by: Eliane Alhadeff
Via: Interactive Multimedia Technology – Ydreams RealTime Interaction With Augmented Reality Characters
Following my prior posting YDreams: Serious Games For An Interactive Future, Ydreams has just uploaded to Vimeo an upgraded version of the April 2008 demo, where Flapi, YDreams’ in-house mascot, and other virtual characters interact in real-time with a little girl and other physical obstacles in a new seamless augmented playground environment.
Serious Gaming with augmented reality characters
YDreams R&D work with Augmented Reality – SimVideo
Following other YDreams’ products with AR, such as the Virtual Sightseeing Scenic Viewer and augmented books, SimVideo extends the possibilities of these technology applications by providing a large set of tracking, simulation and composition functionalities with very low hardware requirements, due to a very powerful proprietary platform.
With this technology YDreams envision applications such as real time competition with F1 drivers during a Grand Prix Tv transmission, the re-enactment of famous movies, performing alongside or replacing ones favourite actors (imagine Woody Allen´s Broadway Danny Rose inverted) and an enormous variety of augmented reality applications.
With SimVideo, video feeds that are either live or pre-recorded can gain new levels of interest through the addition of an individual layer of contextualized interactivity.
SimVideo implements static and dynamic occlusion, static and dynamic shadow casting, collision detection and physics.
Related experiences have demonstrated real characters interacting with virtual objects, new developments already undertaken in SimVideo are leading to virtual characters affecting and controlling real world objects. Soon one will be able to see Flapi turning real lights on and off and other real world objects controlled by virtual characters.
The main idea is merging real and virtual life in a seamless universe that tends to become one.
Original Post: http://elianealhadeff.blogspot.com/2009/02/serious-games-as-augmented-playgrounds.html
