Pacman Comes to Life in Human Pacman

Posted on June 6, 2005

Just when you thought you had seen every kind of Pacman game variation you could, along comes Human Pacman. Wearing headsets and googles players enter a virtual reality version of Pacman where they can roam around and eat power pellets. The players take can take the role of Pacman or one of the ghosts. Here is a description of Human Pacman from its creators at Mixed Reality Lab:

Firstly, the players immerse in role-playing of the characters Pacmen and Ghosts by physically enacting the roles. Players physically move around in a wide-area setting, performing tasks to reach their goals. Utilizing the computing power of wearable computers and the underlying network support, Human Pacman takes mobile gaming to a new level of sophistication by incorporating virtual fantasy and imaginative play activity elements, factors which propelled the popularity of computer games [1] , with the implementation of Mixed Reality on the Head Mounted Displays (HMD). The players also experience seamless connections between real and virtual worlds as immersive first-person augmented reality view (with virtual cookies overlaying the real world) and full virtual reality view of our fantasy version of the game, Pacworld.

The BBC has an article about Human Pacman which explains some of the virtual and wireless features being used:

Combining both real and virtual elements, the game allows the human Pacman to 'see' virtual cookies with the aid of the special headset scattered on the street which the player can then 'eat' by walking through them.

Ghosts get to 'devour' the player by tapping them on the shoulder when they catch up to them within the game area.

In return, Pacman gets the ability to temporarily neutralise them and add to his virtual powers when he finds and picks up Bluetooth-embedded physical sugar jars scattered in the real world environment by a game coordinator.

The player's locations are also wirelessly updated to a virtual 3D Pac-world where online gamers can view their progress and participate by helping either Pacman or the Ghosts through text messaging.

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