Let’s ignore, for a moment, the over-serious way this video’s shot and edited. Ignore the macho trailer-guy voiceover. And let’s consider that this AR training system for close-quarters combat (CQB) looks a hell of a lot like the holodeck from Star Trek. Maybe the show’s pie-in-the-sky 1990s vision of the future wasn’t so fantastic after all.In the video above Sandia National Laboratories shows off a wearable AR training simulation created for the military. Using Hollywood-style motion capture technology, it places the users in a virtual environment and pits them against virtual enemies that come from behind walls and under desks—essentially, just like playing Time Crisis but without the annoying pedal system. And it doesn’t just have to be used to shoot bad guys either. It can also be used for “non CQB activities, including training with real and virtual equipment as well as walking through environments, terrains, and buildings.” Just. Like. The holodeck.Why should the rest of us lowly civilians care? Well, we all know the military gets the goods way in advance of the rest of us, but eventually the best and most useful products trickle down to us plebes. Case in point: the Kinect. So could this be the future of gaming and immersive storytelling? While it’s currently being used for the deadly serious matter of training soldiers for combat situations, when and if it becomes commercially available, it doesn’t take the greatest leap of the imagination to realize it could also be used to carefully creep around your house for some CQB Counter-Strike action, or go for a stroll around Wonderland, or Paris in the 1920s, or ancient Rome, or anywhere.The technology featured in the video isn’t quite at the sleek, minimalist design standard we’ve come to expect in our post-Apple society. It looks cumbersome to our science-fiction fueled minds, with each person having to carry a laptop computer and wear chunky video-equipped helmets. But, and this is the “wow” factor, using LED-tracking the “3D motion capture system enables the computer to overlay virtual people and objects onto the live video… and calculates whether a shot from their weapon hit or missed the bad guy.” It can support up to 6 people using the system at once and it even has a video-game-esque red screen to show when you’ve been hit. Death matches will never be the same again.
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The Holodeck Becomes Reality: Gaming Will Never Be The Same
Life imitates Star Trek with this augmented reality training simulation.