Category Archives: Thesis

An Excerpt from My New Media Paper

These were the concluding paragraphs to the paper I wrote last term on the future of augmented and virtual reality. This paper was part of the inspiration for my augmented reality thesis idea.

Imagine a hypothetical future wherein these technologies have both greatly developed. Joe gets up in the morning and starts getting ready for school. While doing this, he gets an update on his favorite news sites and email through images transmitted directly to his view by augmented reality technology. He goes to school and is taught with the newest technology, allowing for an interactive experience with digital objects that give a better understanding of the subject. On his way home, his friends contact him, getting in contact as if they’re right next to him despite being in a different country. They invite him to meet up later at the usual place. After getting home and doing whatever work he has to, again with the help of digital technology, Joe kicks back and grabs for a special visor. Before he knows it, he’s in a virtual world, surrounded by bustling townspeople. There, he meets up with his friends’ avatars and they go off to explore the latest area added to the ever expanding virtual horizon.

This could very well be the future with the rate different reality technologies are going. Augmented reality is poised to continue to improve our day to day life and interactions, in essence trying to perfect our own reality. Meanwhile, virtual reality, with its more personal focus on escaping our reality and new possibilities of networking through companies such as Facebook, has the potential to surpass the modern internet. Web2.0 was marked as a stride forward in web design when it added new interactivity and freedom of design options, so virtual reality could possibly take that a step further, becoming a possible Web3.0 wherein we are actively immersed in the web. Augmented reality making our world a better place while virtual reality creates a whole new world of nearly endless possibilities. That just one of the possible futures with the rapid advancements in these technologies. Of course, such radical changes will come with their own breadth of ethical and moral issues, from the problems of overuse of VR to the invasive properties AR could have. These just mean that as these technologies emerge, society must keep a constant eye on them and their changing environments. As long as attention is paid, these technologies seem like they will lead to very bright, promising futures.

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Thesis Idea Inspiration: Age of Mythology

I LOVED Age of Mythology when I was younger. The game was everything I wanted at the time, strategy, cool secrets and mythology. Specifically, I went into the game for the Greek Mythology it had in it. I didn’t expect to be so drawn to the other subjects though.

The game starts off in Greece. You follow an epic poem of a story as the hero campaigns through Greece with the help of various gods and mythological heroes. However, after journeying through the Underworld, the player finds themselves in a new land, Egypt. Here, they’re introduced to new mechanics of worship and pharaoh buffing, along with a new pantheon of gods. Before they know it, the group has traveled yet again, this time to the North and they battle under Norse gods.

The whole process was incredibly fun and highly enlightening without me really noticing. Do you know what the Scylla is? It’s a giant creature with a woman’s upper body and a belly made of WOLF HEADS. Better yet, it’s the sister of a gigantic whirlpool. I had no idea of this, despite having read so much Greek mythology. The game not only included these myths into the gameplay, it also gave detailed descriptions of the gods, creatures, heroes and customs in a large text database that could be accessed at any time.

This is exactly what I’m looking for when I talk about passive education. Using a game’s intriguing and immersive gameplay to pull in players and then sprinkling in educational pieces within it so that the player can learn without having to even try.

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Thesis Idea Inspiration: Mega Man Star Force

With my augmented reality idea, one of the biggest inspirations for the project is Mega Man Star Force, a game series for the Nintendo DS. Based off of the Mega Man Battle Network games (which, in turn, are based off a mixture of Mega Man and Neuromancer apparently), Star Force sets itself in the distant, distant future, beyond the sci-fi AI driven internet world of Battle Network.

In Star Force, notably, all electronics and the internet in general have basically blended into society completely. Everything is run by a program and interconnected, even some natural structures. The protagonist, Geo Stellar, gets a special pair of glasses from his father that allow him to see this hidden network world around him. By putting them on in the game, the player becomes aware of all sorts of electromagnetic beings around them in the form of programs, viruses and aliens. Though the latter isn’t really a part of my idea, the former basically sums up my idea of a large scale augmented reality.

Of course, the objects in my project wouldn’t have super advanced AI or control over the real world. Rather, this would be the first step into creating the means for such a blended reality, one where you can experience our world as is, but then also flip a kind of switch and see this amazing, hidden world underneath it.

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Education through Force

In one of my classes, we discussed the idea of fixing the education system in a style similar to video games. The basic idea would be to allow the student to explore subjects they want to in their own time, building up “exp” in that subject, and using the stuff they learned to progress. However, eventually they’d reach a point in whatever subject where they’d need to acquire a new “skill” from a different subject, thus forcing them to go and learn the essentials of another section.

This idea honestly sounds very interesting. It presents a new kind of educational game, one that isn’t directly educational, but more passively educational. It is basically the same concept of the Metroidvania style game, where the player is in a vast world to explore and interact with, but they need specific tools and concepts to move past certain parts of the world. These tools (stuff like Metroid’s screw attack or missiles) are found in different parts of the map, promoting the player to freely scour the entire map, clearing out all they can.

This would make a very interesting experiment if applied to an educational mindset. Possibly, it could teach a student a whole subject, or on a grander scale a whole curriculum, with a single game.

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An Over-layed Reality

As I stated before, one of my big ideas for my master thesis is an augmented reality project. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the last quarter.

I started thinking about when I was taking the “Explorations in New Media” class. We had been discussing virtual reality and the book we were reading mentioned an app that placed the twin towers back as 3D models using a cell phone’s camera.

I assume that this app functioned by using GPS to check the phone’s position and the twin towers position, then place them in the right area relative to it. If this is possible, why wouldn’t you be able to do more?

Why not expand this idea, creating a whole “level” based around a section of map and GPS. With a set up like that, you could have markers, moving models, and interesting objectives placed around an area for exploration. Not only could it have practical uses like highlighting areas and paths, but it could also promote more urban, outdoor exploration as there could be collectibles and amazing sights.

Just imagine walking around, then you get a buzz that there’s something nearby. You pull out your phone, hold it up and find a giant creature leaning against a skyscraper.

It is an interesting concept, and I wouldn’t mind looking more into the possibilities of such a system. Especially if it would be possible to make it user input friendly, allowing others to leave messages and place their own models.

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Initial Thesis Ideas

I have two ideas I could work on for my master thesis as of now:

  1. Something involving passive education with video games. By passive education, I mean giving the player the tools and options to learn about a subject within the game, but not make their education imperative or the focus of the game. A game series that does this very well would be the Age of Empires/Age of Mythology games.
  2. A large scale augmented reality overlay with GPS. This idea was inspired by the twin towers app that places two rectangles where the twin towers used to be. By taking this concept to the next level, I think we could make a very interesting world, with “levels” built off our own world.
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