Gaming is a big part of many people’s lives, and if you also love to play online video games, you’ll want to know all about the newest and most exciting advances in the tech that goes along with it. We’ve put together some information that will help you to discover more about what you might need to make your gaming experience one that you will never forget.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality makes the gaming experience seem almost real – the better the tech, the more real it seems. You can use this form of technology at home, or you can even book group sessions thanks to Mirage VR in Kitchener, Ontario.
Many VR controllers and headsets aren’t available to the general public just yet, which is why booking some gaming fun through a third party can be the ideal way to experience it. Over time, however, this will become more commonplace, and it will be something that every serious (and even not so serious) gamer has in their stockpile of gadgets and equipment.
High Definition
In the past, gamers just had to cope with poor graphics and terrible displays; they carried on regardless, making the best of the situation. Times have moved on, thankfully, and today gamers will expect high definition graphics as standard. Of course, they will also need high def screens to show those graphics on, but that is also becoming standard for those who do love their gaming.
The best definition is known as ‘ultra 4K gaming’, which – as the name suggests – needs to be played through TVs that support 4K capabilities, or 4K laptops. Once these items cost many thousands of dollars, but the price is starting to come down, and soon there will be a 4K screen to suit any budget.
Gesture Control
The first thing you might think of when you hear the term ‘gesture control’ is Nintendo’s groundbreaking Wii platform. Although this unit was at the forefront of gesture control, technology has advanced even further now and includes Intel RealSense technology. This means you don’t have to be holding a device to interact with it; cameras are used to track movement and convert that movement into commands for the game that you’re playing.
This is not just any camera, though. It is a special 3D camera which is set to track 22 different areas of your hands. It was developed by looking at the way that hands moved naturally, so rather than asking gamers to make specific movements for specific commands, it is a much more flowing and organic way to play – it is highly intuitive, and that’s what makes it so much fun.
Voice Recognition
As mentioned above, thanks to today’s technology there is now no need for gamers to even have a controller in some cases, and the same is true if they opt to use voice recognition. Although voice recognition has been around for some time, it is only in recent years that its potential for gaming has been realized, and producers are creating games that use this tech specifically, asking players to speak to their character on screen or interact with the rest of the game using voice alone.
There is one downside to using this tech, and one that some gamers do have a problem with. That is if they live with other people, or they are gaming in public, it may be all but impossible to speak to the game to give commands. It would cause too much disruption, or be embarrassing or even inappropriate. It may not be too much longer before gamers get over this issue and start playing voice-controlled games anyway; after all, it has become usual to hear people talking seemingly to themselves while walking down the street because they are using their cellphones hands-free.
Facial Recognition
Technology revolving around facial recognition and 3D scanning mean that players are now able to create a good likeness of themselves within the world of whichever game it is they are playing. Essentially, your avatar will now be able to look exactly (as far as the tech will allow anyway) like you, rather than a vague approximation. The tech also allows you to map your own facial expressions onto other characters’ faces, making the game that you’re playing a lot more interactive and enjoyable.
The 3D camera created by Intel RealSense can scan 78 points on a face and collate them into a digital image. Although there is no real advantage to using this tech within a game, it does create a lot more fun, and sometimes that is all that is needed.
