Between Oculus Rift and Sony's own Project Morpheus, the big craze of late has been virtual reality. In addition to VR, Sony has been working with augmented reality technology for several years now, and today it released new videos of PlayStation 4 tech demos showing what it's been up to.
On PlayStation's Japanese website (as spotted by NeoGAF), two videos were released to show off the AR lighting technology it's developed which presumably makes use of the PlayStation 4 camera. The first of these shows a man holding up two squares with pictures on them that cause box-shaped fishbowls, of sorts, to appear on-screen. He proceeds to "pour" the water (and accompanying rubber duck--Sony loves its rubber duck tech demos) from one into the other before pouring it onto the ground.
The other video shows a p erson moving a flashlight back and forth over a dinosaur and then Japanese character Hatsune Miku. This creates a shadow on the on-screen floor that moves based on the position of the light and the character.
Lastly, shown only in the form of a single screenshot was PS4 "trading card recognition" technology reminiscent of the PlayStation 3 game T he Eye of Judgment, albeit with Hatsune Miku in place of monsters.
Sony is not the only company exploring augmented reality tech. In 2012, it was rumored that Microsoft was developing augmented-reality glasses, known as "Fortaleza," for release in 2014 on the Xbox One. Meanwhile, former Valve employees raised more than $1 million on Kickstarter last year for their augmented reality system castAR.
Sony, like Microsoft, has not made any formal announcements regarding plans to release any augmented reality gaming technology, meaning we may never see any of this put to use.
Does augmented reality technology interest you more than virtual rea lity? Let us know your preference in the comments below.
Put the internet to work for you.
