Augmented Reality has taken over regular gaming by storm.
Games like "Pokemon Go", that are a mixture between real life and virtual objects, seem to be the new trend - together with Virtual Reality systems, that make you feel like you are in a completely different world.
But combining both worlds, real and virtual, hasn't always been very easy.
Hollywood can do it with a million dollar budget, but now, a new technology will revolutionize the industry:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has just discovered a new method called "Interactive Dynamic Video".
The technology works by recording a short clip of your environment with a regular camera.
Then, the software analyzes the vibrations, and can therefore calculate how the object would naturally move if you were to touch it or interact with it.
This short video explains and demonstrates the technology:
So this means that you could interact with any game or any movie you watch.
Just imagine looking at a picture of a beautiful landscape, and you could poke and push the flowers - and they would actually respond to your action!
If this was integrated into a game like Pokemon Go, it could become much more realistic: The Pokemon could hide under a table or jump on a bush which shakes in return, or a Poke-Ball could bounce off a tree etc.
This would add another dimension to our gaming experience!
Of course, the technology is not quite ready yet to be implemented on such a large scale, but it's a possibility for the future.
This is how it might look like if Pokemon Go was equipped with Interactive Dynamic Video:
As you can see, it makes the virtual characters appear to be much more realistic, because they are actually interacting with your environment.
Abe Davis, student at the MIT and inventor of the software, developed it as a part of his PhD dissertation.
Although he hasn't initiated any commercial uses yet, this technology could soon revolutionize the Entertainment industry.
Currently, big Hollywood Productions let their virtual characters interact with the real world by adding a lot of virtual elements.
In the video above, the example of Jurassic Park is shown: Movies like that are being filmed in a relatively empty environment.
Then, the dinosaur gets added in virtually, along with lots of virtual plants that he can then tread down.
That means a lot of work for the editors!
But with IDV, you could just film in an environment with real plants, and manipulate their movements afterwards with a few clicks.
IDV could also be used to find out how an object would react under certain conditions, without the dangers of actually testing it.
For example: It could be calculated how buildings would react/move in the event of an earthquake, and according to that Data architects could improve their work to make the building more stable and safe.
Davis has actually also talked about his revolutionary new technology in a TED Talk, explaining how it works in detail:
Obviously, this new IDV technology is still far from being implemented in mainstream Entertainment products, but it's definitely an interesting new way of Augmented Reality that might be used a lot in future gaming and film making.
I guess my kids will have lots of fun with new technologies like this one!
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