Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poelette,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: He there. All right then, and today we're gonna start
Speaker 1: off the way we've started off several podcasts recently, with
Speaker 1: a little listener mail. Yeah, and this listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Crystal. Crystal says augmented reality. What in the world
Speaker 1: is it? Thank you, Crystal for that very concise listener mail.
Speaker 1: She probably figured you'd make up another paragrapher said, uh yeah, considering.
Speaker 1: So we've received some some novellas recently. There they've been excellent, guys,
Speaker 1: We love them. Don't don't that as a dig, because
Speaker 1: I think that's awesome that you guys take so much
Speaker 1: effort to write as listener mail. And Crystal, that's awesome
Speaker 1: that you were able to sum it up in one
Speaker 1: sentence long or short. We love the listener mail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're all awesome. So anyway, augmented realitmented reality one the
Speaker 1: world is it? You know what? I didn't really know either, Um,
Speaker 1: I knew, I knew just the barest minimum of what
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, we can give you like the the
Speaker 1: the bird's eye definition of augmented reality. The real idea
Speaker 1: here is that you are overlaying some sort of information
Speaker 1: on top of our perception of the world around us
Speaker 1: in real time. Yes, we're not talking about virtual reality,
Speaker 1: in which you replace the real reality with a institute
Speaker 1: and uh, you know see if you're um, coffee drinkers
Speaker 1: can tell the difference, right, the But the worlds of
Speaker 1: augmented reality and virtual reality do have a lot of overlap.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of technology that um, that belongs in
Speaker 1: both realms, uh, including things like head mald displays often
Speaker 1: are used in both augmented reality and virtual reality applications. Yes,
Speaker 1: except in in virtual reality, Um, the glasses that you
Speaker 1: wear replace you don't really actually see anything but this
Speaker 1: virtual world. And in augmented reality, you do see the
Speaker 1: virtual world with other information layered on top of it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you're right, you see the real world with
Speaker 1: other information layered on top of it. Right. If you
Speaker 1: were the virtual world with other information layered on top
Speaker 1: of it, it would be augmented virtual reality. Can we
Speaker 1: invent that patent pending? All right, no one else out
Speaker 1: there grab it? That's us. Yes, So augmented reality. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, ideally, what you would have is some sort
Speaker 1: of system where you could look at, say a building,
Speaker 1: and you would have information pop up that might give
Speaker 1: you things like the address of the building that you're
Speaker 1: looking at any businesses that are located within that building. If,
Speaker 1: for example, you were looking at a restaurant, you might
Speaker 1: see reviews pop up and you could see what kind
Speaker 1: of food that restaurant serves without having to actually go
Speaker 1: up there and look at a menu, or if they
Speaker 1: had really poor reviews, and you can think, oh well,
Speaker 1: let's just skip that and find something else. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean that's just a very basic application. There are unlimited
Speaker 1: applications for augmented reality. Sure, I mean, you know it's
Speaker 1: not you could you could use it for something like that.
Speaker 1: You can use it for business purposes. Maybe you're on
Speaker 1: a business trip and you need information like that. Um.
Speaker 1: Sad to say. You could also use it for military purposes. Actually,
Speaker 1: the military is already using this technology. It's in a
Speaker 1: lot of visor displays for jet pilots, for example, so
Speaker 1: that they are coupling the the helmet technology with augmented
Speaker 1: reality so that you can do things like track h
Speaker 1: other other aircraft. You can look at targets, things like
Speaker 1: that heads up display. Yes, an h U d ye
Speaker 1: heads up it's actually had that for quite some times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been around for a while now. That's not unusual.
Speaker 1: Just like virtual reality, augmented reality has a lot to uh,
Speaker 1: a lot to to owe the military establishment. UM, military
Speaker 1: applications have fed the research and development of this kind
Speaker 1: of technology for years, just like with virtual reality. And
Speaker 1: it makes sense because when you really think about you've
Speaker 1: got to think with any research project, there's one thing
Speaker 1: all research projects need, no matter what the project is. Money. Yes,
Speaker 1: the money has to come from somewhere. And academic research
Speaker 1: institutions they have a limited budget. You know, they have
Speaker 1: a limited amount of money that they can they can
Speaker 1: dole out to any particular department UM and all of
Speaker 1: them are vying for that same pool of cash and UH,
Speaker 1: and so there's a very limited amount of money you
Speaker 1: can get for for pure research research for research sake, UM,
Speaker 1: You're more likely to see money come in from any
Speaker 1: sort of practical application, So things like the military, where
Speaker 1: practical app location can mean the difference between losing and
Speaker 1: winning a conflict or saving hundreds of people's lives. UH,
Speaker 1: that's obviously going to take a larger priority than just
Speaker 1: a a important but kind of esoteric academic project. UM.
