Augmented Reality Gaming in Zero Gravity – Fun at An Orbiting Space Hotel
By Lance Winslow
Augmented Reality living room home gaming is all the rage with systems like Wii Technologies and Kinect Gaming, but have you ever considered how difficult such games might be to play in zero-gravity, or how fun it might be to try? Consider if you will the opportunities and applications available to a gamer in a space colony, whether orbiting in a space station, space hotel, or stationed on the moon or mars? Surely, you realize that this future is coming, and that it will not be long now.
For instance, there are many space enterprises being developed by the private sector right now. There are expanding space hotels being configured, and they will be up and launched within the next 5 to 10 years. Within the next 30 years there will surely be a lunar colony, and people on Mars. What will they do for entertainment? In many regards they will live in an enclosed any encapsulated environment. Sports as we know them on Earth will not be possible, at least not at first due to the sizes of soccer fields, baseball diamonds, and hockey rinks – but that doesn’t mean they can’t play in Augmented and Virtual Reality.
Perhaps the player might be tethered as they play a video game, and they can let their feet leave the ground and feel as if they are flying, while they watch the video screen. If there are flat-panel displays all around them which were part of the room, they might feel the sensation and rush of speed from a base jump, without actually going anywhere. They might even experience horizontal B.A.S.E. Jumping by pushing off of the sidewall, while tethered to a bungee cord like system. The screen in front of them would be one of the ground getting larger, and larger very quickly as they got closer to the screen. Read more