Will drone-o-vision games be a thing?

Intels record breaking drone-o-vision system in action.

But does anyone else think with more pixels we could play lo-res games using drone-o-vision?

I suppose it could get expensive though the original pac-man ran @ 224×288 or 64,512 drones needed.

What if each drone lifted an led grid say 8 x 8 (still 1,008 drones) but 16 x 16 would only need 252 drones.

How much are they each?

Would it be do-able, could you control and send data to that many drones fast enough to run it at 24-30 fps?

What if each 16x16 led drone was a sprite, a single drone could be pac-man and move around static drones for the grid. Ditto for the ghosts.

OK probably best to start with pong three drones for the moving bits and the others for the score and lines. You could probably manage it.

So what do you think could drone-o-vision games become a thing, and what type of games would best suit it?

 

Silly idea but would it be possible to tie drones together with glowing/illuminated cord/fiber and use them as an old school vector display.

vector-drone-o-vision, Asteroids anyone?

 

Did you ever see the video clip of the farmers that used sheep dogs to muster sheep on a hillside into shapes & formations? They draped led's over them for when it got dark. That could work but I think you'd need a computer to run the drones.

I was thinking more along the lines of augmented reality via the drones camera, so you could play drone strike games on little figures running through your carpet etc. link it to hololens & the players could be scouting a zombie filled warehouse with drones while trying to escape themselves.

 

If someone were to do this they better have some good collision detection to avoid colliding drones, lol.

 

I think it would look strange with more than a single pixel per drone as the drones are keeping a distance between them and would have different pixel densities.

For Pacman my calculation suggests that you "only" need around 8000 due to not needing a drone if a pixel is black.

 

That was my thinking until I realized that each drone can hold an array of LED pixels and be a sprite on it's own. Then you could move the sprites by moving a drone.

 

Such games probably won't become too big a thing, but maybe official fireworks displays will become a thing of the past with such technology.

 

As a kid we used to get up early the morning after cracker night to look for the parachutes. Could you imagine the kids trawling the streets for errant drones that crashed during the display ?

 

Yeah maybe we get a new EU directive saying big fireworks pollute the nature and scare pets, birds and children with the loud noises. Welcome year 2020 where the fireworks are replaced army of drones with led arrays and speakers.

 

My internet isn't working enough for me to check but I think 2:00 is about the time. The whole thing is worth watching though.

 

I think VR might be less expensive and last longer. The only difference between the two experiences would be the that one is AR with a drone and one is VR without a drone. The drone will run out of power. The drone can be damaged and break. Why would anyone want to do this?

 

Because they can?

 

What about drones with fireworks, combine the technologies to boost their potential.
Fireworks use up most of their fuel just to climb to altitude before being released, they have to be aimed and timed to produce a nice effect. Could drone launched fireworks be cheaper and more accurate and produce more amazing displays (more of their volume used to provide sparkle less needed for fuel).

Kind of drones with sparklers and catherine wheels.

 

That kind of logic can justify all kinds of terrible and unnecessary things. But we are dealing with the subject of people so I guess there's no stopping that.

 

You could also do an amazing line in UFO hoaxes, formation flyby's, phoenix lights style.

Or what about setting up the drones in a formation that looks like a 3d model, millenium falcon, x-wing, tie-fighter flyby.

Thinking about it I'm surprised that there aren't drone, formation flight teams similar to the red arrows.

 

My hand was green for a week after not being able to outrun the wick of a firecracker after lighting it. Lucky, I had the excuse of being a 7 year old.

Anyway, when this tech is cheap and modular enough I can see making so computer assisted physical games, not sports.

 

computer assisted physical games - that's what I hope to get from stem, to some extend. The position tracking for the full body should give the user the ability to run and jump and whatever in a small area - extendable with more base stations.

I'm just excited to remake a few simple games that were in arcades for decades, like the boxing games.

 

No drones, but this combines motion tracking with VR

 

I think AR will be cool for applications/software, but I think VR will be better for games. Gaming is an escape from the real world, right? VR is leaving the world entirely, AR is an attempt to... put diamonds on poo.

 

Empty/background/transparent pixels could be safely replaced by sky. So we'd only need as much drones as there are sprites using them. And since drones can move around, we'd get more fluid movement than if we'd try to replicate dot matrix display using drones.