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Google Glass and the Future of Wearable Gaming

Posted by Soulskill on from the check-out-my-tetris-watch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google Glass is now becoming more widely available, but developers are only just starting to tap into the augmented reality specs' potential for gaming. A new report looks at some of the early experiments with the tech — leading the charge is indie developer Mind Pirate, the first studio to release a mobile game simultaneously on iPhone and Google Glass. But will others get on board? Will the explosion in popularity of virtual reality headsets help or hinder it? It's still a wild wild west.

'The potential of wearables will only be realized through thoughtful integration of hardware and software,' says Mind Pirate CEO Shawn Hardin. Right now, 'much of the mature infrastructure of the mobile arena' is missing in the world of wearables. The 'myriad of unique sensor and hardware configurations atop increasingly diverse operating systems' makes it particularly difficult for developers to get started."

14 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by sethstorm · · Score: 2

    If not for the intentional block surrounding face recognition and the general lack of availability, Glass would have a better chance at succeeding.

    Instead of having a heavily controlled device, how about letting a large amount of users figure it out? That way, you'd have less comments about Glassholes and more people really exploring the bounds of what *can* be done with it, not what *should* be done.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
    1. Re:It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by Harlequin80 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I finally got my hands on a pair to play with last week. My initial reaction was "This is sooooo awesome!" after a couple of hours with them though I was a little unsure as to what I would regularly use them for. The GPS map is extremely good while driving, it is far less distracting and intrusive than using a dash mounted gps. Also for those people who like texting while driving (naughty naughty) the voice recognition is amazing. The screen is also amazingly clear - you don't notice it till you look at it but when you do it is brilliant. Speaking of the screen you can very easily tell if someone who is wearing them is looking at something on it. You can clearly see the contrast when the screen is on.

      As for taking pictures of people without their knowing or recording everything it's just not happening. You either need to have you hand up near your head tapping it or saying "ok glass, take photo". It is actually a lot easier to take an unobtrusive photo with a phone. Where the camera comes into its own is taking photos while you are holding something with both hands. That and the ability to stream what your phone is seeing to the tethered phone - this means you can get a second set of eyes on things if you wanted.

      I wore them for a full day out and about and while they got a few looks nobody said anything at all. That may be thought because in Australia most people haven't really heard of them outside of the geek circles. When people did ask what these weird head piece thing I was wearing was they all wanted to play with it and ask about it. At least here no one seemed to care about the camera.

      In the end what I used it for mostly was to talk to the owner of the glasses via hangouts about how I was finding using them. I send a couple of text messages, answered a heap of calls and took photos of things I wouldn't normally just to test the camera. In the same kind of way that you do with a new phone to test the camera. I would be very unlikely to take many pictures with it if I owned one and wouldn't care if they removed the camera to stop people stressing.

      Finally I wouldn't recommend someone get this generation. The tech in the glass is obviously getting a little old now. There are a few noticeable instances of lag and it gets quite hot if you are using it. Not enough to be uncomfortable but definitely enough to be noticeable. Give it a modern phones processor and lower the power usage and it gets interesting.

      My feedback for google would be - make the screen bigger. It shows a decent amount of info but it is 16:9 now and if it was 3 time taller it would be much more useful. Find a way to have a low power status display that could be there all the time - eg like displaying a clock.

    2. Re:It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

      That's enough for an overlay of game-related information - which could go one step further than things like the Logitech G15

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
    3. Re:It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

      As for taking pictures of people without their knowing or recording everything it's just not happening.

      The latter can be fixed, just that Google wants to make the regular Glass a boring device with all the interesting functions already removed.

      That, and it's not like such a command could be changed to be less obtrusive (such as an eye blink pattern).

      You either need to have you hand up near your head tapping it or saying "ok glass, take photo". It is actually a lot easier to take an unobtrusive photo with a phone. Where the camera comes into its own is taking photos while you are holding something with both hands. That and the ability to stream what your phone is seeing to the tethered phone - this means you can get a second set of eyes on things if you wanted.

