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HP Developing Augmented Reality Applications

HP Gets Serious with Gaming

Last year, when Hewlett-Packard (HP) bought VoodooPC, a manufacturer of high-performance computers used for gaming, it was an indicator that the company was planning to move beyond servers, personal computers, and printers. Now HP has made it official. At a press event on Wednesday, the company unveiled prototype gaming technologies and announced its plan to actively enter the lucrative industry of online, mobile, and PC gaming.

The new gaming technologies have been plucked directly from projects at HP Labs. And four projects that highlighted mobile gaming, touch-screen technologies, and next-generation projection systems were on display.

One project, called mscape, provides a way of playing a virtual game in a physical world. The mscape software is downloaded to handheld gadgets, such as cell phones, PDAs, and mobile gaming devices. The software leverages sensors in the gadgets, from GPS to accelerometers, to determine a player's location and activity, and then it gives the player instructions. Here's a video of an mscape trial at the Tower of London, in England.

Mscape is an example of augmented reality. Nokia is working on a similar idea, although not necessarily for gaming. Mscape may soon turn into a product: in May, HP plans to make an announcement regarding the project, says Susie Wee, the director of the mobile- and media-systems lab at HP.

Comments

  1. Hmm, these applications don't seem to actually superimpose imagery on top of the real world, just use different sensors to determine the participant's location and offer some context-related material. I suppose that's one form of AR.

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