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Real Life Doom With Point-And-Shoot Positioning 267

Posted by timothy from the but-i-was-born-with-this-ability dept.
SoupIsGoodFood_42 writes "A company called GeoVector has come up with a system that lets you point out a location. They say it could be used to get info on buildings and objects. E.G. pointing your mobile device at a movie theater could tell you what's on. They've also developed a "real world" version of Doom. So don't be surprised if you're in Japan early next year and see people running holding their cellphone/PDA like a gun."
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Real Life Doom With Point-And-Shoot Positioning More

Real Life Doom With Point-And-Shoot Positioning

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  • Virtual Light (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:50PM (#6269545)
    I want it built into my sun glasses, so I if I focus on an object for 250 ms, it pops up a little yellow box telling me what it is.

    • Re:Virtual Light (Score:5, Funny)

      by iosmart ( 624285 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:53PM (#6269572)
      haha, pretty soon you'd start tuning out the word "boob"

      • Re:Virtual Light (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:55PM (#6269919)
        Embarassingly enough, this happened to me. In my fourth year of university, I took a class in Human-Computer Interaction. One of the class requirements was that I take part in one of the professor's projects which was working on a camera system that tracks where the human eye is looking on a computer screen.

        One of the test items was to test the usability of a web page. The professor noted that there was a lot of focus on the "boob region" of the female body. It was bad because if you focused on an area for a few milliseconds, it registered as a red mark on the webpage and you could see a buildup on the chests. Ahh, good times.

        • Re:Virtual Light (Score:5, Funny)

          by demonbug ( 309515 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @10:22PM (#6270563) Journal
          There is a system similar to what you describe at the Exploratorium in S.F. It puts up an image, and tracks where your eyes are looking, then replays what you were looking at. Pretty cool. I was there a year ago or so with my girlfriend, and purposely concentrated on every female in the images (she hit me).

    • long live Clippy! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hogwash McFly ( 678207 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:08PM (#6269662)
      It appears as though you are trying to stare at that blonde woman's breasts. Would you like me to...

      A) Order some pornographic material to relieve your urges?

      B) Zoom in?

      C) Shut the fuck up and let you carry on ogling?

    • Re:Virtual Light (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm imagining an airport lounge full of people in business suits with thick goggle mounted displays and black gloves mounted with 3-D mouse, wagging their heads and waving their hands around.

    • Will also end up with guy suing you with proof of you staring at their wife's ass =) I CAN wait for it to happen.

    • Re:Virtual Light (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gregmac ( 629064 )
      I read the subject of your post, and suddenly remembered a book I read years ago, called (surprise, surprise) Virtual Light [amazon.com]. The book takes place in 2005, and was written in 1994. Always neat to see old books and movies doing a good job of predicting future technologies.

      Of course, California would have to break up into two, and homeless would have to take over the Bay Bridge.. but hey, theres still a couple years for that.

    • "I want it built into my sun glasses, so I if I focus on an object for 250 ms, it pops up a little yellow box telling me what it is. "

      That way, when you look in the mirror, it can say "perpetually available".

  • Hmmm, this sounds like... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BeerSlurpy ( 185482 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:52PM (#6269557)
    This sounds like the rangefinding/GPS binoculars the military uses to read off bombing coordinates now.

    Im surprised how fast it came to the civilian market. With affordable cruise missle technology available soon, ordinairy citizens will be able to carry out their own starcraft style airstrikes (minus the cute red dot and the mushroom cloud of course, but who knows).

  • Just when we thought we were safe... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mgcsinc ( 681597 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:52PM (#6269558)
    Now public schools will again have a rationale for prohibiting cell phones in school!

    • So?? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )
      PDAs and laptops are one thing. But what POSSIBLE benefit would a child have posessing a cellphone at school? All they are / would be is a distraction, with people making / recieving calls and text messages while in class, etc. It's not like they add anything to the educational experience. All they are is an annoyance to teachers.

      I would never let my child use a cell phone in school. IF I provided them with one I would explictly tell them it was only to be used after hours / in emergencies, and if they wer

      • Re:So?? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gantrep ( 627089 )
        Well, I do agree with you, but I guess some parents feel differently. Found this article [thedesertsun.com] about how great cells in schools are. A few good points, but I still think they are too distracting and annoying.

