People pretending to be props, Inflatable ghosts, Eerie music, Colored lights, and Chainless chainsaws. What do all of these  Halloween gags have in common? They don’t hold a candle to Rich Fiore‘s house. Fiore has turned the front side of his home into an augmented reality shooting game. Aim for the ghosts haunting the building, but be careful. Miss, and you’ll blast a hole into the framework. Even the windows appear to shatter when struck. Seems like a rather expensive lawsuit.
Check out a video below!
Haunted House Game from Rich Fiore on Vimeo.
There are some detailed special effects, all done with projectors, cameras for visual mapping, and an IR-emitting Wii remote for the gun crosshairs. Plus, what we’ve seen so far isn’t even the finished product. “This is a beta test of a large-scale projected video game… More characters and AI are in the works,” promises Fiore. Those who wish to partake in the ghost hunt had best hurry over to Chicago, IL and look Fiore’s address up.
All of that technology in place for an arcade-style shooter puts into perspective what an achievement augmented reality and virtual reality truly are. We can talk about the headsets and gyroscopic cameras until the goblins come home, but seeing it happen just down the street makes one feel as if they’re witnessing a sort of miracle. In a way, it is one. Technology isn’t so much taking over our lives as it is helping us to enrich them.