      This would get around the Google Glass's unwarranted block on face recognition - just stream raw data out and have Something Else do the interpretation and feedback.

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
    4. Re:It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by shadowrat · · Score: 1

      I finally got my hands on a pair to play with last week. My initial reaction was "This is sooooo awesome!" after a couple of hours with them though I was a little unsure as to what I would regularly use them for. The GPS map is extremely good while driving, it is far less distracting and intrusive than using a dash mounted gps. Also for those people who like texting while driving (naughty naughty) the voice recognition is amazing. The screen is also amazingly clear - you don't notice it till you look at it but when you do it is brilliant.

      huh. i guess it works for some people then. My own experience with it was that i couldn't make out anything on the screen unless it was positioned absolutely perfectly. Even then, i had to really concentrate to determine what i was looking at. If it slides just a little bit up or down my nose, the whole thing just vanishes and i can't see anything. I was left feeling like it was one of the worst ways to consume information i've ever seen. For reference, i do wear contacts. Maybe it just doesn't jive with that.

      Speaking of the screen you can very easily tell if someone who is wearing them is looking at something on it. You can clearly see the contrast when the screen is on.

      I'd agree with that. People are really sensitive to the direction other people's eyes are aiming. It's really easy to tell when someone is looking into thier glass vs looking anywhere else.

    5. Re:It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by Harlequin80 · · Score: 1

      I don't wear contacts and could see the screen clearly as soon as I put it on, so maybe that is the key. I did have to adjust the bridge slightly as the RHS of the screen kinda fuzzed out of existence when I first put them on. Once I shifted them about 1.5mm left I no longer had that problem.

      I wore them all day and only really touched them as much as you would normal glasses.

      I'd agree with that. People are really sensitive to the direction other people's eyes are aiming. It's really easy to tell when someone is looking into thier glass vs looking anywhere else.

      It's not just that - you can actually see the screen is on. It is black a lot of the time so you see this black square when you are looking at someone else wearing them.

    6. Re:It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by Grizzley9 · · Score: 1

      I wore them for a full day out and about and while they got a few looks nobody said anything at all.

      There will be mixed reactions even if some are too polite to say anything. I love tech and am wanting to try these but a guy had them on near me at a restaurant and I just wanted to tell him to take it off. Google hasn't perfected the social acceptance yet.

    7. Re:It'd be nice if Glass was unleashed. by Harlequin80 · · Score: 1

      No question. But the ones I was wearing were the first ones I had seen so in Australia the knowledge of what they are is very low. I got a fair few "what are those things" questions but even when I answered Google Glass most had no idea what they were.

  2. Jealous much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's good technology to have around. Privacy, in your(and about most Glass Luddites) case, is just an excuse to kill a product you can't get. That, and the anti-Glass signs are more like announcements of being Luddites.

    The same argument could have existed for many other devices, but they've found their places.

  3. obligatory Star Trek by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Game

    Google Glass is an alien conspiracy.

  4. Re:Just make sure Wil Wheaton and Ashley Judd by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

    I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks of that episode whenever seeing a Glass.

  5. Ghost town by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Google Glass is now becoming more widely available, but developers are only just starting to tap into the augmented reality specs' potential for gaming."

    It's not that developers are "only just starting". The issue is that most developers I know, myself included, have no interest in it. The last thing we need is more glassholes walking around forcing people out living their lives into Facebook spamvertising prisons.

    Some glasshole captures you minding your own business jogging one day and the next thing you know your inet connection is saturated with running shoe ads. I'll pass.

  6. What a hoot! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

    'The potential of wearables will only be realized through thoughtful integration of hardware and software,' says Mind Pirate CEO Shawn Hardin.

    Awesome corporatespeak Hardin. You must be the guy who conceptualizes, initializes, and brings action items to fruition

    In a synergistc way that leverages market impact of course.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  7. Re: Fuck off, glassholes. by meekerd · · Score: 1

    ^exactly