Category: Augmented Reality Games

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Update: Weta’s Concept First-person Shooter is Really Coming to Magic Leap One

Magic Leap One, the upcoming AR headset from one of the most well-funded startups in history, is said to arrive sometime this year. While no real specs are known about the headset outside of a few choice bits revealed during its unveiling back in December, one important factor that’s been largely unresolved is starting to slowly materialize despite the company’s insistence on complete secrecy: content. Talking to Rolling Stone, Weta Gameshop designer and artist Greg Broadmore revealed that an upcoming first-person shooter called Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders, which is slated to launch alongside Magic Leap One, has been the headset’s longest-developed game.

Update (03/18/18): Weta Gameshop, a 50-person game development wing born from Weta Workshop, is now officially open for business, according to RadioNZ. The studio is made up of half Weta and half Magic Leap staff set in a warehouse at Weta’s site in Miramar, New Zealand.

Magic Leap first showed off a Dr. Grordbort-themed concept video back in March 2015, but it wasn’t clear at the time what end the video would play, be it a one-off marketing video or otherwise. Now it’s clear the concept video wasn’t simply a paid ‘what if’, but rather a game prototype Weta Workshop was toying with.

Speaking with Rolling Stone’s Brian Crecente, Weta Gameshop designer and artist Greg Broadmore revealed the company’s first-person shooter Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders has been in the making for more than 5 years now, something Broadmore says has been equal part game production, and equal part platform development.

“One [of our jobs] is to make a mixed reality game on Magic Leap, but the other is to actually help to define the platform in the first place, and we’ve been part of that feedback loops since the start,” Broadmore told Rolling Stone.

image courtesy Magic Leap

In order keep the business going post-Lord of the Rings, Weta Workshop started selling replica props like swords, helmets and Hobbit pipes—something to insulate the company from the “feast and famine” nature of producing props for the film industry. Eventually the company started looking for new places for revenue, which led to designer Richard Taylor to create the retro-futurist guns which soon became the basis of the prototypal space-faring English colonist Dr. Grordbort.

Even though Weta Gameshop wouldn’t reveal much more about Dr. Grordbort’s Invaders to Crecente, they did say the game is releasing alongside Magic Leap One. By description the game is a wave shooter, but Weta told Rolling Stone there will be plenty of “character stuff” as well.

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‘Star Wars: Jedi Challenges’ for Lenovo Mirage AR Gets First Content Expansion Since Launch

If you haven’t touched your Lenovo Mirage AR headset since Christmas, now may be the time to jump back in for the latest content expansion to the lightsaber-intensive Star Wars: Jedi Challenges.

The content expansion, which is now available for free, is the first major update to the app since it was released back in November alongside the smartphone-driven AR headset.

New content includes:

  • New Lightsaber Duel – Players can duel two elite Praetorian Guards featured in The Last Jedi. This is the first time Jedi Challenges players will duel two characters at the same time.
  • New Planet for Strategic Combat – Three thrilling new levels of Strategic Combat set on Crait, a brand new planet that debuts in the film, will come with the update. Battle new enemies and vehicles including the formidable First Order AT-M6 walker.
  • New Content in Assault mode – All-new enemies and levels will be introduced, including the First Order Stormtrooper Executioner and Riot Control Stormtrooper.
  • Introduction of Porgs – Players will be rewarded with fan-favorite porgs in augmented reality.
image courtesy Lenovo

The Mirage AR ships with a lightsaber controller, which is localized with the help of the headset’s on-board cameras and a separate tracking beacon. Besides the obvious implication of lightsaber duels, Jedi Challenges offers a smattering of minigames, including HoloChess and an RTS game called Strategic Combat.

As far as we know, this is the only app currently available on the Mirage AR (not to be confused with Lenovo’s ‘Mirage Solo’ standalone VR headset), still making it an expensive gimmick at $200. Although if you’re a Star Wars superfan, that “collectible quality” lightsaber might be just enough to entice the credit card out of your wallet.

