CS 428 Homework 9 - Week 12 Homework
Mark Chen, mchen200
For week one of presentations, I have chosen to write about Amit Panthi’s Student Choice Presentation which features an augmented reality video game called Minecraft Earth. It is the popular video game Minecraft used with augmented reality, where users are able to augment Minecraft onto their phones and overlay Minecraft on top of what your camera sees. It’s family friendly, with the target age of people of ages 7 and above. Minecraft Earth allows users to build their own creations (buildings or structures), explore geolocations to collect resources, and be able to share their creations to other users. Some additional features include scaling the creations to be big, small, or expand to the size of a room. Users also get their own avatar to explore the users’ creation, fight monsters. Motion capture is used to correspond a user’s movement to their Minecraft avatar, so when the user waves their left arm, then the Minecraft Avatar waves its left arm. However, if the user does not want to user their Minecraft Avatar, then the user can place them self in their Minecraft creation in a life size scale, and the user can interact with the Minecraft objects. So like you can see a user interact with their Minecraft World through another user’s mobile device.
I think that Minecraft Earth is a really cool idea. I like how users do not have to put on headgear and be restricted to their computers to be immersed in the Minecraft world like in Minecraft VR. With Minecraft Earth, I think it is cool that you can bring your Minecraft creations anywhere, and show off your creation with other users. I also like the social aspect of Minecraft Earth. As stated before, you are able to share your creations with others. You are also able to collect resources at certain geolocations, just like Pokemon Go’s PokeStops, so you can meet other people who are also collecting resources at that geolocation. Minecraft Earth also promotes some level of fitness if you walk to these geolocations. The scaling is also a cool feature to have, especially life scale where you can interact with a Minecraft world in life size. Some concerns I have with Minecraft Earth is the immersion. Yeah it is cool to be immersed in your Minecraft World, but if you are using Minecraft Earth outside, then users have to be careful. Just like Pokemon Go, users have to be aware of their surroundings when outside, and travelling to geolocations, because some users of Pokemon Go have been robbed because users were not vigilant. Users also have to be aware of not walking into the street when trying to explore their Minecraft World. This could be fatal, and Pokemon Go always has warnings about this, so hopefully Minecraft World implements these warnings as well.
All in all, Mojang, the Minecraft publishers, have definitely stepped up their game in putting Minecraft to the next level. At first, I thought Minecraft would just be a PC game for all of its time. But then Minecraft got ported to as a mobile game, so you can play Minecraft on the go. Then there is Minecraft VR where you can play Minecraft in a virtual reality setting where you are your avatar and you do everything you would do on Minecraft PC, but with virtual reality. Now Minecraft is going to be an augmented reality game, where you can be in your creation.