Though the Microsoft HoloLens' release to the consumer market is still a distant thought at the moment, Ubisoft is preparing for the future with the unveiling of AR video game prototypes.
The French video game publisher revealed the AR prototypes at a talk called 'AR Prototyping for the HoloLens' at United Europe 2017. Here, David Yue, Ubisoft programmer, spoke about and showed pictures of three prototype games being developed exclusively for Microsoft's HoloLens.
According to VRFocus, one game they spoke about involved toy soldiers. There was no title suggested for this game aside from 'Toy Soldier'. In it, Ubisoft used spatial mapping to project toy soldiers into the world. Users would be able to manipulate and interact with the toy soldiers at their will, creating teams and using their hands to select and move the soldiers. Using spatial mapping, the toy soldiers would be able to recognize if objects from the real world were in their way and act accordingly to get around them, or be manipulated by a user's hand motion.
Another project unveiled was a new 'Raving Rabbids' game — one of Ubisoft's most popular video game series. The tentative title of the game is 'Rabbid Rockets'. The photos that have surfaced online show two claws at the sides of the screen launching rockets at augmented Rabbids that are scattered around users' real life environment.
The game has a targeting reticule in the center and as users look around their space, Rabbids can be targeted for rockets to launch at them. It seems that this game would not use spatial mapping, according to the presentation.
It's important to remember that these games are still only prototypes and might not even come to fruition. However, their development and presentation show that Ubisoft is serious about developing games with AR in the future. It's also clear that Ubisoft is one of the video game companies working the closest with Microsoft as they perfect the HoloLens. Their dedication thus far to creating a good AR video game could give the company a head start when AR video games do go mainstream.
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