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For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology 10 March 2012 | NewScientist | 25 LINDA A. CICERO/ STANFORD NEWS SERVICE PROM WEEK ONE PER CENT SNAKE THE PLANET/MOBILE PROJECTION UNIT serves as a case in point. To find out if behaviour in a virtual world can translate to the physical world, Ahn randomly assigned 47 people either to inhabit a lumberjack avatar and cut down virtual trees with a chainsaw, or to simply imagine doing so while reading a story. Those who did the former used fewer napkins (five instead of six, on average) to clean up a spill 40 minutes later, showing that the task had made them more concerned about the environment. This effect has also been seen in experiments by Bailenson’s team, who used virtual doubles that were either fatter or older than the volunteers to encourage them to exercise or save for retirement (Journal of Marketing Research, DOI: 10.1509/jmkr.48.SPL.S23). There’s still work to do, such as finding out how long such effects last, but it seems immersive virtual experiences can change people’s behaviour in useful ways. “It’s a different way of sending out that message,” says Ahn. “This might be more effective than public service announcements.” Advertisers, meanwhile, are sure to cotton on and use the same techniques to their own end, says Ahn. Jaron Lanier, one of the original developers of the Kinect, based in Berkeley, California, conjures up a scene where diet pills are sold via an ad that takes a photo of a person and then manipulates it to make them look fatter. Lanier sees another side too. By messing with our minds, these techniques might make people aware of the fragile nature of the self. “I think there is a really wide range of possible outcomes and the interesting thing is what we do with the technology,” he says. n Prom Week was released as a Facebook game last month but Comme il Faut is also available separately for others to use in their own games. “We’re hoping it will raise the bar on storytelling and video games,” says McCoy. Daniel Kudenko, who researches artificial intelligence for games at the University of York, UK, says the high level of detail in the simulation might make it hard for players to predict how characters will react. “You might have a very smart game AI, but if the player cannot understand it, they might think it is stupid.” Jacob Aron n –Seeing the future?– Let Snake loose on buildings Since it was first released in the 1970s, the classic game Snake has moved from the arcade to the Atari gaming console before appearing on cellphones. Now Mobile Projection Unit, an art collective based in Sydney, Australia, has built a version that can be played anywhere. Their game, called Snake the Planet, uses a laptop, camera and projector to display the traditional game on the sides of buildings. Anything that interrupts the projection – a window, street sign or person (see photo) – can be turned into pixelated obstacles which the gamer must navigate the snake around. Thumb tug lets you reel in the big one A prototype video game controller that tugs on your thumbs as you play could make games feel more realistic by simulating the recoil of a gun, for example. The controller, created by William Provancher and his team at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, features the two thumb joysticks found on most game controllers. But at the centre of each stick there is also a small “tactor” which moves beneath the player’s thumb to mimic a variety of motions. The team have used this device to create a fishing game that mimics the tug of a fish and the side-to-side swaying of a boat. They presented their work at the Haptics Symposium in Vancouver, Canada, this week. Your planet to explore It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “open world game”, usually used to describe a game in which players can roam freely through a virtual world. Designers of the game Outerra have built an entire 3D planet for people to explore. Normally, such a large virtual creation would require huge processing resources to render in real time but Outerra uses real-world elevation data from Earth to recreate landscapes, and then fills in details – trees, rock textures and the like – using a fractal algorithm. Gamers can view the terrain from as far away as space, zoom in and soar over hillsides and valleys or come down to ground level and just walk around. For breaking tech news go to: newscientist.com/onepercent “Virtual doubles that were older than the volunteers encouraged them to save for retirement” –Please say yes to a date–
