Tapping on arm allows users to scroll through menus and select options
Touchscreens may be popular both in science fiction and real life as the symbol of next-gen technology, but an innovation called Skinput suggests the true interface of the future might be us.
Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University unveiled Skinput recently, showing how it can turn your own body into a touchscreen interface. Read more »
For years, the sophisticated play of professional teams trickled down to their college and high school counterparts. Recently, that flow has been reversed. Read more »
Custom-Built Virtual Lecture Hall Provides Fuqua School of Business Students With Access to World’s Most Influential Leaders and Extends Classroom Environment Read more »
Our avatars are coming. Those mobile and 3-D and interactive technologies being created around us are about to beam us into a new world, filled with workday holograms, avatars and stuff we called magic only a few years ago. Read more »
This list of ten features should be embraced by game designers
Steve Krug argues in his book Don’t Make Me Think! that a good program or product should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible. The less time it takes a person to complete a desired task (even if only by a few seconds), the more satisfying it becomes. When that happens, people are more likely to use a product in greater frequency and return for more. So in the spirit of improved usability, here are ten standard features every videogame designer should embrace. Read more »
Behind the scenes at Weta Digital, where creativity meets cutting-edge science
James Cameron has spent the better part of a decade developing the technology used to create Avatar.
Back in 1996, James Cameron announced that he would be creating a film called Avatar, a science-fiction epic that would feature photo-realistic, computer-generated characters. Read more »
From: Score One for Quality! Using Games to Improve Product Quality
by Joshua Williams and Ross Smith
Abstract:
In this paper we describe how using a game can improve both the quality of a product, but the quality of life of the employees as well. We call this kind of game a “Productivity Game.” Read more »
(CNN) — In the shimmering fantasy realm of the hit movie Avatar, a paraplegic Marine leaves his wheelchair behind and finds his feet in a new virtual world thanks to “the link,” a sophisticated chamber that connects his brain to a surrogate alien, via computer. Read more »
Games are a wonderful medium. Like music, literature, film and theatre, games do a great deal to help make life worth living. In Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde said, “All art is quite useless.” He said this to illustrate that yes, art has little to no practical value. That does not mean that art is of no benefit to anyone of course! For me, the same argument can be applied to games, as their entertainment value is enough to justify their existence.
Critics of games however are full of concerns about violence, addiction and distractions from what the establishment regards as “more meaningful” pursuits. These being reading, watching films or punching someone in the face in a bar… Read more »
Illustration: Olly Moss
On the last day, they gathered for a group photo. They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts. Their team was — finally — giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding. So they headed down to the lobby of their building in Garland, Texas, to smile for the camera. They arranged themselves on top of their logo: a 10-foot-wide nuclear-radiation sign, inlaid in the marble floor. Read more »
In the virtual reality game, the player’s avatar mirrors the player’s actions. Credit: Tedjokusumo, et al. ©2009 IEEE.
(PhysOrg.com) — With a new immersive multiplayer game system, researchers are further blurring the line between gaming and the real world. Using a mouse and keyboard sounds kind of quaint compared to the system developed and tested by Jefry Tedjokusumo, Steven ZhiYing Zhou, and Stefan Winkler of the National University of Singapore (Winkler is currently with Symmetricom in San Jose, California). Read more »
Can’t find your Nintendo DS? Try one of the new Adidas sneakers instead.
Adidas has created a virtual 3-D world that can be accessed using an upcoming line of five men’s sneakers in an idea that ties into one of the technology trends of the year: augmented reality.
“The foundation of augmented reality lies in adding a layer to the real world,” says Chris Barbour, head of digital marketing for Adidas Originals. “That’s what we have done. We have taken a real world item and added a fantastic virtual world on top of that”
All users have to do is go to the Adidas site and hold up their sneaker, which has a code embedded in its tongue, in front of their computer webcam. A virtual world then pops out in front of them and they can navigate it using their sneaker as a controller. Read more »
ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2009) — Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one’s self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user’s thoughts, according to research by a University of Texas at Austin communication professor. Read more »
Study Finds Americans Spend More Time and Money on Games than their European Counterparts
TNS, Gamesindustry.com, and SPIL GAMES today announced the launch of the 2009 Today’s Gamers International Survey results for the U.S. market. The survey focuses on demographics, time and money spent, and gaming trends across Europe and the United States involving all game platforms.
According to the survey, American men and women spend significantly more time and money on video games than their European counterparts. Of the U.S. citizens polled, 83% play video games and many rank it as their favorite pastime ahead of popular activities like surfing on the Internet and watching television. Read more »
An Arizona State University professor sees a bright future for video games in the learning process — in and out of school.
Lynn Marentette has just reported, hot off the press from Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group at UIST 2009.
MS presents novel input devices that combine the standard capabilities of a computer mouse with multi-touch sensing. The goal is to make multi-touch interaction more widely available and applicable to the desktop environment. To chart the design space, they present five different multi-touch mouse implementations. Each explores a different touch sensing strategy, which leads to differing form-factors and hence interactive possibilities.
The following video is courtesy of Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group:
Matthew Sharritt, President of Situated Research, recently created a brochure giving an overview of our video game user-experience research:
Situated Research: Video Game User-Experience Analysis (PDF)
Please feel free to download, view, print, and redistribute this brochure to others! We have a unique talent to help game developers create better games, and we need your help getting the message out there so people know about us. Read more »
Steve Ballmer discusses some of Microsoft’s new technologies and the future of computing: cloud computing and revolutionary user-interfaces to support content on multiple devices. Read more »
Video games and learning exercises form the core of a new public school curriculum
Learning with Little Big Planet: Get an education, and you too can become a Sackboy astronaut Read more »
Usability is an integral part of software development and has been so for the past 20 years. For one reason or another, usability has not gained similar popularity in game development. This, however, is about to change.
The effects of video-game playing on your brain have been studied for a quarter-century, but the latest research reveals that there are still deep puzzles yet to be solved. Read more »
Greetings! Today we’re happy to offer a guest post by Ross Smith, Director of Test, Windows Security, at Microsoft, and one of the authors of The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention (Microsoft Press, 2007). Read more »
A group of scientists at Cambridge University has conducted a study that shows that associations in videogames transfer directly to the real world. A group of volunteers played a (rather basic, from the look of it) cycling game, where they would be given a slurp of fruit juice if a cyclist from their team passed them, but a slurp of salty tea if a rival cyclist passed them. Read more »
Project Natal brings natural user interfaces the office
Mundie: The Desktop Of The Future Is A Room
Microsoft’s Craig Mundie demonstrates natural user interface technologies (photo credit: Robert Sorbo/Microsoft) Read more »
