Taking Video Games to the Streets - The Ever Evolving Pacman
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Other developers have avoided violent first person shooters and are trying to transport more innocent arcade games, like Pacman, to augmented reality and urban gaming. This game seems particularly popular for gamers to simulate, perhaps because of its utter simplicity. There are at least a couple projects bringing Pacman out of the game cartridge.
A relatively simple version of the game is called Pac-Manhattan (official website), which doesn’t use GPS or WiFi. Pac-Manhattan has avoided using GPS to track players because the expense of the equipment needed, and also it would drop the signal when players run past very tall buildings. The game coordinators also looked for an area in the city with enough WiFi coverage but couldn’t find one.
In many ways, it resembles a complex game of tag, and it is more of just an urban game than actual AR. There are five players wandering the streets of Manhattan, Pacman and four ghosts. The ghosts try to eat Pacman by means of tagging him. After touching certain street signs (the equivalent of grabbing a power pellet) Pacman can likewise eats ghosts by tagging them.
Technology comes into play in the control room. Elsewhere, five people sit in a room trying to help the players. Each player has their own controller who they talk to on a cell phone. The controllers watch and update a computerized map that shows roughly where all the characters are, resembling the overhead view of the original Pacman game. Pacman’s controller updates the player’s location whenever he reaches an intersection, and the program counts how many dots he has run past since the last intersection. The ghost controllers watch the map to help their players catch up with Pacman, and they also update the ghost positions.
The Pac-people catching their breath
By far, the greatest part of Pac-Manhattan is that players on the street all wear Pacman and ghost uniforms. The constumed players all run around the Washington Square park area, holding cell phones to their ears and tagging street signs as they dart through traffic. You must be forgiving if this project isn’t as advanced as others; it isn’t one of the newer ones and seems to have had a more limited budget.
The newest Pacman project is Human Pacman (award website), from Mixed Reality Labs in Singapore. As far as technology, it is rather similar to ARQuake and also borrows quite a few ideas from Pac Manhattan. It uses a wearable computer and a monitor-headset. Human Pacman uses GPS to track players and also makes use of inertia sensors to detect where players are going and how fast. Like ARQuake, they are using very high end GPS equipment to make player locations more precise. And to prevent losing signal due to tall buildings, the team chose a somewhat open playing field. If the signal is lost, information reported to the game from the player’s inertia sensors can try to predict where the player was headed until they show up again.
Besides the additional tracking system, the game also has a few other little bonuses. The project uses Bluetooth hardware that reports to the game’s wireless network which allow users more interactivity within the game. Also, Human Pacman is more social than ARQuake, more along the lines of the communication in Pac Manhattan.
The world through Pacman's goggles
Pacman’s yellow dots are superimposed on the player’s surroundings much like enemies and objects are inserted into ARQuake. The game detects when Pacman walks through them, which makes them disappear as if they were eaten. Power pellets are actually Bluetooth boxes. When Pacman picks up one of the boxes, the wireless network detects it and then allows him to eat the ghosts.
Much like Pac Manhattan, both the Pacman and the ghosts are played by people, not computer enemies. In order for them to eat each other, they must tag their opponents. Also like its predecessor, Human Pacman has a control team. People can connect to the game’s network and act as controller, sending text messages to players via their headsets. Online observes can warn Pacman that a ghost is over on 26th street or that a power pellet is around the corner of a building.
As a side note, the project is funded by the Singapore government. It wouldn’t be surprising if this technology is of interest to their military for combat simulations. Not only that, soldiers could wear helmets that use the AR technology to superimpose targets and information on the battlefield, including communication from a command office and other soldiers. Who would have thought Pacman could be used as a tool for warfare?
Next: Parallel World on Your Handheld >>
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