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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."

18 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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    Trolling is a art,
    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 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...

  2. Hmm..... by exhilaration · · Score: 5, Funny
    players realize their Pacman fantasies

    Is this before or after the men in white coats take them away?

    1. Re:Hmm..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Personally, I'm still waiting to realize my Ms. Pacman fantasies.

  3. 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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    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    1. Re:virtual light by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why do sci-fi authors get credit for stuff they didn't invent?

      I dunno. Maybe to equal out all the times that SF authors invented stuff and didn't get credit for it.

      Blue screen technology, like your local weatherman uses -- say thank you to Murray Leinster.
      He got screwed on that one.

  4. 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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  5. Leisure Suit Larry by Suit_N_Tie · · Score: 5, Funny

    I want a Human version of Leisure Suit Larry...

  6. Some PacMan fantisies (sic) ... by BabyDave · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... are best left unrealised

  7. maybe we need a better game for this by undernourished · · Score: 5, Funny

    Aided by a helper who can view the entire game board

    "operator"

    "I need a tunnel out of here, quick, and not to the other side of the board"

  8. Re:First steps by Zocalo · · Score: 4, Informative
    Yes, in accordance with Newton's third law (conservation of momentum), they do. In fact, they have a hell of a lot of it, which is why the prototypes tend to be securely bolted to such stable structures as the ground. Apparently, because photons have momentum, even lasers have a tiny amount of recoil.

    Of course, it's much easier to harmlessly disperse the energy from a recoil than from the impact.

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  9. The sound of ./ by SoftwareTechie · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actual audio footage of a website being slashdotted

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    Political Correctness is doubleplusungood.
  10. Re:john candy by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny
    > The problem with the Human Pac-man is that the human body can only consume about 6lbs of food per sitting. If you would recall "The Great Outdoors" with John Candy. The ol' 96er + a few desserts is all he could handle.

    Yeah, I just finished playing Human Pac-Man. Didn't need no VR either. Just run around a table with four turkeys, four bowls of garlic mashed potatoes, two bowls cranberries, and pack in 240 bread crumbs! w00t!

    (I almost got the 1600-point turkey, but instead it defeated me. Now I know why Pac-Man shrivels up and withers away like that. Tryptophan coma, dude.)

  11. 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.

  12. Re:OT: There ought to be a law... by ShieldWolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    Speaking of advertising: don't forget today is buy nothing day :D

    http://adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd/

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  13. I tried this out last summer. by quakeslut · · Score: 4, Funny

    Very cool. Only cost me $15 for LSD microdots. Monsters were very believable!

  14. This has already existed... by Goldfinger7400 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pac-Man VR is an actual game, not too disimilar from what is being discussed. It was made in the late 1990s.