Mike McCracken, loneconspirator , has made an Audio ping-pong game (or audio Pong, really) for one person using an Arduino board, headphones, and an accelerometer (a sensor that measures tilt, used in the Nintendo Wii controller). It is still in an early prototype stage, but I have a feeling he will keep refining it.
It is a one-person game. You put on the headphones, and you will hear a sound “approaching”. It will be to your right or left, and you tilt your head to center the sound. If you tilt your head, or the “paddle”, to the right position, you strike the “ball”, and it will come back. Speed increases over time, just like classic arcade games.
There is potential for this to become a multi-player game. What I really would like to do is to remove the headphones and create a reactive, multi-user space augmented with a layer of virtual audible reality. It would keep track of the position of people, and have capability of placing sounds very precisely in 3D-space. This would take very expensive equipment, I’m sure.
Mike has started simple, and may be headed in a really interesting exploration of alternative human-computer interfaces. Recently, Mike conceived of and implemented an interactive space called Audible Avatar, for the People Doing Strange Things with Electricity show, hosted by Dorkbot Seattle.
Update: Audio Ping Pong has been featured in Engadget and Makezine.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
This is awesome. I’m loving all the new innovations in game control lately. With the Wii and DS, Nintendo has really opened people’s eyes to new possibilities in gaming. I can’t wait to see how independent game makers utilize these new technologies to revolutionize how people game.
This is awesome. I’m loving all the new innovations in game control lately. With the Wii and DS, Nintendo has really opened people’s eyes to new possibilities in gaming. I can’t wait to see how independent game makers utilize these new technologies to revolutionize how people game.
April 23rd, 2008
10:01 am
Nice write up, Per, thanks. I like the full-room environmental Audio Tennis (as opposed to audio table tennis) idea.
Nice write up, Per, thanks. I like the full-room environmental Audio Tennis (as opposed to audio table tennis) idea.
April 23rd, 2008
11:28 pm
This is a pretty cool audio driven gaming environment as well: http://blog.6angrymen.com/blog/show/87
A combination of gestural and audio input interfaces would be cool…
This is a pretty cool audio driven gaming environment as well: http://blog.6angrymen.com/blog/show/87
A combination of gestural and audio input interfaces would be cool…
April 24th, 2008
6:57 pm