Can Augmented Reality Improve Your Airsoft Gaming Experience?

Given the recent success of Pokémon GO, can augmented reality improve or at least make a more interesting airsoft gaming experience? 

By: Ringo Bones  

With the recent success of Pokémon GO, augmented reality gaming seems to be the in thing at the moment if you own an advanced enough smart-phone. And given the relative ubiquity of advanced smart-phones, can augmented reality elements be introduced to airsoft gaming to make it more interesting? But first, an introduction to what is this augmented reality business….

Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than being augmented), by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one. Augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and can be digitally manipulated. Artificial information about the environment and its objects can be overlaid on the real world.  

With the proper creative application of augmented reality, airsoft gamers would soon be closer to playing in a gaming environment closely resembling to that of James Cameron’s Avatar or those exotic extraterrestrial locales of the Halo computer gaming series and even a passable World War II, Vietnam War, and the recent Gulf conflict of the Call of Duty gaming series. It seems that augmented reality applications for airsoft will only be limited by the gamers’ imagination.