive, tech-savvy white people.<\/p>\n

\"Minecraft\"<\/a>

Minecraft<\/p><\/div>\n

It might look rather like an excitingly chunky pair of wrap-around sunglasses, but Microsoft promises that it is entirely self-contained, with speakers, lens and CPU housed entirely within the chassis.<\/p>\n

Being substantially smaller than the Oculus Rift<\/a>, and intended to be less invasive than Google\u2019s much-maligned Glass<\/a>, HoloLens provides perhaps the most credible attempt to introduce augmented reality into our homes.<\/p>\n

\"DIY<\/a>

DIY Plumbing<\/p><\/div>\n

What is augmented reality anyway?<\/h3>\n

Even though HoloLens is new, the idea of augmented reality is certainly not. First proposed by L. Frank Baum (author of the Wizard of Oz) in his 1901 novel The Master Key<\/a>, AR has a long and illustrious history, at least in theory. But what is it, exactly?<\/p>\n

Augmented reality is a form of \u201cmediated perception\u201d: an AR device overlays a virtual world on the real one. It does this by taking a live video feed of the external world and then supplementing it with computer-generated sensory input. In this sense, it is unlike virtual reality<\/a>, which entirely replaces the external world with a virtual one. Instead, AR embellishes the real world to make it more fun, clear or informative.<\/p>\n

Already there is a huge number<\/a> of AR apps, most of which have been built for mobile devices. One such is Layar<\/a>, which synchronises camera input with data from Google Maps in order to let you see the world with the digital marginalia built in.<\/p>\n

\"Smartphone\"<\/a>

Smartphone<\/p><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, games like Ingress<\/a> enable smartphone users to win points and compete with other players by \u201chacking\u201d with virtual nodes that are attached to real-world landmarks. In order to hack the node, they need to actually stand near the landmark, giving it a distinctly physical dimension.<\/p>\n

Some of these AR programs are genuinely remarkable, and carry with them the seeds of a changing paradigm. The new version of Google Translate<\/a>, for example, can perform real-time spoken-word translation, as well as translating written words almost instantaneously. The Babel fish<\/a> from The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy gets one step closer.<\/p>\n

However, HoloLens provides you with something a little different. Unlike mobile phone apps and Google Glass, the sensory overlays provided by HoloLens are interactable digital objects<\/em>. They don\u2019t merely provide parenthetical or additional information about things in the world; instead, those objects serve to further populate the world around us.<\/p>\n