Speaker 1: You would also probably see it in corporate UH functions
Speaker 1: as well. Things that things where companies think they can
Speaker 1: make some money off of an augmented reality application, whether
Speaker 1: that's something that's in a car, like perhaps you were
Speaker 1: able to create a screen within your car so that
Speaker 1: as you're driving down the street, a little display what
Speaker 1: can tell you things are that are coming up, like
Speaker 1: where the next gas station is. That's funny you would
Speaker 1: mention that I was thinking of Dash. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good example. UM. Dash is a company that was recently
Speaker 1: acquired by Research in Motion, who you might be aware
Speaker 1: made the BlackBerry UM. When they start it out, they
Speaker 1: were making a very sophisticated and also very large GPS
Speaker 1: def ice called the Dash Express UM and John Fuller
Speaker 1: wrote an excellent article about it on the website. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he also wrote it the very same week that Dash
Speaker 1: announced that they weren't gonna make hardware anymore, and we
Speaker 1: had to edit the article before it went live. UM
Speaker 1: But basically, the technology combines GPS and UM information about
Speaker 1: that area so that you can be driving along the
Speaker 1: street and say, man, I could really use a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee right now, and it will tell you, well, hey,
Speaker 1: there's McDonald's on your left, there's a Starbucks on the right,
Speaker 1: A couple of blocks down the street, around the corner,
Speaker 1: there's a local coffee shop. UM. Or you could say
Speaker 1: I'm looking for a gas station and it's it will
Speaker 1: give you that information in real time. Also traffic information,
Speaker 1: so that kind of but that's not UM at least,
Speaker 1: the Dash Express wasn't showing you in a heads up
Speaker 1: display like you might see a fighter pilot might use.
Speaker 1: Although I know that they have dabbled with heads up
Speaker 1: displays and cars for again in years, I just don't
Speaker 1: see an awful lot of them. Yeah. The closest thing
Speaker 1: you tend to see in cars these days are things
Speaker 1: like um uh night vision applications, where you can you
Speaker 1: can have suddenly the windshield turns into like a screen
Speaker 1: with night visions that you can see an infrared or
Speaker 1: ultra violet as opposed to using headlights, which I guess
Speaker 1: would be very useful for law enforcement officers, um be
Speaker 1: kind of scary for anyone else if they don't have
Speaker 1: their headlights on. But uh so that that's one kind
Speaker 1: of application there. But of course there that's that's more
Speaker 1: night vision. That's not really augmented reality because you're not
Speaker 1: really adding any information to the display. And uh and
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, augmented reality has kind of
Speaker 1: shifted to the mobile device market now. In the traditional
Speaker 1: idea of what augmented reality would be, uh, it was
Speaker 1: much more kind of sci fi. The idea was that
Speaker 1: you would have like a pair of glasses that you
Speaker 1: put on, and those glasses, you know, they look like
Speaker 1: stylish sunglasses. So you're just you know, hitting the towel
Speaker 1: and being a Hollywood schmooz um. But you're really looking
Speaker 1: around and you're seeing different, you know, facts and figures
Speaker 1: about the the area around you. It's just that it's
Speaker 1: on a screen that's you know, transparent, so you can
Speaker 1: look through the information. Um, so you're not blinded. Because
Speaker 1: I mean, that's obviously an important element in augmented reality.
Speaker 1: You've gotta have it so that the information is there
Speaker 1: if you want to read it, but it's also possible
Speaker 1: for you to ignore it and look at the real world.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you may not be able to react when someone's
Speaker 1: throwing a punch at you because you're a Hollywood schmooze,
Speaker 1: and they will because you know, if my nose could
Speaker 1: tell you stories. But the the other elements that have
Speaker 1: to be in place here. You have to have certain
Speaker 1: things to to allow an augmented reality system to work.
Speaker 1: All right. You have to have some sort of tracking system,
Speaker 1: so it has to know where you are looking, otherwise
Speaker 1: it can't display the relevant information. It has to have
Speaker 1: some sort of video feed or graphic generation so that
Speaker 1: it can create the things that you're gonna be looking at.
Speaker 1: And it has to have some sort of database of
Speaker 1: information to draw upon to to populate the fields so
Speaker 1: when you're looking around, it's actually giving you information you need.
Speaker 1: So so you don't actually need a sophisticated piece of
Speaker 1: eyewear to do this with or a camera on top
Speaker 1: of your head, although you could do in early systems.