      • Re:So?? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Binary Gibbon ( 413182 )
        When I was in high school, several times a week I found myself needing my cell phone to arrange for rides or coordinate plans with my parents. When I didn't have my phone, I was left high and dry, with no communication and no way to get home, more than once.

        • Re:So?? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by CableModemSniper ( 556285 )
          Speaking as a fellow ex-high school student, which was it? You didn't have quarters, or the school didn't have payphones?
          • when i was in high school, i arranged my rides home through the use of collect calls from 'insert parking lot name here'

            no quarters needed (a phone is still needed though)
          • As another ex-high school student, I can recall almost all of the payphones on my high school campus being in varying states of perpetual brokenness. There were a number of occassions I would have much appreciated (or I was fortunate enough to borrow) a cell phone. :)

      • Re:So?? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lpret ( 570480 )
        I have a smartphone. Should I not be allowed to use it simply because it is also a phone (as well as being a PDA)?

        In general they are nice for coordinating lunches, after-school activities, and keeping up with life. Simply because high-schoolers are sitting in class doesn't make it any different than yourself in a boring meeting.

      • Simple. It could be used as an emergency device. Can't find mom or dad? You have their work, cell and her friends phone numbers. And what's better is, you can lock some phones to only dial and accept calls from certain places.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • What works in Japan won't necessarily work everywhere else. You'd probably get beat up in the States if you are seen doing some of the stuff Japanese kids do.

  • Won’t work (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:52PM (#6269559)
    Jeff Bezos has an exclusive patent on pointing at stuff.

    • Re:Won’t work (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And because they are all derivative works, he strongly asserts IP rights to control
      • Mouse pointers
      • Points in a basketball game
      • The film Zabriskie Point
      • All dogs that fetch ducks
      • The tips of pencils and pens everywhere(and thus, by further extension, printing, language and dental work resulting from chewing on writing implements)
      • Any "point" being made in an internet post such as this one. Uh-oh, got to go, looks like someone is on my doorstep with a legal notice...
    • Al Gore claims prior art to Jeff Bezos' claim. Have a nice day!

  • Sweeet (Score:3, Funny)

    by hubenshtein ( 671367 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:52PM (#6269561)
    Great, now as if people don't think I'm geeky enough I can run around pointing my cell phone at shit expecting to Zap it.....


    • ...that rather freaky demo clip of the 4-shot .22 caliber "cel phone" starts hitting mainstream web servers. Then "pointing the cel phone like a gun" will get you a whole lot more attention than you expect, and people won't think you're a geek. They'll think your Yet Another Terrorist(c)[tm][dibs].

  • Just great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by agent dero ( 680753 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:52PM (#6269563) Homepage
    This is what we need, lots of sketchy looking people running around aiming there cell-phones like they are real weapons, am I the only one seeing a problem with this.
    "Put the money in the bag or get fragged Mr. Johnson!"

    Just one great idea after the other.
    In fact, this is probably from the same folks who make water pistols that look EXACTLY like real guns.

  • Awesome (Score:4, Funny)

    by blitzoid ( 618964 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:52PM (#6269564) Homepage
    I want the devices to be shaped like guns, just to piss all those anti-violence-in-videogames people off. "I'm not REALLY shooting them! I'm just aiming a realistic looking gun at them and pulling the trigger, thus gaining rewards in-game! Training me to be a killer indeed..."

  • Suggestion (Score:5, Funny)

    by AntiOrganic ( 650691 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:53PM (#6269566) Homepage
    It would be better if you could point it at hot girls and it would search the Internet for pictures of them without any clothes on.

    • Re:Suggestion (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:55PM (#6269587)
      What if you accidentally pointed it at that fat geeky guy next to the hot girl?

      Oh wait, fat geeky guys would never be next to a hot girl. My bad.
      • What if you accidentally pointed it at that fat geeky guy next to the hot girl?

        Yeah, also it would suck if the goatse guy just happened to be walking in front of her for some reason.
        • Yeah, also it would suck if the goatse guy just happened to be walking in front of her for some reason.

          What? The goatse.cx guy can walk? I don't see how.

    • I would actually pay a subscription fee for that!