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‘Pokémon GO’ Now Uses Apple’s ARKit on iOS 11, Bringing Pokémon Closer to Reality

Pokémon GO, the massively successful location-based mobile game, just got an update on iOS 11 thanks to Apple’s ARKit that gives iPhone 6s and above more realistic Pokémon-catching encounters.

Since it was released in summer 2016, Pokémon GO has been hailed as an augmented reality game capable of immersing you in the world of Pokémon like never before. The only problem is it wasn’t really AR.

Entering a battle to catch one of the elusive pocket monsters left you with two options; a simple battle sequence in a virtual environment, or a pass-through ‘AR mode’ that let you see the Pokémon projected on top of the real world. These projections only allowed for the most basic of interactions though, and wouldn’t actively change position according to the user’s movement in 3D space, making it impossible to walk closer to a Pokémon or even look around it to get a different vantage point—effectively leaving you with little more than a novelty in contrast to the game’s true potential: catching Pokémon as if they were really capable of existing in the physical world.

To that effect, Niantic has pushed what it calls an ‘AR+’ update to its iOS 11 app, allowing for Pokémon to be fixed to a point in space, meaning you can walk up close to Pikachu or Snorlax to see to how they’ll look in the real world.

Now that Pokémon actually have a fixed point in space, physically moving closer to the little beasties makes it easier to throw Pokéballs. To balance this advantage, Pokémon will run away if you get too close. Niantic says in a blogpost announcing AR+ that you’ll have to sneak up close to earn an Expert Handler bonus, but you’ll need to be extra cautious so you don’t scare it away, as an awareness meter now indicates how spooked they are. If the meter fills up, you’re in danger of losing them.

“This is our first step toward making AR capabilities in Pokémon GO even more awesome, opening up the framework for greater AR experiences in the future,” says Niantic.

The company will likely update the Android app at some point, although it would only be capable of running on phones that support Google’s ARCore. Initially supporting both the Pixel line and Samsung S8 line, ARCore is said to roll out to 100 million devices in the coming months though, setting up Niantic’s next big IP, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, to be a smash hit as it hopefully rolls out to both AR-supporting Android and iOS devices.

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‘HotStepper’ Gives You AR Directions with the Help of a Silly Half-naked Man

Thanks to augmented reality, the world is about to get weird. Real weird. Thankfully we’re not the only ones who think so, because Nexus Studios, the minds behind the inside-out VR tracking solution using ARKit, today launched HotStepper, an iOS wayfinding app that follows an infectiously strange little man that beckons you to follow him on the way to your destination.

Simply enter an address, and your hot-stepping sidekick will guide you there, replete with a jaunty little walk and a few other moves worth watching.

Nexus Studios, a film and interactive media studio split between LA and London offices, says that the app combines the very latest in AR, geo-location and mapping technology. Nexus says their Interactive Arts team built a system that uses a combination of GPS coordinates, your phone’s IMU and mapping data in order to calculate your location and render HotStepper.

The studio says they’ve developed a new suite of tools to ensure HotStepper looks as realistic as possible (for a cartoon walking around the real world, that is). To give him a real-world quality that he’d otherwise lack if simply dropped into AR, the app takes the camera feed and essentially reflects the environment onto your chubby half-naked companion, making him fit more naturally in the environment with dynamic shading. Aiming to make him even more ‘realistic’, the app also programmatically makes a calculation about where the sun is in relation to HotStepper himself so his shadow is rendered correctly too.

HotStepper was animated in VR through their an animating tool of their own creation, VLO. Nexus says VLO will be releasing soon.

“HotStepper is part of a series of research projects we’re doing into storytelling using real-world data. We’re super excited to be exploring this new frontier and with HotStepper we’ve combined multiple innovations to bring to life a playful dude creating a fun way to get somewhere. The HotStepper has a complex steering algorithm that uses different types of data to keep him on the path and walking in the right direction. It’s only as good as the GPS data though so absolutely use your common sense when perhaps it appears he hasn’t!” said Nexus Studios Head of Interactive Arts Luke Ritchie.

