A video of someone playing Super Mario in Augmented Reality went viral this summer.
That someone was Abhishek Singh, who mapped the entire first level of the original Super Mario Brothers in 3D and put it in Microsoft's HoloLens.
There's no way to buy or download this but I did play it with Singh in our office.
Okay did you see the mushroom coming?
Okay just let it fall on the.
I got it.
We wanted to play it in the park too.
Just like in the video.
So we did at Madison Square Park.
Here is what happened.
The lunch crowd is going to love me.
Yeah and now look around you should see the bushes maybe
Actually in the bushes right there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is perfect.
Yeah.
They're kinda like lined up with the real.
Yeah.
Mario plants and real plants side by side, here he is, okay I can see him.
Yeah, you can see him.
In the sidewalk.
Yup.
Here we go, did I get him I'm a terrible jumper, yeah 100 points.
What inspired you to make this, how did you start or where did you come from Actually, it wasn't a very linear process of how we arrived at Super Mario.
When I started playing with the HoloLens, I immediately saw its potential to be used in outdoor environments and for large, expansive game play.
So I wanted to create some sort of Yeah So now I'm learning how to do is basically took this white cube and I just like moving it around this space and for some reason I placed it a little above my head and I stepped under it and I jumped.
And as soon as I jumped, all these memories cam flooding back and I was like My God this is Super Mario There's the crazy, crazy pit here.
Yeah.
Which it feels like it's extending down.
It is.
And it goes to the pavement.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm just going to give a little running jump here and just kind of.
Yeah.
All right.
I feel good with my terrible jump there.
Yeah.
I mean that's much more than you needed to jump.
What's it like to actually play?
Well, it's pretty linear and a lot of things overlap with the real world, like a flagpole sprouted from a sedan.
I couldn't jump on it.
This Nissan contains the princess' castle.
Exactly yeah.
It's sprouting right out of the hood.
Yeah and if you look up it's probably the flag, the flag that Mario kind of jumps on.
I look like I'm crazy.
Yeah.
This is the future where everybody's gonna see extra things floating around the world.
Exactly yeah.
Now it's not a perfect game but it does show where AR could be headed into games.
And Singh is going to be looking at Apple's AR kit for the iPhone.
That can be where people play a lot of AR, instead of wearing it on their face.
That's what I'm actually experimenting with right now is putting an iPhone into something like a
Audible kind of viewer and seeing whether you can actually have a hands free experiences with Kit.
But this is definitely a taste of where the future might be heading from mixed reality.
Abdul Sheikh, thank you for exploring the future a little bit and letting me dive into it.
Thank you.
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