A researcher of Medialab in Madrid began an experimental project: An interactive cube. The cube is tracked by a webcam and on the screen the sides of the cube are displaced with a game.
Its called LevelHead and created by Julian Oliver. The technique is so-called ‘augmented reality’.
Here is a link to a movie of the game: filmpje
The goal is to let the man escape from the cube. It also possible to multipayer so the man can walk trough several cubes.
He uses a Sony EyeToy-camera and a Ubuntu Linux-system. The animations are made in Blender. He is searching for a better animator. In the end it gotta be Open Source.
hmm interesting. It’s a pity the text isn’t in english at least. I’ve also done 2 augmented reality installations with the help of ARToolKit and Blender, and 1 performance just Blender + VR helmets.If anybody is interested, see on my site on works “Kukatko” in Installations and “VR Performance” in Actions section: http://plant.ffa.vutbr.cz/~novak/
Article By Tom Rosens, Monday October 15th, 2007 12:18
A researcher of Media facility Medialab in Madrid, has started an experimental project: an interactive cube. A real cube being registrated by a camera, on which the computer generates game images.
The project, titled LevelHead, is the creation of Julian Oliver. The technique being used is called ‘augmented reality’; with this technique, images from the real world are captured using a webcam and combined with computer generated images. Like seen in the movie, the player of the game needs to free a virtual character out of an actual box that exists in the real world. The character can be steered around by tilting the cube. There’s also an option to play the game with multiple cubes, in which the character can walk from one into another cube.
For his game setting, Oliver uses a Sony EyeToy camera and an Ubuntu Linux System. The animations being shown were created with the program Blender. Additionally, Oliver says he’s looking for a skilled character animator. Eventually he would like to offer his creation to the community as an open source project.
Although this ‘augmented reality’-game won’t be released directly on a console system, there are game studios working on similar projects. One of the games being worked on is The Eye of Judgement, a game for the PlayStation 3, which combines a traditional card game with digital information. Compared to a game like Magic, players have paper cards that can be played out against others. A supplied camera registrates the cards, whereafter an associated spell or creature comes to life on the television screen. That way, creatures on the cards can fight each other for real on the screen.
