The Android application blends maps with AR technology to illustrate its fictional worldwide conspiracy.
The Android game, Ingress, is being released with a unique augmented reality element that is meant to provide an exciting new element to the experience for its players.
The app asks users to fight a “mysterious energy” that is showing up on a global scale.
The app then uses augmented reality technology to allow the player to discover the location of the energy so that he or she can make the decision to embrace or fight it. The game was developed and designed by Google – in combination with Niantic Labs – and is meant to illustrate the leaps and bounds that are being made by technology.
In this instance, augmented reality is being used to show off the tech through energy events.
Whether the player is located in London, Paris, New York, or anywhere else in the world, there will be locations that he or she can identify in the game, and which must then be hacked into. The game also allows users to work together to accomplish the tasks and to battle the challenges. They can also join forces to discover hidden objects and to claim territories, whether they are on the side of the Resistance or of the Enlightened.
Currently, the augmented reality app remains in its BETA stage. This means that an invitation will be needed for users who want to give Ingress a try. At the moment, it remains available only for Android devices, but industry experts feel that it won’t take long to become a highly addictive experience through its combination of location games and an interesting storyline.
The game has been compared to a kind of World of Warcraft experience, in that the players are all a part of the same world. However, the augmented reality element brings the gamer out of his or her home in order to take part in the full experience. In order to assist players in discovering the different places that use the AR features of the game, the “Field Trip” location aware guidebook has been released.
The blending of maps with augmented reality brings Google into an entirely new territory; one that they can see taking off very quickly in the near future.
