Yesterday, on my way home from work, I got into a lengthy conversation about how that holodeck experience you see on Star Trek could come to fruition - it's such a novel idea, but so hard to eventually come up with. If you recall, a few weeks back, I also talked about other gaming innovations. As we move forward with technology, there are so many possibilities for what we'll experience.
But... let me paint a picture of a scenario that I just pulled out of my ass:
The year is 2021. After the Wii U, and the follow-up consoles of Microsoft and Sony have been on the market for some time, people are beginning to yearn for something more. Console and PC graphics continue to improve, and even innovation is steadily plodding along.
Nintendo's tablet controller has become a defacto standard for adding immersion into the game, but so, too, has the NextBox.
Kinect 2 not only collects data from the people who are playing Microsoft's latest games, but it can differentiate between four different voices. More importantly, Kinect 2 projects additional images around the player. In the early years of the NextBox, this feature is mainly used to provide an additional hud that clears the space on the TV. When playing Mass Effect 4, you were able to see your map on your left side, and your team's names and health on your right. This made your main screen less cluttered, and delivered a more immersive experience.
In the later part of the generation, Kinect 2 integrated so well, that it could actually determine where you were pointing on the projected image. The projections became so robust that you could actually hotswap equipment off the screen. On the Wii U, when you had your tablet controller acting as your backpack, that was impressive enough. But during the later years of the NextBox, when you could actually move skills without any hands-on interface as seamlessly as real life, that was when things truly became revolutionary.
Of course, the Playstation Omni brought their own revolutionary features to market. The Omniviewer, essentially a visor with a built in gyrometer functioned as a headtracker. At first, the Omniviewer was used very sparsely, mostly for HUD elements and menu effects. While the Omniviewer allowed for elements of the television to appear as though it hovered closer to the player, nothing could be produced outside of the television's range. Looking to the left or right meant that the visor did nothing for you, as opposed to Kinect 2, which could produce images anywhere within a certain range of the device, as long as it was unobstructed. Eventually, the Omni was able to integrate headtracking into more games, making first person shooters more intuitiv. Though the peripheral vision of your character was enhanced somewhat, it was still somewhat limited.
It wasn't until earlier this year, at E3 2021, that it finally became clear just how far we'd come with our technology. Clearly something like the Star Trek Holodeck was still such a fantasy idea, but game immersion was about to change in a huge way.
A new company, Goliath Entertainment, had been securing the rights to old warehouse buildings across the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia and China, with plans to expand across other markets as time and finances allowed. No one was really sure what exactly the company was investing in, until that day in June when all was revealed.
The CEO of Goliath Entertainment arrived on stage with a few note cards and a small, sleek cardboard box. There were a lot of power keywords thrown out there to drive attention, words like "synergy" and "immersion", but nobody really gave him much of their own at that point. Until the first video played on the big screen.
They had a player, James, introduce himself to all those in attendance at the auditorium. It was clear that it was a pre-recorded schtick, but there was something about the video that instantly appealed to everyone. Maybe it was that weird visor that sat on his head - essentially the Oculus Rift, but with a lot more power behind it. Or, perhaps it was the "can't-fake-it" smile on James' face. Whatever he was promoting, he truly believed in it.
As the camera panned out, the audience could see the interiors of one of those old empty warehouses that Goliath had been stealing. It no longer looked like some forgotten relic of a factory era, however. Fake trees had been fashioned in lieu of lode-bearing joists and pillars. The walls of the buildings were covered in green screen. The floor looked like turf that you would see in a football game - and it was all within this warehouse.
The lights dimmed in the auditorium, and then, in the video itself. James lowered the visor onto his face, and a soft transition showed the audience what he was seeing.
Through the visor, James was able to see the software he was playing, games built from the ground up for that warehouse experience. For the sake of the conference, Goliath chose to display a game akin to the latest Elder Scrolls. A fantasy realm spread out before James, but it was nearly photo-realistic. Every turn of his head shifted the game world properly. Every pan, every pitch, every roll, every yaw was recreated in realtime, and without any glitches.
Drawing away from James' view, a side-by-side comparison was shown on the video feed. As James was moving forward in the game, he was moving forward in the warehouse. The fantasy realm was completely fashioned both in the game and in the real world. As the audience came to terms with that truth, whispers began to arise. It was basically just a LARPers wet dream. But then, in game, they were first introduced to the Stalker. The game's introductory boss, it was essentially an oversized sabertooth tiger. There was no way to introduce this creature effectively into a real life stage - it had to be recreated digitally. The visor gave it definition and depth that a mere projection would have failed to.
James did the only thing he could. He began running. In a first person view, we see as the trees whip past him. The Stalker sprinted ahead of him, leaping out across his vision, but he rolled just far enough away to dodge a vicious strike. He rose to his feet, and his avatar did as well, seamlessly, and resumed his hasty retreat. He pushed through a particular thick brush, and looked back over his shoulder to see if he was still being pursued. Satisfied with no sight of the wild cat, he peered forward again, just in time to see the massive river stretching out before him. Trapped, he turned around, just in time to see the Stalker pounce at him. As the creature obscured his vision, the game's title showed up briefly: The Realms of the Reborn.
Just as soon as that logo showed up though, it faded, and once again the video showed James happily grinning at the camera. That initial video was his first experience with The Realms of the Reborn. Since then, he had joined the two hundred other on-site players who were enjoying the world's newest massively multiplayer online fantasy.
The video panned over to show dozens of other players in the warehouse, similarly wearing the visor and holding controllers as they proceeded through the game world. Several travelled together, others nodded to each other in passing. This fantasy universe seemingly drew from real life. The visor hardware was able to recognize other players and could recreate their avatars in real time.
A sizzle reel of the game play quickly followed, showing the adventurers of the game. The Stalker was just one of the game's impressive digital beasts. Massive trolls, diabolical wizards and scheming demons were abound in the realms, and every day, more players were jumping in to help save them from the conquests of evil. The real kick was that every warehouse had the potential to interconnect digitally. A player in Sydney could interact without any obstruction with a chap in London, or another fellow in Los Angeles.
Goliath Entertainment had essentially brought gaming back to the arcades, by assembling the technology that was already rapidly becoming a part of our society.
Over the next few months, Goliath added to the game by adding floors to the warehouses (when players moved to new areas, they typically moved through elevators, affronted by loading screens). But they also created new games. Sci Fi shooters popped up seemingly overnight, and were like tremendously real laser tag adventurers.
...annnnnnnd I'll abruptly bring you back to reality there before this tangent goes on too long.
But what do you think of our potential technological future? A lot of these things are already on their way, if rumors are to be believed. That stuff about the next Microsoft and Sony consoles? Pulled from this article. There's any number of directions the future could take us, but maybe things like the holodeck and Minority Report-style interfaces aren't so far off.
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