W3Haus UK Labs

Hyper reality – from the movie Avatar to the your friend’s phone, everyone’s getting touchy-feely

In Ridley Scott’s recent blockbuster movie Avatar, a human being could control another living creature through the power of the mind and a wireless connection. This is impossible in today’s technology, but this futuristic approach is not as far fetched and distant as you would imagine. Of course, the technology for controlling living creatures and receiving instructions from a human brain are still in their very early stages of development, but if you dive into the world of hyper reality, it is already possible to mix the virtual world and the real world, even with affordable consumer products. A few gadgets are hitting the market which promise to blur the difference between “Reality” and “Virtual”:

Iphone Quadcopter

Last week we featured the Quadcopter by Parrot on this blog: an IPhone remotely-controlled helicopter with 4 blades (hence Quadcopter). The onboard camera, together with the IPhone’s advanced processing capabilities made it possible to turn your living room into part of a hyper reality game scenario. Very cool. Of course we want one too

Light Blue Optics projection screen

I’ve personally always thought that screens should not have fixed sizes, they should adapt to your needs – you want a big screen for watching movies, a small screen for private functions such as texting, writing emails, etc. Light Blue Optics has come up with a multitouch projection screen that nearly achieves this. The screen projects onto any surface onto which you can interact with multi-touch gestures (now popularized by the IPhone).

Augmented reality (used to promote Avatar)

Not really a gadget but a technology, Augmented reality has become a reality on the web by the use of a webcam interacting with a physical object. This allows you to manipulate 3D objects as if they we in the real world. Because of its recent port to the widespread plugin from Adobe – Flash, the technology still suffers from a few bugs and performance issues, but promises to be a new option for many websites that want that more “tactile” interaction. In its marketing launch, Coke Zero created a special Coke can which could be used to interact with an online Augmented Reality demo of the movie Avatar. Some toys for the game will even have this augmented reality feature for fans to play with:

Microsoft Project Natal

Seemingly always playing technology catchup nowadays, Microsoft will soon launch its new games console – code named Project Natal. Trying to “one-up” the successful Nintendo Wii, which uses a wireless infrared control that simulates the users actions in the real world into the games being played on the television screen, Microsoft has completely eliminated the need for any extra controls, choosing instead to detect automatically the human body’s movements. We will have to wait and see if it works and whether not having controls is a step too far:

New gadgets and interesting ways of interacting have always been a successful attention grabbers. I remember being awed as a child in the Louvre using one of the first touchscreen computers  to view the Louvre digital archive. You can be sure I told as many people as I could about this novel technology and interaction. And so do most consumers when they come into contact with a cool and novel technology. But the novelty soon wears off and we have to go off in search of the next big technology. This recently happened with multi-touch technology and the IPhone. Initially, a massive difference and selling point for the mobile phone, soon after its release, a myriad of copycat phones have sprung up in the market making the technology very common.

Having a cool feature is a great way to achieve outstanding marketing results in this age os social media, where one interesting finding on the web spreads from user to user like an out of control wild fire.

Now that touch is coming to the digital world, It should only be a matter of time before more of the human senses become digital. Can you smell that virtual toast burning already?