While it’s hard to imagine using such an app for day-to-day walking directions, it certainly adds a bit of flair to an otherwise boring function. Not only that, the possibility of having such a helpful character to inject a little fun into your day when AR glasses come to the consumer market from household names, which could be as soon as 2020, is basically a dream we’ve all had as kids.

HotStepper is now available for Apple devices supporting iOS 11. Android support coming soon.

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‘Pokémon GO’ Makers Announce Harry Potter AR Game, Releasing 2018

Niantic, the minds behind Ingress and the smash hit Pokémon GO, have partnered with Warner Bros and WB Games to bring a new location-based Harry Potter-themed AR game to mobile phones. Called Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the game will let you battle fantastic beasts in the same sort of world-scale arena as Pokémon GO.

According to a blog post announcing the game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite lets players learn spells, explore real-world places, fight legendary beasts, and team up with others to take down the game’s powerful enemies.

Although details are still thin on the ground at this point, even if the game turns out to be a 1:1 reskinning of Pokémon GO, it’s sure to do some serious business in microtransactions based on the subject matter alone (who doesn’t want to be a wizard? also, why is my credit card bill so high this month?)

image courtesy Niantic

Pokémon GO’s battle sequences aren’t really what you can call ‘true’ augmented reality, as it only overlays images via pass-through camera with no positional tracking. You can’t, for example, run around a Pokémon while in the middle of the fight or run closer to it to get a better shot. Niantic says however they’ll be leveraging its entire Niantic Platform while also “pioneer[ing] all new technology and gameplay mechanics,” and with the release of ARKit from Apple and ARCore from Google, this may mean we actually get a ‘real’ AR game.

Not much else is known about the game, although Niantic says aspiring wizards should expected it sometime in 2018.

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‘Pigeon Panic’ Proves That AR is Only Going to Make the World a Stranger Place

As first to market with a robust augmented reality function baked right into its mobile operating system, the various projects we’ve seen using Apple’s smartphone-based AR platform have tended to range from the useful, to the artful, to the downright silly. Targeting the ‘downright silly’ category is Pigeon Panic, a deliciously strange game from AR studio Combo that lets you chase virtual pigeons through the park, making everyone around you wonder what the hell you’re doing with your life.

To play, all you have to do is pick a spot on the ground, chuck out a mass of hamburgers, donuts and pizza, and watch as the dopey virtual pigeons arrive for the feast. Waiting for just the right moment, the objective is to scare off as many of skyrats as possible before the timer hits zero.

The game, while not exactly high on replay value, demonstrates AR’s unique ability to immerse you in an invisible digital world that really leaves people wondering why you’re having so much fun running around the park. While it doesn’t offer the sort of game mechanics you’d stick around for like Pokemon Go, it certainly gives you a taster for what’s in store for the future of AR games.

Sam Piggott, developer on Pigeon Panic and co-founder of Combo, recalls the moment when the idea was born. “Pretty much the day after the announcement at WWDC, we were sat in an East London coffee shop, coming up with a concept for the new game; something fairly simple to grasp in concept, but dependent on AR for execution. There were a bunch of pigeons outside pecking at some bread outside the coffee shop window, and one of us was like, ‘what if….?’”.

“The whole experience was designed to be quite silly,” says Piggott. “We wanted to pull together an experience that let anyone relive that juvenile feeling of scaring off flocks of birds – without the crushing fear of judgement from onlookers.”

“In retrospect, it’s probably equally as strange to be seen running around open spaces with an iDevice, though”, he added.

Pigeon Panic is free, and currently available for download on the App Store for most devices that can run iOS 11.

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8 Cool AR Apps to Try Now That Apple iOS 11 is Here

Apple’s newest iteration of the iOS mobile operating system is here, and with it comes the ability to turn your iOS 11 compatible device into an honest-to-goodness augmented reality viewer. Thanks to a few months of lead time with Apple’s developer tool ARKit, the App Store already has plenty of useful apps and interesting games boasting AR capabilities.

