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Human Pac Man

Posted by michael on from the one-way-to-get-exercise dept.

erined writes ""Human Pac Man" is a project of the Mixed Reality Lab of the National University of Singapore. Players don back pack computers, VR gloves, and 'mixed reality' goggles which overlay virtual cookies--shown as floating spheres--on a first person view of the real world. Aided by a helper who can view the entire game board, players realize their pacman fantisies as they physically move around in a wide-area setting eating cookies and avoiding monsters."

13 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Next game please! by grub · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Human Pac Man is cool but I want Human Doom, Human Thief and Human System Shock. Looking up at a ~6m tall cyberdemon would cause instant soiling of the gitch. No idea how things like rope arrows would work in Thief... and the monkeys in SS2, scary stuff...

    That would be leet.

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    1. Re:Next game please! by Pxtl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I know. I heard about this technology about 2 years back and that was the first thing I thought of.

      Still, I'm really happy that they've gotten this far with the technology. When I last heard it was only done in small rooms.

      The only thing is that you have to realize your limitations - you can do anything that doesn't alter the location of the player, or move the real-world walls around.

      So, to do Doom and Quake, its fine - its just that the player has to walk to the respawn point to respawn (the mechanics of this would be tricky to make gameplay good).

      IMHO, Unreal Tournament CTF would be the best. Interesting weapons, the game is designed for the slower pace of real-life, and its an all around solid FPS. No cloaking or X-Loc tho.

    2. Re:Next game please! by grub · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thief 3 isn't due until next year sometime but it looks amazing. I agree with you there about it being a favourite. It hasn't left my hard discs since I installed Thief 1 "back in the day". If you like fan missions, check out ThiefMissions.com for loads of missions. It'll keep you playing..

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    3. Re:Next game please! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's kinda sad that it's stuck with 'flat' 2D games. I mean Pitfall and Hunchbaack would give it some problems, although if you found a building site, I bet Chuckie Egg would be a helluva laugh...

      Centipede would have the potential to scare the crap out of you though; imagine a giant centipede snaking down the street towards you as you fire manically...

    4. Re:Next game please! by GigsVT · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How's it much different from paintball CTF then? :)

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    5. Re:Next game please! by nautical9 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      It's been mentioned on /. many times before, but the Cave Quake II game is about as close as you can get, albeit still in a small room. If you've never seen it before, you must watch the movies.

      The movies have been updated since I last looked, and I didn't immediately see one of my favorites where an inexperienced player dons the headset, walks close to an in-game ledge, and literally falls down when his character does. Quite immersive, apparently. :)

  2. virtual light by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    by gibson..

    has a pair of glasses that show information on real world things floating above them, quite cool and maybe something we'll see someday as well(for everyday use).

    though.. imagine huge virtual ads blocking your glasses, i just hope they run some system that would allow custom code to block them.

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    1. Re:virtual light by cjustus · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I spend a fair bit of time thinking about this... Imagine being able to see the names of people at a party hovering over them ... Or some high-level info about them, plus your own notes... Have the glasses record everything as well... add face recognition... Allows you to replay / view all interactions with someone just by looking at them... All part of ubiquitous computing...

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      Platform independent bug tracking software
  3. X Person by Malicious · · Score: 4, Interesting
    VR gloves, and 'mixed reality' goggles which overlay virtual cookies--shown as floating spheres--on a first person view of the real world

    It would be kind of weird playing 3rd person in VR no?

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  4. Re:john candy by RetroGeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So you are making a scientific statement, then backing it up by citing a comedy movie?

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  5. VR FPS & invisibility by Baron_Yam · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually, if you did immersive VR instead of mere augmentation, you could simply 'erase' an invisible player from other players views of the arena.

    You'd have to have a cutoff - like you become visible if you're within five feet or so to avoid running into 'invisible' people. I also imagine you'd want the VR walls to line up pretty closely with the real ones to avoid toe-stubbing.

  6. Human Pac-Man? They've done this at Burning Man by Vulpine · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Although it was nowhere near as high-tech, a human immersive pac-man has been brought to Burning Man at least one or two years. They set up a huge maze with pink PVC piping. The players would don head pieces that represented the characters in the game -- pac-man, the ghosts, or even the bonus fruit. Pac-Man ran around in the maze popping balloons which represented the dots. A DJ at an elevated station synchronized the sounds of the actual video game with actions in the maze. It was great! I camped down the block from them at Livejournal camp in 2002.

    Unfortunately I have been unable to find pictures of the actual game maze or a game in progress on the web. However, you can see a photo of the giant Ms. Pac-Man dome the theme camp creators lived inside here and here.

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    -- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
  7. Re:Next game please! [ARQUAKE] by FrenZon · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Human Pac Man is cool but I want Human Doom, [...]
    I think you want ARQuake, which was mentioned on slashdot a few years ago, and is still being worked on by various students.