Ah, the humble BBC Micro. This was the weapon of choice of my primary school back when I was but a little piglet (and the weapon of choice of most primary schools in the UK at the time, prior to the rise of the CD-ROM). Although most of my computer memories from that time are associated with the ZX Spectrum which we had at home, I have one distinct memory the BBC Micro, and that is a red blob in the form of Podd.

What is Podd exactly? Well, Podd was an educational game (both terms are used in the loosest sense here) which presented the user with the words “Podd can” and a blank space for the user to type what they think Podd can do. If you typed something which Podd could indeed do, you were rewarded with watching him do it. Observe (unfortunately the sound goes a bit out of sync as the video progresses):

Podd can walk – yep.

Podd can jump – yep.

Podd can fart – I’m afraid Podd is not flatulent.

Podd can poo – No, he’s constipated it would seem.

Of course, playing this game in school (when unsupervised) usually resulted in typing in all sorts of obscenities, only to find disappointingly that Podd didn’t do any of the things that we really wanted him to do. Podd can pop was probably the best action that I can remember (shown at the end of the video above).

The reason I have such a distinct memory of Podd is not just because of the unparalleled thrill of the game, but also because I managed to break it – and I’m not talking about something that could be fixed with a simple off and on here. No, I managed to break Podd to the point of no return. Apparently, pressing the break key on the keyboard, does actually break the game and its disk. At least, after I pressed break to exit the game, it never worked again and I got the blame. I became the target of a mass hate campaign of Podd-loving classmates. Candle lit vigils were held in Podd’s demise and attempts to contact Podd with a Ouija board proved unsuccessful. Limits were imposed on me to ensure that I never harm another pixel puppet ever again.

R.I.P. Podd.

Looking back, Podd was rubbish… and yet we loved it. It was easily the most popular choice when we were allowed to decide what program we wanted to use (although the choices were limited). Something about being able to control this ‘thing’ on the screen really hit the spot. A far cry from blowing stuff up and driving over hookers with your car these days, eh kids? (Sarc.)

A similar toy for the PC a few years later called Dr Sbaitso, who talked to you and said whatever you wanted him to say, was also similarly amusing.

This is just incredible, and a real joy to watch. I’d love to think that, if I’m ever a dad, I get to do something this cool with my kids.

Luke Geissbuhler and his kids decided they wanted to send an HD video camera high into the stratosphere, so they spent eight months researching and testing for their project before finally launching their Go Pro Hero HD-laden balloon from Newburgh, New York. The balloon rose for 70 minutes to a height of 100,000 feet (19 miles) above the Earth before popping.

The video includes audio, so you get to experience what it looks and sounds like to be floating 19 miles above the Earth, surrounded by the blackness of space.

Source: Petapixel

A blog post over on Games4Rehab alerted me to this cool hand tracking technique from researchers at MIT. It simply uses a printed lycra glove and a webcam, and can track the 3D position of the hand at under 100ms latency.

I quite liked the light-hearted trailer they put together for the glove too:

This could be very useful for some of the research I’ve been doing lately – plenty of games and applications could be made around this technology. Then again, I guess thats what Microsoft are getting at with Kinect. How good both are in the hands of the public remain to be seen.

For more details on the project, check out the project’s page.

Justin Bieber – you know that little guy that is everywhere online and who apparently sings? Okay, well it just so happens when you slow down the tempo of one of his tracks by 800% and slap a bit of reverb on there, you end up with one hell of an ambient soundscape track. Who’da thought?! Listen to the ambient masterpiece below:

Rather lovely, right? You can listen to the entire track here, and download it here. If you want to hear the original Bieber track, just for comparison’s sake of course, you can hear it here.

If you don’t believe this is actually the Bieber track slowed down, here’s the proof. I took the slowed down version and sped it up again here. When I first posted this sped up version I simply was doing it to prove to someone on Twitter it wasn’t a hoax. Turns out Gizmodo found the link and posted it on their article about the song (see Update 2), and as of the time I’m writing this, the clip has over 32,000 listens and it’s at the top of the Audioboo popular chart (see below). Thank God I changed my display picture to one that didn’t show my ugly mug to those 32k people, eh?

