If you’re interested in reading about augmented reality and how the technology is slowly but surely becoming part of our everyday life, here’s something you might be interested in. Does anyone out there remember the arcade racing game by Sega named Out Run? Well if you do it looks like it has been taken out of the arcade and put onto an electric golf cart, and appears to have gotten a new lease on life with an augmented reality style gameplay.
Much of the old game was discarded with the exception of the graphics. While most augmented reality software tends to take the digital world and splices it into the real world, this augmented reality Out Run game actually takes the real world and translates it into the digital world, all in real time.
Through the use of cameras that are facing forward, a custom software attempts to detect objects as seen through the camera’s lens and “draws” it up in the game. Specifically speaking it attempts to look for roads, so if you were to drive the electric golf cart down the highway (which is highly not recommended), it would interpret the roads, turns, bends, twists and all, and draws them into the game.
Given that the cart only goes at a max of 13mph, this system was designed not so much for gaming, but rather in an attempt to develop therapy for those who are disabled, and potentially even create augmented reality based wheelchairs in the future.
Filed in . Read more about Augmented Reality (AR) and Sega.