IKEA Place

One of the most talked-about ARKit apps is here, IKEA Place. Letting you virtually ‘place’ IKEA products in your home to figure out if they actually fit, the app features everything from the company’s unpronounceable sofas to it’s equally unpronounceable coffee tables. If only it included a flatpack model that showed how big the damn box was before trying to fit it in your car.

Download here (free)

Zombie Gunship Revenant AR

Zombie Gunship Revenant is a unique zombie shooter where you take control of a heavily-armed helicopter gunship and obliterate zombies from the sky as they run around a military complex. Complete with fake heatmap and plenty of radio chatter, it’s amazing how realistic it all looks.

Download here (free)

Follow Me Dragon

Ok, so there’s also some pretty silly AR apps too. Exhibit A: Follow Me Dragon. Although we can’t say how long something like this will actually be fun (especially for $2), there is an undeniable novelty in owning your own dragon that’s too hard to turn down. You can poke him, make him do tricks, take selfies with him, change his skin color and a bunch more basically useless things that will make your kids giggle.

Download here ($1.99)

World Brush

Art is everywhere with World Brush. You can create and post your 3D paintings anonymously at the approximate GPS location you created it. To combat the inevitable onslaught of phallic artistry, users have the ability to like, dislike and report paintings The app also uses a scoring algorithm that combines popularity and time of creation so you can always view the best stuff at your location.

Download here (free)

Housecraft

IKEA Place is great, but if you’re looking for something a little more generic, Housecraft has a wider selection of 3D models to choose from if you’re planning out a new space including the ability to save the whole room configuration for later viewing.

Download here (free)

Measure Kit

MeasureKit contains 7 AR measuring tools for those impromptu moments when you need to measure anything and everything including:

  • Ruler — measure straight lines on any surface, such as a desk or wall.
  • Trajectory — measure by “drawing” (moving your device) in the real world.
  • Marker Pin — measure distance from device camera to fixed points in space.
  • Angles — measure corners.
  • Person Height — measure how tall someone is.
  • Cube — visualize how big something is.
  • Level — check if something is horizontal or vertical

Download here (free)

The Machines

Featured onstage at the iPhone X unveiling was Directive Games’ AR real-time strategy game, The Machines, featuring a PvP arena and a selection of robot warriors. Playable online or in the same room as your friends, The Machines is basically the game we all wanted when we were six.

Download here ($4.99)

Sky Guide AR

Finding stars in the sky is easy. Just look up. Figure out the names and constellations is another matter entirely though. With Sky Guide AR, identifying stars, planets and satellites is easier than ever.

Download here ($2.99)

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This Company is Building an AR Version of ‘Minecraft’ for iOS and Android

South African startup Speak Geek? recently teased an update to their project that aims to replicate the official Microsoft version of Minecraft for HoloLens, the company’s $3000 AR headset, and put it on mobile devices capable of running Google’s ARCore and Apple’s ARKit.

This is the company’s second attempt at bringing Minecraft to AR, the first taking place in 2015 right after the multiplayer version for HoloLens was unveiled. Now, with the release of Google ARCore and Apple ARKit, Speak Geek? says they’re streamlining their first attempt to make a smoother experience for users to view their worlds in AR.

The app interfaces with Minecraft via Forge and the Raspberry Jam Mod. You then find an open world via WiFi and display it.

While the prototype only incorporates a viewer function at this time, the company says they have their eye on building a complete Minecraft client which would include a way to interact with the map via “minions” who you could order to collect resources while away from the PC. The company maintains that these ideas aren’t currently implemented, but could become a reality in the near future.

With enough support, Speak Geek? says they’ll release a version soon to a select group to start playing. Keep an eye on the MinecraftAR for more updates.

