I don't venture much into videogames here, since I'm not a big player, apart from an early obsession with Dark Castle back in the days of black & white screens. Cody Brown, a regular member of the gang here, is way into this stuff and sends along the odd post. But Invisible Train seems rather interesting, pointing in some new direction. Plus I like the graphic below that suggests how VR big-rigs with their head-mounted displays are evolving toward something as simple as a rasta-boy with PDA.
“The Invisible Train is the first real multi-user Augmented Reality application for handheld devices (PDAs). [...] The Invisible Train is a mobile, collaborative multi-user Augmented Reality (AR) game, in which players control virtual trains on a real wooden miniature railroad track. These virtual trains are only visible to players through their PDA's video see-through display as they don't exist in the physical world. This type of user interface is commonly called the ”magic lens metaphor“. Players can interact with the game environment by operating track switches and adjusting the speed of their virtual trains. The current state of the game is synchronized between all participants via wireless networking. The common goal of the game is to prevent the virtual trains from colliding.”
Here's my favorite picture of the Train being demoed at the recent SIGGRAPH. It's a rogues gallery of new media types: the geek, the eccentric [where's his bola tie?], the sassy girl gamer, the lean & hungry designer...and a kid in the background, the next generation, waiting impatiently for everybody to get the hell out of the way so she can play.
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