Published by Leonardo Calcagno
It’s always been fun to see what Stockholm’s 13th Lab is up to. They company has been doing really “new” things in the Augmented Reality and Computer Vision fields since 2010, for instance creating the Pointcloud browser – a mobile browser that actually seems mobile native.
Now they’ve announced Rescape, a “reality gaming” platform for mobile, which they’ve just put up on Kickstarter. It looks like a game that actually takes advantage of all the technology and sensors in your pocket – and added to it with special optics and gave it a gun-shaped form, which is perfect for first person shooters.
Now with 13th Lab’s tech, you can move through shooters by actually moving in your apartment “virtual reality” style (or by navigating with the directional keys) and get a much more immersive experience than staring at your phone and tapping.
“Once you and two of your friends have tried playing a game like Quake together using Rescape, running and jumping around like mad in your respective apartments, you’ll never want to play it in any other way again,” the company says on their Kickstarter page.
Additionally for developers 13th Lab is releasing the Rescape game controller library, which can turn a normal shooter into aRescape enabled game. 13th Lab provides developers with an SDK which can map your environment – like your office – digitally paint it, and then start a game.
Rescape requires the 180 fisheye lens to go over your phone’s camera, so at launch they’re only supporting iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, and will include experimental support for the iPhone 4S. Android phones are more complicated due to the wider differences in hardware and optics, but they expect to support a range of high-end Android devices in the months following the release.
As a bus stop mobile gamer, I’ve been waiting for something more “innovative” to come along. Your phone can do so many things, so why do mobile games just have us tap gems?
(source: arcticstartup.com)