7/24/2023 0 Comments Minecraft earth block![]() The charity partners with communities in developing countries, using Minecraft to design squares, parks, and footpaths that are then shown to city governments and build in the real world. It's just us trying to figure out how we can educate people and make this mainstream when it's clearly not yet." You can create your own builds on Build Plates, or freely edit, disassemble, or (as we did) set fire to them using blocks you find as you playĬonceptually, Zahn said the idea was inspired in part by Mojang's work with its charity, Block by Block. People don't necessarily know that a blank, white table is not necessarily going to be a great background for a build because there are no feature points. Zahn added, "And I think there are a lot of challenges in teaching people how to use augmented reality. So as we started to use augmented reality to be inside creations and stand around for 20 minutes, go to parks, and go to different environments, and we discovered there were a lot of issues that hadn't been unearthed, simply because people hadn't been using AR in that way before." ![]() "And truth be told, although it's available on our phones, not a lot of people are using it. "Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are investing a lot in augmented reality, so there is a lot of software that only a year or two ago was just research papers somewhere in Zurich, and now runs on all of our phones," he said. Many of those, said Olafsson, were related to the fact that your average AR user had, up to this point, only experienced AR through activities such as photography or design. While many of the early technical challenges simply involved getting the thing to run on most phones, new challenges presented themselves throughout the development of Minecraft Earth. "There have been so many advances in the capabilities of mobile phones and cloud computing and visual computing that just became possible" Torfi Olafsson Which is annoying ("And exciting," Zahn interjected) because there's no path. There have been so many advances in the capabilities of mobile phones and cloud computing and visual computing in the past couple of years that the thing we are doing just became possible, which puts us at the bleeding edge of technology. And this particular game couldn't have been made two years ago, let alone four years ago. "But it had a lot of technical and design challenges. "After our experiences with HoloLens, we were incredibly keen to bring Minecraft to the real world - not just to your table, but to your street corner, your park, the water fountain, and allow people to be completely immersed with it," said Olafsson. It wasn't until the latest generation of mobile devices widely supported AR capabilities, 60fps, good tracking, and the ability to play without overheating the phone in a few minutes, that something like that prototype became viable in the form of Minecraft Earth. That prototype, and the HoloLens in general, never made it to the mainstream. ![]() They were then able to manipulate the world and view it from numerous different angles. At E3 2015, Microsoft showed off a demo of HoloLens during its stage presentation in which one person played Minecraft normally using the lens, and the other was able to see an augmented reality version of the world the first player was in on the table in front of them. On the technical side, Minecraft Earth is the natural offshoot of another prototype we've already seen. Minecraft Earth effectively has two origins: a conceptual, and a technical. Olafsson (left) and Zahn (right) stand by a pre-made Build Plate But it's also part-AR adventure game and part-creative space, where players can take the found Tappables and build them into Minecraft creations anywhere: on the table in front of them, in their living room, or even in the middle of a public park.Īt a hands-on preview last month, I spoke with game director Torfi Olafsson and briefly with principal program manager Jessica Zahn on the game's inspirations, technological challenges, monetization concerns, and the global spirit the team at Mojang wants to infuse into Minecraft's foray onto mobile devices. It contains some similar elements, such as exploring the real world and collecting in-game items that correspond to real spaces ("Tappables," which contain recognizable Minecraft blocks and items). It's a dance that probably looked to outside observers not unlike (but perhaps more ridiculous than) the odd movements of crowds chasing virtual monsters during the overwhelmingly popular launch of Pokémon Go.īut Minecraft Earth, despite at first glance looking a bit like Pokémon Go in that it's a location-based, AR-using adventure, is something entirely different. If you happened to pass by a certain park in Seattle last month, you might have seen myself, a few Minecraft representatives, and a few other journalists awkwardly pacing, crouching, and waving our phones close to the ground or in circles around us. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |