Aggrogate

Canon Shows Off Augmented Reality Gaming, Makes Chris Look Silly

I cover a lot of different consumer technology products, and they all usually have their own groups of brands. You don't expect Nintendo to go into HDTVs, you don't expect LG to go into digital cameras, and you don't expect Canon to go into futuristic video games. However, when I attended the CanonEXPO yesterday, that last option is exactly what I saw. Tucked into a corner of the expo was a video game demonstration kiosk for Canon's "Mixed Reality" system. It's a little bit virtual reality, a little bit Playstation Move, and a whole lot of looking like a character from The Lawnmower Man.

Chris and I were invited to play a "game" where we created a cartoon character in virtual reality, using head-mounted displays to watch our creations float before our eyes while we manipulate them with our hands. I sat down and held the display over my eyes, keeping it aligned so I could see through the virtual glasses. They were almost completely clear, but could show computer-generated images on top of the regular view thanks to a small screen and a prism.

The glasses were a two-way display system, and while they projected images before my eyes they also recorded everything I saw. A tiny camera used a second prism to look at the world through the glasses, measuring the movements of certain objects and figuring out where and how to display certain things. I was given a "thimble" for my finger with a colored foam ball at the tip, and the cameras in the glasses used the position, size, and orientation of the ball to determine where my finger was pointing in three dimensions. It seemed to work a lot like the Playstation Move, tracking a colored circle and using it as an input device.

First, I drew the head of my character with my finger, poking at the air to form an outline. Once the head took shape, the system generated a basic body and I was on to the next task. The game then prompted me to draw "ears and a tail" on the character in a similar manner, drawing shapes over the body to create new appendages. I ended up giving my character two horribly misshapen ears, a horn, and two extra arms. The system really was harder to control than it seemed.

After the character took shape, I had to give it some color. I was given a large artist's palette with a series of black and white squares scattered over it. When I entered the painting phase, several of the squares formed colorful patterns before my eyes. the display identified several of the squares based on the black and white markings and used their positions to figure out where the "paint" was supposed to go. When I tapped the pools of paint, my finger-cursor took on their patterns and let me fill the different parts of the character with colors. Finally, I was told to draw a face on the character. The paint patterns disappeared and a different set of squares turned into drawing tools. I scribbled on the character's head and ended up with an ugly, screaming, plaid insect. Unfortunately, I couldn't catch it on camera.

Okay, it was less a video game than a sort of Baby's First CAD Program, but it demonstrated how augmented reality could make some pretty interesting video games. The glasses projected images in mid-air, filling empty space with colors and shapes and using monochrome markers to determine the positions of tools. It's easy to imagine laser tag or Nerf games turning into real FPSes, with the glasses transforming darts into bullets and tracking scores with a virtual leader board. Strategy games could sprawl across a dining room table, forming a virtual war room and letting players pick up and move their troops where they would like. Even chess could potentially be enhanced, using the glasses to turn wooden pieces into clashing warriors.

Unfortunately, the technology isn't there yet. Control was extremely awkward, and getting the system to recognize where I wanted the cursor to go was a chore. Sometimes the control circle appeared inches from my face and sometimes it appeared in the background, forcing me to gesture wildly to figure out where it thought my finger was. The glasses were also extremely uncomfortable and looked ridiculous, and while they worked well enough while I was seated I can't imagine walking around with them on my head and not constantly bumping into things.

Still, it's really cool technology, and even if it's all world-of-tomorrow techno-hype, it was pretty interesting to try out. Canon clearly meant the game as a tech demo, but with the right development team they could turn those glasses into a genuinely immersive gaming experience. That's years down the road, at beast.