5/30/2023 0 Comments Pokemon scenery![]() ![]() There is a fundamental difference between just slapping a label in front of something because I’m there and actually altering our perception of reality. In what other ways are the new augmented reality technologies distinct from what Pok émon GO offers? Games like Pokémon GO are fun but they’re really more location-based entertainment than augmented reality. These new technologies are really raising expectations for augmented and mixed reality beyond holding your phone out to see a creature on your street corner. To the point where users will, for example, see that there’s a virtual object sitting on a table and that object will remain where it is with respect to the user’s position as he or she moves. But I think the push by Microsoft with its HoloLens technology as well as new headsets from companies including Meta and magic leap, will really show people how virtual objects can be integrated into real-world surroundings. There were likewise some popular smartphone apps from a few years ago that let you superimpose images over reality. The term “augmented reality” has been applied to a number of different technologies over the past few decades-including Google Glass-that allow you to see text and images floating in front of you. If Pok émon GO is not augmented reality, what is it? Instead, he says interest in the game provides an opportunity to look at where augmented reality could go in the near future. Perlin is not criticizing Pokémon GO, which has introduced a lot of people to the basic idea of augmented reality in a short period of time. Perlin’s experience with virtual and augmented reality extends back decades, and he has won several awards-including an Academy Award-for inventing ways to improve computer graphics. Perhaps it is just splitting hairs but Ken Perlin, a computer science professor and founding director of the New York University Media Research Lab, makes a distinction between simply dropping digital characters onto a screen based on a player’s location and integrating those characters into their surroundings so that they seem more real than virtual. Just about everything written about Pokémon GO since its July 6 release positions the game as a triumph of augmented reality-technology that overlays digital images atop the real world-on a smartphone. ![]() That might sound a lot like augmented reality, but one pioneer in that field prefers to call Pokémon GO and games like it “location-based entertainment.” It uses the camera and GPS system on an Android or iPhone handset to digitally superimpose these animated creatures on top of whatever scenery appears on the smartphone’s screen when its camera scans one’s surroundings. In the week since its release as a free smartphone app, Pokémon Go has sent millions of people worldwide on digital scavenger hunts to hunt down and collect cartoon characters. ![]()
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