As though rock climbing weren’t exciting enough, AR is now being used to turn it into a kind of video game.
Indoor climbing company, Brooklyn Boulders, has now launched a new type of augmented reality experience that allows its customers to turn their regular bouldering challenges into an entirely new competitive video game experience.
The sport of indoor rock climbing has been spiking in popularity and businesses are working to stand out.
As climbing gyms start to appear all across the United States, it is reaching the point that these companies are starting to need to work to allow themselves to stand out from the competition. In this effort, Brooklyn Boulders – located in New York City – has become the first in this industry to implement an augmented reality technology based game on their bouldering wall. The hope is that by adding a lit up, competitive game experience similar to video gaming, it will help to make this sport even more appealing and will draw people specifically into their location.
The augmented reality climbing game experience was first created by John Cheng and is called Time Trial.
Time Trial is a form of digital AR climbing game from the Randori startup. The game works by projecting numbered circles next to the hand hold positions on the various climbing walls. When a climber touches those circles, he or she gains points. The purpose of the game is to be able to collect all the available points throughout the length of a climb. Moreover, the climber must complete the bouldering challenge within the shortest time possible.
In order to run the Time Trial system, the equipment needed includes a laptop to run the program, a camera sensor, and projectors. Cheng, a former student of computer science, is a Brooklyn Boulders member and originally demoed his AR game, last year. Since it was first showcased, Time Trial has gone through additional evolution as it can now display the scores and times of the climber on the wall next to the number targets.
Cheng is now working to implement the augmented reality climbing experience at locations outside of Brooklyn Boulders and is currently looking into opportunities in Queensbridge and Chicago.
This new technology allows a child to be able to color in the traditional way, but with a high tech twist.
The use of coloring books is something that children have been enjoying for generations, but today’s kids are used to having a digital spin to everything they do and augmented reality is about to help them with that.
A.R. technology is now making it possible for newly colored characters to come alive on device screens.
This isn’t just a matter of having the animated pictures move about the screen. The augmented reality technology used by Arnimate has made it possible for the characters to appear in three dimensions, appear to move about the real world when viewed through the device screen, and will even respond to being “touched” by kids who are playing with them. This is certain to create a new sense of wonder for children who had previously found coloring to be a game that was limited to choosing the shades and trying to stay within the lines.
The augmented reality coloring book experience from Arnimate is meant to be fully immersive for kids.
Every page in the brand’s coloring book products produces a different scene. When viewed through the mobile app, it becomes possible to bring the complete creation to life. The three dimensional characters and scene will start to appear in real time through the device screen. They will move about in front of the child (or adult). The entire scene and all the characters within it will appear in the colors that were selected by the person who filled them in.
The characters within the scenes are all touch responsive which means that they will interact with the mobile device user through the screen when viewed through the app. Each of the scenes can be viewed from different vantage points.
According to the Kickstarter campaign that was launched by Arnimate, “This way, page after page, children will create their own world. They will meet new characters and play fun and educational games, which will undoubtedly develop creative thinking and install thirst for learning new things.”
Every augmented reality coloring book comes with 12 different scenes that are fully interactive through the app. When they are all completed, they make it possible for the user to play a complete game with the main character. It also comes with sound effects and background music that allow a child to essentially create their own full video game.
