If you ever dreamed of becoming a ninja slashing dozens of fruits thrown towards you, there might be a chance to try.
Many fans of iOS and Tegra-based Android devices could enjoy the quite fun game of Fruit Ninja, which main goal is to slash virtual fruits with the use of a bare finger (and a touchscreen of course). Students from FH Wedel University of Applied Sciences located near Hamburg in Germany, thought it would be so cool to see it life-sized, motion controlled and in virtual reality.
What they used is Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, a system better known as CAVE. That is a kind of virtual reality box, with images projected on up to 6 walls of a cube large enough for a person to stand inside. Students Thiemo, Alex, Matze and Moritz used CAVE’s SDK, along with a Wiimote, 5.1 audio system and three devices projecting images from the game on three walls. Four different cameras are responsible for 3D motion tracking and the graphics are rendered with the use of OpenGL and Chromium. Life-sized Fruit Ninja requires four synced PCs.
And that was the way to achieve really immersive gameplay. The player stands inside a little room and cuts fruits with the use of Wiimote that is changed into a virtual, imaginative sword. The project is a part of FH Wedel’s students media-informatics studies and was prepared for virtual reality workshop. It took those clever geeks 2 weeks to complete the idea.
I have to admit it’s one of the coolest indie game mods I have ever seen, despite the facts those guys did not create anything new. They just found an extremely clever way to use existing technologies. The gaming industry may have already crossed out video arcades venues where early gamers like Kevin Flynn proved their masculinity, but games like the CAVE-based virtual reality Fruit Ninja may yet bring them back to popularity.
Interested in indie games? Have a look at the PewPewPewPewPew shooter or Minecraft Magnets for Block Addicts.
Via: Crunchgear
