TMCnet News
Singapore Researchers: 'Actually Become Pacman'By DAVID R. BUTCHER, Assistant Editor, Customer Interaction Solutions
OK, we at TMCnet are unsure how we missed this information on Wednesday, but we did. We regret the neglectful omission. (*)
There are those moments in any evolution — be it human, technological or otherwise — wherein what was breaks through in such an enormous way as you cannot even fathom while in the what is. Be prepared, technology-inclined people. Another of those moments is now.
The Associated Press two days ago reported huge news: researchers have reinvented — yes, reinvented — Pacman; they have done so in a format where “the virtual world meets the real one.” “Instead of pressing buttons on a keyboard or using a joystick to move Pacman around a flat maze on a computer screen, the player actually becomes Pacman and plays in the streets,” Adrian David Cheok, head of Nanyang Technological University's Mixed Reality Lab, told AP.
The Lab is a Singaporean team developing “Human Pacman.”
Researcher James Teh recently demonstrated the new format by playing Pacman, strapping on a backpack containing a laptop, and donning a headset comprising a camera and goggles. Sensors and other gadgets were attached to the backpack with electrical tape. Teh’s objective, as is the player’s of the 25-year-old video game, was to collect as many yellow dots as he could; the dots, in this case, appear in goggle displays as yellow orbs bobbing above a parked-car-lined road.
When Teh turned, according to AP’s description, he could see his similarly equipped colleague, whose objective — as Pacman’s nemesis, Ghost — was to tap Teh’s backpack, thereby “eliminating his existence.”
Through the goggles’ virtual objects are superimposed on real-time video of the environment, creating “mixed reality.”
A standard equipment setup costs about $7,780; but the team secured a deal with a Hong Kong gaming company mid-last-month to develop a minimized version in which the wearable computer and headset would be replaced by a mobile phone using third-generation (3G) technology.
This is strikingly similar to Pac Manhattan, which has been around since at least early 2004. Pac Manhattan is “a large-scale urban game that utilizes the New York City grid to recreate the 1980s video game sensation.” This analog version of Pacman, according to the group’s Web site, is developed in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications graduate program. Its development is aimed at exploring “what happens when games are removed from their ‘little world’ of tabletops, televisions and computers and placed in the larger ‘real world’ of street corners and cities.”
A player dressed as the fruit-and-dot-gobbling character runs around the Washington Square Park area of Manhattan while attempting to collect all of the virtual “dots” along the streets. Four players dressed as the ghosts Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde attempt to catch Pacman before all of the dots are collected.
Using cell phone contact, Wi-Fi internet connections and Pac Manhattan-team-designed custom software, Pacman and the ghosts are tracked from a central location as their progress is broadcast over the Internet for viewers around the world.
According to the evolution-inducing team’s site, Wi-Fi is used in the control room but not on the streets where the players interact. They were going to use Wi-Fi networks as an uplink for the GPS data, but they couldn’t find an area of the city with consistent coverage over a large area — another example of how wireless Internet access in New York City is pretty crappy.
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* Admit, though, that this isn’t as bad an editorial-coverage regret as a daily newspaper failing to cover the civil rights movement as it was taking place.
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David R. Butcher is Assistant Editor of Customer Interaction Solutions. He finds the fruits tastier than the dots. To see more articles by David Butcher, please visit:
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