Well, that escalated quickly: Augmented Reality edition

February 23, 2018 8:35 AM

In which Abhishek Singh recreates a scene from The Ring using Augmented Reality, so the friendly character Sadako can follow you around your house. The scene in the US remake, and more in The Verge, Road to VR and Gizmodo. The character on Wikipedia (Maybe don't answer the phone if it rings while you read this FPP).
posted by Wordshore (14 comments total)

Nope.... Noperdienopenope....
posted by Pendragon at 8:37 AM on February 23, 2018 [5 favorites]

Favorite comment on that YouTube video, by Spookgrrrl, is:

"Effing brilliant, even though I'm now sitting in my own wee, thanks."
posted by Wordshore at 8:47 AM on February 23, 2018

The poor girl is having the worst hair day ever. Point her in the direction of the nearest beauty salon to get some cute bangs, trim the split ends, maybe an ombre color process, and everything will be fine.
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:47 AM on February 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

The modeling on Sadako could use some work, but it's a pretty cool proof of concept. According to the "Road to VR" article, it seems as though this might be specifically mapped to the space before running? Presumably a similar commercial application would have to have hardware or software to do that beforehand. Although once you mapped your house once (that's a really weird idea, typing it out) it would probably be useful for any similar game / experience, right?
posted by codacorolla at 8:48 AM on February 23, 2018

  _       _                          
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 | |/ _ \| | | '_ \ / _ \| '_ \ / _ \
 | | (_) | | | | | | (_) | |_) |  __/
 |_|\___/|_| |_| |_|\___/| .__/ \___|
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posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:49 AM on February 23, 2018 [8 favorites]

I bought my 3DS to play the Fatal Frame game Spirit Camera: Cursed Memoir. It's a neat use of the 3DS's AR capabilities to depict ghosts and such in your own home! It should be very cool... except the game orients itself in 3D space by having you take a picture of the included booklet (the titular "cursed memoir") and using the gyroscope in the 3DS to tell how you've moved since taking that picture. So you need to play it in a space that's sufficiently well-lit to get a clear read of the booklet, but dark enough to be creepy, and you'd really be best off in a space that's wide open enough for you to spin around fully in...

Anyway, this is a neat, new version of that, and exciting! I'd love to see something like this married to the gameplay of something like, say, Ingress.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:51 AM on February 23, 2018

Ah, she looks too fake to be scary.
posted by orange swan at 8:52 AM on February 23, 2018

I ... I wanted this to be scarier. I think it's a great concept and can have genuinely freaky applications, but that Sadako was just so rough that it wasn't really that effective for me.

Mostly, I watched it and thought "this is cool" more than "this is terrifying." And I'm pretty easily scared.
posted by darksong at 8:53 AM on February 23, 2018

Oh yeah no way am I looking at that in VR...but if there's like, a videotape of it or something, maybe I could watch that.
posted by sexyrobot at 8:57 AM on February 23, 2018 [10 favorites]

TBH the most impressive part is that since apparently he gave the program a map of his apartment, it can do stuff like having her follow him around corners- unlike a lot of AR stuff, Sadako here won't clip out of his walls. That's good work, and makes her much more unsettling, since she's actually interacting with the environment (albeit in the limited sense of not touching things) rather than being superimposed on it without respect for the environment, if that makes sense.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:00 AM on February 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think all of you noping out should actually watch it... if you want to never be afraid of this particular property again. It's so... chunky and computer graphic-y, covered in the fingerprints of the mundane. It's like turning on all the lights in the haunted house and seeing dollar store halloween decorations everywhere.

Anything that you can clearly tell was made in an office park, is basically the opposite of scary.
posted by danny the boy at 9:52 AM on February 23, 2018

Wow, tough crowd. Let's check back in 5 years or so when AR tech has advanced exponentially.
posted by jeremias at 11:01 AM on February 23, 2018

I dunno. It sounds like great fun the first few times... And for visitors. Just wished I had the kit to run it.

Also, that 3DS game sounded SO cool. Wish I had a 3DS and a copy of it. I have seen pretty much all the Fatal Frame games (in Let's Plays, granted) and thought they were neat.
posted by Samizdata at 11:48 AM on February 23, 2018

The poor girl is having the worst hair day ever. Point her in the direction of the nearest beauty salon to get some cute bangs, trim the split ends, maybe an ombre color process, and everything will be fine.

From the related videos selections:
"Terrifying girl from the Ring grew up to be gorgeous."
posted by kaibutsu at 1:11 PM on February 23, 2018