      (and I'm a cheap ass)

    • Re:Suggestion (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gantrep ( 627089 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:23PM (#6269740)
      Actually, an intelligent image search engine like that would be really cool. Not just for finding people like you mentioned, but say for example you just bought some antique "thing" at a garage sale. You don't know what it's called or what it's for, but it's old. So you snap a pic and an image engine identifies it or at least comes up with a lot of stuff that looks similar. Completely unfeasable today, but someday it will be possible and really sweet. Closest thing to it I think I remember a /. article about how compressable an image is with gzip is an indicator as to whether it is biological or not.

      • Re:Suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)

        by bluGill ( 862 )

        Even better, forget buying it at a garrage sale. I want those who hold garrage sales to identify this item and not throw away something that looks useless, but infact is valuable to the right person. Perhaps it could even notify (Not via spam, but something similear) those who are interested in such a thing that it is for sale.

        I know of several people who got rid of a lot of 'junk' that I would have been interested in. They didn't know what it was, but I did on hearing them laughing about the 'junk' da

    • It would be better if you could point it at hot girls and it would search the Internet for pictures of them without any clothes on.

      How about this radical idea -- you could introduce yourself, bring out your inner player and maybe get the real thing.

      No No. Wait, never mind. This is slashdot. Yeah the image search thing is a really good idea! good luck with that...

  • Real Life Doom??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Obscenity ( 661594 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:53PM (#6269567) Homepage
    Oh yes! my prayers have been recieved! I can now look like a total geek-fool in front of many people by shooting them with my mobile phone wee!!! This is going to be a good thing for the geek culture though. Instead of fat geeks, we'll get super thin, fast reaction, quick thinking, tactical geeks. The superhumans of tomorrow!

  • Silly (Score:5, Funny)

    by giminy ( 94188 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:53PM (#6269573) Homepage Journal
    E.G. pointing your mobile device at a movie theater could tell you what's on

    Or you could look at the sign.

    • Guess it's a bonus if you're blind. You could have your little braille pocket interface hooked up to it.

    • Re:Silly (Score:4, Insightful)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:59PM (#6269612)
      Yeah, but the sign can't offer you a click-through way to buy your tickets without waiting in line. That's the reason why this is being developed, so that you can get content that relates to what you can buy at the places you happen to be walking by.

      No need to move cash around, or even deal with the credit card industry, the charges show up on your celluar bill, which also means your wireless carrier takes a cut of the money.

  • doom (Score:4, Funny)

    by CheechBG ( 247105 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:54PM (#6269576) Homepage
    It had better have a grapple, and a rocket launcher. (of course, said rocket launcher would only hurt humans, and not damage buildings in any way)

  • Doom? (Score:3, Funny)

    by blowhole ( 155935 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @06:54PM (#6269580)
    I prefer the current batch of phones that let me play Carmageddon!

    But seriously, is it just me, or does this sound TOTALLY lame? Maybe it's one of those things you have to see demonstrated in person before you think it's cool.
    • But seriously, is it just me, or does this sound TOTALLY lame?

      It does. Remember that movie, Gotcha! Where a bunch of people went around in a school (College?) shooting each other with paint guns?

      If you tought that was cool, then you'll probably like this "high tech" version of the game. Others will probably think of it as "grown men shooting each other with toy weapons".

  • Interesting to see... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    to what extent gaming invades phones. Are we going to be running around playing games with messages like "You killed Tony S (mobile)"? Assuming gaming wins out it'll be more like "incoming call from 1337 k!lla"?

  • GPS? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by AntiOrganic ( 650691 )
    Haven't a lot of GPS devices been able to essentially do this for years, without all the pointing?

    • Re:GPS? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SoupIsGoodFood_42 ( 521389 )
      The idea with this is that you don't have to walk over to whatever you want to get into on. If you happen to be 2 blocks away from the movies, and want to know what time film X is on, you could point to it. Instead of having to walk all the way there, in which case you might aswell go right inside and look at their timetable.

      I'm guessing that this is based on GPS. But the idea in this and normal GPS devices are a bit different. GPS tells you something about where you are now. This tells you something abo

  • Sod that. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:03PM (#6269633) Journal

    I'd rather have a jamming device to stop stupid people from running around my house and "camping" behind my garage. Also, hearing some 14 year old yell out "OMFG YUO AWN* FAGGOT!!!" in my backyard at 07:00 is probably NOT the best way to get my day started.