Note: “Echoes Across The Wasteland” was the title given to the track when it was uploaded to the Photon Wave Orchestra bandcamp page, a band name which apparently originated from 4Chan. There had been some confusion as to whether this was a genuine ambient release from this band, hence why I sped up the track to show it was indeed the Bieb-meister.

More and more uses of Augmented Reality have been rearing their head as mainstream products recently, thanks to the increase in smart phones. An iPhone (3GS only) app released on the app store yesterday provides an augmented overlay when driving along a road, detecting lanes and nearby vehicles. I wouldn’t say its exactly very useful, hell if you try using this while driving yourself you’ll probably end up dead, but its still a cool example of whats possible with low-cost technology and the app itself only costs a mere £1.79.

It wouldn’t be difficult to turn this into some sort of game (for passengers of course) – maybe some sort of Pokemon collector type game where you have to photograph a certain number of cars of a certain model or colour, or if you want to get controversial, virtually shooting at passing cars and scoring points for it.

I was going to mention some form of Death Race mechanics, but thats probably pushing it…

App: Augmented Driving by Imaginyze

Engadget have posted a video from a Microsoft event in Tel Aviv yesterday which showcased some of the technology which will be present in the upcoming Project Natal. The video below shows how Natal recognises full body movement, of not just one but two people in real-time.  This definitely has potential for some cool competitive and co-op mini-games, for example a Wild West dual or some beach volleyball (off the top of my head). As well as that, Natal uses face recognition to determine the gender of the player and represents them with a male or female avatar accordingly. Pretty cool right?

But what of butch ladies and girly gentlemen? I can see some offended players in the future. In relation to that, I found some of the comments on the Engadget post hilarious, notably “How’s Lady Gaga supposed to get her game on?” to which someone replied “Natal obviously can’t see her Poker Face silly”.  Genius.

Hit the jump for the video.

Read rest of story…

I’m just home from the VS Games 2010 conference which took place in Braga, Portugal. I presented our paper from the University of Ulster entitled “Augmented Reality Games for Upper-Limb Stroke Rehabilitation”. We’re really pleased to have won best short paper at the conference (we won best paper at the conference last year – on a roll baby…).

I have uploaded a new presentation to my SlideShare which is a merge of the VS Games presentation and a recent one hour seminar I gave at the university. It includes videos of the games I’ve been working on, including some early prototypes of augmented reality games (note: these are in their VERY early stages – still glitchy and need developed much further). You can find the presentation below.

We went to see Alice in Wonderland (in 3D) at the cinema last night. Although not an amazing film by any means, it was still thoroughly enjoyable (as with most, if not all, of Tim Burton’s films). Wonderland looks rather nice in 3D, though nothing compared to the world of Pandora (Avatar). As with Avatar and other 3D cinema I’ve experienced (e.g. old 3D Imax shows), watching the film just excited the hell out of me for when I can play games in 3D. In particular, I can’t wait to play a 3D Elder Scrolls game. I just keep imagining that moment when you walk out of the sewers in Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls IV) and the glory of seeing Cyrodiil and The Imperial City in the distance in 3D.

Bring it on! Eurogamer recently published this interesting feature on the current state of 3D TV’s and 3D games.

This morning I received a copy of my first ever magazine publication.  The article was printed in the Stroke Association‘s free quarterly publication “Stroke Matters“, and is a discussion of the potential benefits of using video games in stroke rehabilitation.  Many thanks to the publication for giving me the opportunity to write an article for them and also for kindly allowing me to publish the article on my blog.

If you wish, you can also download a pdf version of the document (includes OCR’d text), and a text only version.

If you’ve ever wondered what my research is about, this is a good representation of it.

Its video like this that make me wish I was a better, more inspired researcher.  A great idea, designed and developed at low-cost to create a highly impressive Augmented Reality system.  Baring in mind that this is just a prototype, it really makes you wonder how much the digital world will merge with the physical world over the next few years.  AR technology is moving at such a fast pace, and in particular in the past year (co-inciding with the increasing power of portable devices like smartphones) it has really taken some leaps forward into becoming mainstream.  As well as filling our world with information and shared knowledge within seconds, it will also have great implications for gaming and I’m extremely excited for it.

The future’s bright, the future’s augmented.