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Real Life Doom With Point-And-Shoot Positioning

SoupIsGoodFood_42 writes "A company called GeoVector has come up with a system that lets you point out a location. They say it could be used to get info on buildings and objects. E.G. pointing your mobile device at a movie theater could tell you what's on. They've also developed a "real world" version of Doom. So don't be surprised if you're in Japan early next year and see people running holding their cellphone/PDA like a gun."

19 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Virtual Light by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I want it built into my sun glasses, so I if I focus on an object for 250 ms, it pops up a little yellow box telling me what it is.

    1. Re:Virtual Light by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Embarassingly enough, this happened to me. In my fourth year of university, I took a class in Human-Computer Interaction. One of the class requirements was that I take part in one of the professor's projects which was working on a camera system that tracks where the human eye is looking on a computer screen.

      One of the test items was to test the usability of a web page. The professor noted that there was a lot of focus on the "boob region" of the female body. It was bad because if you focused on an area for a few milliseconds, it registered as a red mark on the webpage and you could see a buildup on the chests. Ahh, good times.

    2. Re:Virtual Light by gregmac · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I read the subject of your post, and suddenly remembered a book I read years ago, called (surprise, surprise) Virtual Light. The book takes place in 2005, and was written in 1994. Always neat to see old books and movies doing a good job of predicting future technologies.

      Of course, California would have to break up into two, and homeless would have to take over the Bay Bridge.. but hey, theres still a couple years for that.

      --
      Speak before you think
    3. Re:Virtual Light by ganley · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Anyone remember the movie "Looker"? (I didn't think so.) In there, there was a mention that advertisers would show a swimsuit-clad woman, and then switch to their product, centered right where the "boob region" just was, because they know that's where your eyes are probably pointing.

  2. Hmmm, this sounds like... by BeerSlurpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This sounds like the rangefinding/GPS binoculars the military uses to read off bombing coordinates now.

    Im surprised how fast it came to the civilian market. With affordable cruise missle technology available soon, ordinairy citizens will be able to carry out their own starcraft style airstrikes (minus the cute red dot and the mushroom cloud of course, but who knows).

  3. Just when we thought we were safe... by mgcsinc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now public schools will again have a rationale for prohibiting cell phones in school!

  4. Just great by agent+dero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is what we need, lots of sketchy looking people running around aiming there cell-phones like they are real weapons, am I the only one seeing a problem with this.
    "Put the money in the bag or get fragged Mr. Johnson!"

    Just one great idea after the other.
    In fact, this is probably from the same folks who make water pistols that look EXACTLY like real guns.

    --
    Error 407 - No creative sig found
  5. Safety? by Piranhaa · · Score: 0, Interesting

    With more people running around the streets in Japan - worse than it already is - doesn't seem too safe does it? My 2 cents

  6. ArQuake by rhysweatherley · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Doom on an iPAQ? Give me a break. For "real life" gaming, the ArQuake guys are years ahead:

    http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/arquake/

  7. Toy guns by yerricde · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Toy guns, such as squirt guns and the pointing devices in coin-op shooting games, are brightly colored so that police officers won't shoot a person holding a toy gun.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  8. Reminds me of an idea by eddy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've had (I'm sure it isn't in any way novel) for television with overlays. So we have tv-text, but now with everything going digital it would be cool with a standard for "html" (including vector graphics) overlays which would be sent with the TV broadcast and toggled by the viewers at will.

    For instance, one could have an overlay with the name of the actors floating over their heads. Or the names of the characters -- I know a person that while watching a movie in company, have to ask every freaking minute what is happening on screen..argh -- .. other overlays could provide information on what music is currently playing (linking to the place of purchase with a simple point'n'click with a remote) or just misc information about the program such as the next airtime and what not.

    Sure, there's the problem of creating all that metadata, but -- call me a nerd -- it'd be cool.

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  9. Re:Suggestion by gantrep · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, an intelligent image search engine like that would be really cool. Not just for finding people like you mentioned, but say for example you just bought some antique "thing" at a garage sale. You don't know what it's called or what it's for, but it's old. So you snap a pic and an image engine identifies it or at least comes up with a lot of stuff that looks similar. Completely unfeasable today, but someday it will be possible and really sweet. Closest thing to it I think I remember a /. article about how compressable an image is with gzip is an indicator as to whether it is biological or not.

  10. Re:So?? by gantrep · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, I do agree with you, but I guess some parents feel differently. Found this article about how great cells in schools are. A few good points, but I still think they are too distracting and annoying.

  11. Cell I can understand, but in a camera would RULE by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can understand this being put into a cellphone, and I can see the utility of it.

    However, what I want is a nice 10 Mpixel camera with this in it - record when the shot was taken, where, and what the bearing was.

    Add that and perhaps a short, low-rate voice note, and maintaining my photo collection would become a great deal easier.

    OT: If you have a photo collection, do those who come after you a favor and LABEL your pictures - date, names of the people in them, event, and why you felt this was important enough to take a picture of. I had to go through both my mother and my grandmother's estates, and it was sad to see the number of pictures of somebody somewhere at sometime - I'm sure some of them had some meaning to the family, but what has been lost to time....

  12. Re:Suggestion by bluGill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Even better, forget buying it at a garrage sale. I want those who hold garrage sales to identify this item and not throw away something that looks useless, but infact is valuable to the right person. Perhaps it could even notify (Not via spam, but something similear) those who are interested in such a thing that it is for sale.

    I know of several people who got rid of a lot of 'junk' that I would have been interested in. They didn't know what it was, but I did on hearing them laughing about the 'junk' dad kept all those years and just about killed them for throwing away some good thing.

  13. Think.... by Usquebaugh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How accurate is this going to be? Certainly not pin point.
    I thought about making a toy similar to this, but a little more advanced. You've seen light guns for computers, well how about a gun you can target anything with, sorta. Look up 'Small Arms Trainer' e.g. I built one of these for fun, yes it's a scream with a projecter, webcam and laser pointer.
    But I want more, If you can work out were a gun is pointing and you know in advance where the targets are then you work out if they are hit. Simple huh? Well no, it's a real bear to locate something in 3d, it has to be accurate, way less than 1mm.
    Of course I posted an ask slashdot but it was rejected, obviously way to technical.
    Any ideas?

  14. Re:Oh this is so great... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Problem with all these is that most people are cowards and are afraid of tiny welts when they're bound to get carpal tunnels from too much time playing CS or whatever.

  15. Way ahead of them by M3wThr33 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I got PalmGun on my Palm. It's Laser Tag with it's IR port, of course, it works with ANY IR device, so people cheat with the uber-strong omni-remote controllers, but otherwise it's still good fun.

  16. Real Doom! Yeah but... by frunch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Won't it suck to always respawn in the exact same place? Unless of course this phone as some other pretty nifty features, like say teleportation