Re-Synthesized Reality Transportation Game
Written by Sebastien Devaux - - no comments
How to make long transportation time more fun ? Let's make the transportation itself a game. Using geographic database synthetic world generator coupled with GPS, the traveler may play inside a fantasy world directly derived from the real locations he is going through. All the needed pieces to build such entertainment are already almost freely available: geographic data, portable device integrating GPS and advanced graphics capabilities. Let's try to think about what is feasible by linking all that stuff.
The game concept
A 3D shoot them up game without predefined levels: levels are built live using your location and geographic data. Of course, such game targets the passengers only, The player has no control over the movements of its in game vehicle. It's in game location is driven by its real location according the GPS sensor feed. He can only control an embedded device like a turret to lock and shoot targets. This would result to some kind of Rail Chase game where the track is drawn upon the road you are traveling on.
Other possible variations:
- bombing game / vertical scroll shoot them up, more suited for in plane use.
- running and avoidance game, for in car or in train use.
Security issues
The game use should push safe behavior of the car driver transporting the players. Then the game shall not become more challenging when the driver breaks the speed limit. It just have to become unplayable. Such system should not be used for building any kind of racing game.
What's need to be done
- drive in game position from GPS (quite easy)
- build a live synthetic world using geographic data' that is a kind of 3D skinning of geographic data. OpenStreetMap data is freely available for such use and contains many featured object from which game objects may be derived.
- setup a cool gameplay by integrating location management with the synthetic world.
More advanced functions and features
- record GPS track to replay at home.
- exchange cool recorded tracks between users over internet.
- multi-player: at home while replaying recorded tracks or live while traveling for the ones that can share a network link (group of travelers in train or bus using wifi, strangers crossing using 3/4G)
- more immersion in the re-synthesized world by using other sensors (gyro/accelerometers) to also also integrate a line of sight, not only the location.
- improved and advanced accuracy of the re-synthetised world in the case of availability of more accurate and complete data (especially the 3rd dimension and complete buildings' layout) compared to what is freely available from Open Street Map