    * = Arctic Warfare Nokia. Just a regular Nokia with snow camouflage colours.

  • ArQuake (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rhysweatherley ( 193588 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:04PM (#6269636)
    Doom on an iPAQ? Give me a break. For "real life" gaming, the ArQuake guys are years ahead:

    http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/arquake/ [unisa.edu.au]

  • Wow... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:04PM (#6269641)
    First we have cellphones that spend money, now we have phones that can identify stuff when they're pointed at it?

    One day I'll not be able to find my phone cos it's nicked my car keys, stolen my money and gone out with its mates on the piss at a nightclub.

  • Reminds me of an idea (Score:2, Interesting)

    by eddy ( 18759 )

    I've had (I'm sure it isn't in any way novel) for television with overlays. So we have tv-text, but now with everything going digital it would be cool with a standard for "html" (including vector graphics) overlays which would be sent with the TV broadcast and toggled by the viewers at will.

    For instance, one could have an overlay with the name of the actors floating over their heads. Or the names of the characters -- I know a person that while watching a movie in company, have to ask every freaking minute

  • They did this before (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:09PM (#6269673) Homepage Journal
    it's called lasertag.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SkewlD00d ( 314017 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @07:17PM (#6269711)
    "A 22-year old college student was fatally shot by a police officer mistaking the student's cell phone for a gun. The student was apparently playing the Real-Life (TM) DOOM (TM) game that is the rage on college campuses world-wide."
  • Cell phone DOOM would be like DDR for shoot em up fans... Just think of it, all these gamers who normally play sitting on their butts, running around and having asthema attacks... Ohh, that'd be cool. And Japan's weight problem would be solved... Wait, they don't have one...

    Or, gamers could just discover paintball...

    But then again, what's the difference between this and laser tag... Aside from dorky guns and stupid helmets...

    • I second the paintball motion. It's bloody cool, and more fun than a FPS could ever be.

      Hurts like hell when yer teammate shoots ye in the butt from >3ft away though. Trust me on this one.

      But hey, learn paintball instead of this. Hell, do both! Games, but with physical activity. This is good; I like the concept of a physically active computer game.. =D

    • Re:Oh this is so great... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <john&jmaug,com> on Monday June 23, 2003 @12:28AM (#6270997)
      Or, gamers could just discover paintball..

      Ummmm Japan has a game called airsoft. It has replica's of pretty much any gun available in the world (and if it's not available, build it yourself) this game is VERY popular in Japan. The guns fire small plastic BBs that hurt less than paintballs (but fly farther and are way more accurate.) I know a bunch of people who play it in the states (like half the number of people that play paintball play airsoft) but in Japan it is much more popular.

      I've even seen a few anime's where some of the main characters would play airsoft (like all the time and they'd always talk about it in all the episodes, not like one time and forget about it.) I don't think their's a show in america where any of the characters play paintball. Besides, I don't think their's a gamer I know who never heard of paintball And 90% of the people who play games like CS love airsoft (after they find out it exists.) You can check out some of the guns and info here

      Redwolf Airsoft [redwolfairsoft.com]

      Or here is one of the best airsoft stores in the world (with it's main store located in Japan)

      Den Trinity [dentrinity.com]

  • Cell I can understand, but in a camera would RULE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) * on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:01PM (#6269948) Homepage Journal
    I can understand this being put into a cellphone, and I can see the utility of it.

    However, what I want is a nice 10 Mpixel camera with this in it - record when the shot was taken, where, and what the bearing was.

    Add that and perhaps a short, low-rate voice note, and maintaining my photo collection would become a great deal easier.

    OT: If you have a photo collection, do those who come after you a favor and LABEL your pictures - date, names of the people in them, event, and why you felt this was important enough to take a picture of. I had to go through both my mother and my grandmother's estates, and it was sad to see the number of pictures of somebody somewhere at sometime - I'm sure some of them had some meaning to the family, but what has been lost to time....
  • Don't we already have 'real life Doom'? I thought that's what all those reservists were playing overseas...

  • This sounds like The Assasination Game. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Blaede ( 266638 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:30PM (#6270092)
    This was the rage in the 80s. Basically you had a target. You went around with a rubber sticky dart gun hunting your mark. If you "killed" him, you then went after his target. And so on, until one was left.