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Apple is Bringing AR to “Hundreds of Millions” of iPhones and iPads Starting September 19th

Apple’s iOS 11 is coming to compatible devices starting September 19th, which means that if you own a recent Apple iPhone or iPad, you may have an augmented reality-capable device in your hands before the new iPhone line even launches.

Apple’s big iPhone 8/8 Plus/X unveiling this year promised a bevy of information surrounding augmented reality, thanks to the release earlier this summer of ARKit. As a tool that lets developers make AR games and apps on what Apple says will amount to “hundred of millions of iPhones and iPads,” we had our hopes pretty high for a slew of app announcements.

While we only saw four AR apps revealed on stage demonstrating the phone’s AR capabilities, Apple has said in the past that they’re working with Pokemon GO creators Niantic, IKEA, and Lego to name a few to bring AR apps to the App Store. To that end, starting this month any iPhone, iPad or iPod that can upgrade to iOS 11 will be able to get in on the action, which the company says will let you do things like “redecorate your home, explore a city you’ve never visited, or even try on a new tattoo.”

image courtesy Apple

Apple is advertising the new iPhone line as custom designed “for the ultimate augmented reality experience,” featuring specially calibrated cameras, a screen low on bezels, and the new A11 Bionic processor that drives the room and face-mapping power of the new devices. That may not be enough for many to take the $1000 iPhone X upgrade, but if you’re looking for the most capable AR-capable phone out there, you can bet it’s going to be an Apple product until other manufacturers get in the game.

Google also recently released an AR developer kit, ARCore, which aims to give similar AR abilities to “100 million [Android] devices at the end of preview.” Google is working with Samsung, Huawei, LG, ASUS and unnamed others to accomplish it, making AR the next battle ground for the competing brands.

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5 Google ARCore Experiments That Inject Magic into Everyday Life

Google released a preview version of ARCore for Android yesterday, the company’s answer to Apple’s ARKit. Since ARKit was released a few months ago, we’ve seen a bevy of really cool experiments and potential apps to come from developers from all over the world, but now it’s ARCore’s turn to shine.

Developers looking to use ARCore to create augmented reality apps can start building right now on both the Pixel line and Samsung S8 line. The platform will be targeting 100 million devices by the end of preview access however, coming from various hardware manufacturers and potentially making ARCore the defacto largest AR platform when it launches on other devices later this year.

While the critical mass of inspiring (and hopefully useful) ARCore apps has probably yet to come, here are some cool early experiments that get us excited about the potential of AR to inject something magical into every day life.

Morph Face

Morph Face is an experiment that lets you morph any surface around you into a new shape. It uses shaders to achieve the morphing effect.

Built by George Michael Brower with friends at Google Creative Lab. Built with Unity and ARCore.

Portal Painter

Portal Painter gives you a fun way to create portals into other dimensions. Just point your device at a nearby surface, then use your finger to paint a portal into another world.

Built by Jane Friedhoff with friends at Google Creative Lab using Unity and ARCore.

Hidden World

Hidden World is a simple experiment that combines hand-drawn animation with augmented reality. Point your device at the ground, then tap anywhere to reveal an animated world at your feet.

Built by Rachel Park Goto and Jane Friedhoff with friends at Google Creative Lab using Unity and ARCore.

Draw and Dance

Draw and Dance lets you create your very own dancing AR stick figure that reacts to the music and sound around it – your voice, your dog’s bark, and best of all, your playlist. This character can also augment your Google Home by taking its place on top of the speaker and moving in response to whatever sound comes out.

Built by Judith Amores Fernandez and Anna Fusté Lleixà with friends at the Google Creative Lab using Unity, ARCore, Vuforia and API.AI

ARCore Drawing

This is a simple demo that lets you draw lines in 3d space. It was made as a quick example of how to combine openFrameworks and ARCore. You can get the source code here.

Built by Jonas Jongejan using openFrameworks and ARCore.

Keep an eye on Google’s AR Experiments page for more in the coming weeks.

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