guest post by Aaron Muszalski
Doctor Popular – the noted San Francisco game theorist, crafter, musician, artist and yo-yo performer extraordinaire – has posted an article in which he envisions the potential applications of the iPhone as an alternate interface for videogames. Rather than merely using the iPhone as a stand-alone gaming platform, Doc suggests using it as a uniquely capable adjunct to games that are currently played on laptop or desktop computers.
Although developing games for the iPhone may be hindered by it’s lack of controls, the iPhone itself could surprisingly make for an awesome game controller itself. Imagine controlling the avatar on your computer over WiFi with your iPhone. Tilting it to move forwards or backwards, selecting weapons from your touchscreen, controlling your weapon via swipe motions. The iPhone could make a great game controller, hell it’s even got a built in rumble pad!
Meanwhile, in his post “Baby Steps to an Augmented Future“, new media producer and gamer Eric Rice theorizes that the iPhone is just one step towards a future where such alternate interfaces have become ubiquitous.
What do the new iPhone, fashion industry, and video games have in common? They might be baby steps towards a future world where the virtual overlaps the real.
The general definition of augmented reality is the combination of computer-generated data (images, videos, etc) with real, tangible things that are located in our ‘real’ world. Most early ventures with augmented reality involve overly-geeky headsets and contraptions to accomplish a simple augmentation of what we see in front of us.
One example of a possible augmented reality interface is Robert Winters’ AUGNAV – or AUGmented reality NAVigation – an imaginary application for a future iPhone that would combine video capture, location-awareness and wireless data access to provide a navigation experience far beyond anything offered by current GPS units.
While a system as advanced as AUGNAV remains at least a few years away, the equally-revolutionary gaming interfaces suggested by Doctor Popular are well within the iPhone’s current abilities. And really, if you’re an iPhone developer, wouldn’t you rather work on something truly innovative, rather than yet another flashlight app?
photo by Doc Pop
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
i do the iphone represents a slice in the direction of augmented reality. I think graffitio is the first real app that shows this possibility and while its pretty simple it clearly gives me the sense of woah whats gonna come next. Its also a bit scary in that we really don't know what the rules are for augmented reality. Playing Graffitio and thinking about AR sent me back to watch a little unknown anime called Dennou Coil that presents a possible future that is not that far from the creative power behind the iphone, or the storm of jailbroken developers that gave rise to the app store.
Very cool post!
I totally see iPhone as a pioneering device for augmented reality. In fact I have ranked it as one of the top 10 devices that will reinvent mobile video gaming in my blog http://www.gamesalfresco.com
The idea of using the iPhone as a secondary controller moves one step closer to reality with the announcement of multitouch.framework. http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/multitouch
From the site:
“MultiTouch.framework is a native Cocoa multi-touch framework for Mac OS X. It uses the default event handling system and the responder chain of the operating system, providing a familiar application programming interface to Mac OS X developers. It is built upon a modular low-level architecture that unifies all touch events, with input units for different multi-touch input devices including FTIR, DI, iPhone/iPod touch, as well as any TUIO-based devices. Thus, as a developer, you do not need to care about the actual input device being used.
One of the great advantages of this toolkit is that you can develop and test your multi-touch application on your standard desktop Mac, using your iPhone as multi-touch input device, without having to work at an FTIR table all the time.”
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