    Then one day the inevitable happened. A guy was pinting his very real dart gun at someone at night, and a security officer blew him away.

  • Think.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Usquebaugh ( 230216 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:47PM (#6270165)
    How accurate is this going to be? Certainly not pin point.
    I thought about making a toy similar to this, but a little more advanced. You've seen light guns for computers, well how about a gun you can target anything with, sorta. Look up 'Small Arms Trainer' e.g. [army-technology.com] I built one of these for fun, yes it's a scream with a projecter, webcam and laser pointer.
    But I want more, If you can work out were a gun is pointing and you know in advance where the targets are then you work out if they are hit. Simple huh? Well no, it's a real bear to locate something in 3d, it has to be accurate, way less than 1mm.
    Of course I posted an ask slashdot but it was rejected, obviously way to technical.
    Any ideas?

  • Old (Score:2)

    by cosyne ( 324176 )
    HP Labs had their Websigns [hp.com] like two years ago. You have a PDA with a GPS and a compass. You point it at stuff, it pulls up info or lets you interact. We've been working with them on ways of getting away from using a GPS and compass, as they don't work so well indoors.

    I think CMU or MIT had like a headmounted version, probably on slashdot a year ago?
  • People keep making fun of the pointing action as if it would be like holding a gun, but I don't think there's the need to do that. You can just hold it normally, but in the direction you want and the built-in compass and positioning technology determine your location and direction. It could be done as discreetly as in this picture [inovdesigns.com]. Besides, if you hold it like a gun, how can you see the screen?

    IMO it'll be a pretty awesome technology, and considering its similarity to tricorders, maybe someone had the idea
  • someone gets ventilated by an overzealous security guard.

    I mean most phones are small, and hard to distinguish as phones at long range.

    One part of me says 'cool, Doom/Cyberpunk LARP!'

    The other part says 'Don't try this in a public place, especially not one in a metropolitan area subject to constant, vague terrorism threats.'

  • ultimate doom cellphone (Score:5, Funny)

    by demonbug ( 309515 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @10:29PM (#6270581) Journal
    My Nokia BFG should arrive any day now...
  • > So don't be surprised if you're in Japan early next year and see people running holding their cellphone/PDA like a gun.

    A scary thought, for anyone who has watched Lain. True, the multiplayer game there is about as advanced graphically as Doom, and it's not played on PDAs or cell phones, but the parallels are a bit scary.

  • Consumer Safety and Inventory Convenience Act (Score:3, Funny)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @12:49AM (#6271058)
    I have an idea. Put a chip in each person's body that is used to regulate their critical functions (heart, lungs, brain, etc.) through the Internet.

    Then make "real life" versions of all the guns in Doom, like the Super Shotgun, etc. Then, make up a video game where you can go around with these guns and shoot at real-life people. There are no real life bullets; no projectiles to fire... but if you shoot at someone, a packet (the Ping of Death ) is sent through the Internet to the chip in their body, based on GPS coordinates, as measured by the gun, that instructs the chip to kill that process, er, person.

    This technology would be useful for enterprise integration applications, military, government, the video game market, and for inventory tracking in commercial stores, like Walmart, which will be implementing RFID in its products by 2005: If you jack a product from their store, a ping of death immediately kills you as you exit their store. This takes place even if you paid for the product, but the clerk who rang you up didn't properly demagnetize it. A law called the Consumer Safety and Inventory Convenience Act (similar to the DMCA but more restrictive for consumers and more flexible for corporations) would be passed to facilitate the use of this technology to, uh, make things more convenient for consumers. Also, someone could make up an e-Voodoo website, like the one in the insurance commercial, where you can go online, type any person's name, and stick virtual pins (implemented by the chip in their body, of course) into any part of their body to give them agonizing pain, once again, through the Internet.

    Yup, this technology is definitely going to be useful.

  • I've always thought this would be a cool application: if someone cut you off in traffic, point at them and give them an "asshole point." If someone got enough asshole points, they could get a ticket or some other penalty. This technology looks like it could make that possible.

    Of course there would have to be abuse safeguards. (Like X points available to give out per month, adn you couldn't give the same person more than n points per year, etc...) But this looks like it makes "asshole points" a reality.

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