Speaker 1: You know when some imagine quite expensive systems do have that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you look at early augmented augmented reality systems. They
Speaker 1: tend to like really big rigs with a huge head
Speaker 1: mounted display, and you know, it's it's meant to be
Speaker 1: portable because it doesn't do you much good to have
Speaker 1: a fixed augmented reality station. You can't. You know, you
Speaker 1: just be able to look at the stuff that's immediately
Speaker 1: around you, and that's it. But the problem is that,
Speaker 1: you know, carrying all that around, the power supply cables
Speaker 1: and everything, it's not the easiest thing in the world
Speaker 1: to do. So the mobile device market really makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense to me. For thing, it takes away
Speaker 1: that that fear that suddenly you're gonna, you know, be
Speaker 1: focusing on the information in your glasses as opposed to
Speaker 1: the oncoming car. You know, that's a to me, that's
Speaker 1: a legitimate thing to worry about, because I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that I don't know about you, but I've been
Speaker 1: walking down the street before looking at my phone, reading
Speaker 1: Twitter messages and then suddenly realized that I was about
Speaker 1: to walk into a telephone poll. Yeah, you know, there
Speaker 1: is actually an iPhone application that uses the camera on
Speaker 1: the other side of the phone um and it will
Speaker 1: show you what's on the other side of your phone
Speaker 1: as you are working on it. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: problem for me because I have an iPod Touch which
Speaker 1: has no camera, right, so you're still you're still blind now.
Speaker 1: So the nice thing about the mobile devices is that
Speaker 1: you can take one element completely out of the the
Speaker 1: whole augmented reality issue, which is the idea that you
Speaker 1: no longer necessarily that camera. You don't need something to
Speaker 1: be able to look through because you're able to easily,
Speaker 1: you know, set the mobile device to the side and
Speaker 1: look around yourself. Um, what you do need is something
Speaker 1: that tells the device where it is and how it's oriented.
Speaker 1: So it has to have some sort of accelerometer so
Speaker 1: it knows which way it's facing asset or or which
Speaker 1: way it's you know, facing in the sense of is
Speaker 1: it is it portrait or landscape mode. You have to
Speaker 1: have some sort of GPS system so it knows the
Speaker 1: geographic location, and you need some sort of compass really
Speaker 1: to know which direction you're facing at any given time.
Speaker 1: This is starting to sound like something I'm sort of
Speaker 1: familiar with actually, how so, Um, basically the smartphone that
Speaker 1: most people have in their pockets these days, or the
Speaker 1: HTCG one. Yes, the HTCG one does have a compass,
Speaker 1: GPS and accelerometer, and the iPhone yeah, that's that also.
Speaker 1: Ran also willing to bet without a whole lot of
Speaker 1: additional detail, that Rim might have a reason for wanting
Speaker 1: to acquire dash. Yeah. Yeah, the iPhone three, we should say,
Speaker 1: has the compass. Yes, that's true, that's so. But I
Speaker 1: mean that more and more smartphones are starting to have
Speaker 1: these things built in. And uh, you may already have
Speaker 1: the makings of at least the basic augmented reality in
Speaker 1: your pocket right now. Well you happen to, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't so. Um. Yeah, there's actually an application right
Speaker 1: now for the iPhone that you can get that uses
Speaker 1: an augmented reality application. I think there are many, but
Speaker 1: there's one that made the news recently, right, but there
Speaker 1: they do it in varying degrees, right. The one I'm
Speaker 1: talking about is yelp and oh yeah, And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me is that the augmented reality function was
Speaker 1: a hidden feature. It wasn't designed. You know, if you
Speaker 1: were just using Yelp normally, I wouldn't even know necessarily
Speaker 1: that it was that it was working. So let's say
Speaker 1: you've got Yelp and you're walking down the street and
Speaker 1: then you um, you shake your phone three times while
Speaker 1: Yelp is running, it'll activate a secret feature called Monocle,
Speaker 1: and Monocle will give you a little overlay of the
Speaker 1: various places that are around you and tell you information
Speaker 1: about them. And the main thing would be like restaurants
Speaker 1: and and ratings, obviously, so you could hold your iPhone
Speaker 1: up and and point it at the h the pub
Speaker 1: that's across the street from you, and and read the reviews,
Speaker 1: and you might see that, hey, you know, the staff
Speaker 1: here is really friendly. They've got live music every night,
Speaker 1: and the food is great, and I think, awesome, I'll
Speaker 1: walk in and I'll have dinner there. Or you might
Speaker 1: see something like the the owner throws profanity at people
Speaker 1: left and right, and occasionally a fight breaks out for
Speaker 1: no apparent reason, and and there's a honky tonk piano
Speaker 1: player and who's missing some teeth in an eye, and
Speaker 1: you're thinking, you know what, that doesn't sound like what
Speaker 1: I want to do tonight, or maybe you're thinking, hey,
Speaker 1: that sounds exactly what I want to do tonight. But
Speaker 1: the point being that the application lets you make those
Speaker 1: kind of decisions right now. That's just again another very
Speaker 1: basic form of augmented reality. And it also blends in
Speaker 1: well with your your theory, your conspiracy theory about the
Speaker 1: iPhone and how they're just encouraging people to make applications
Speaker 1: that suggest you should shake it, throw it across the room,
Speaker 1: break it and by anyone. I call it the the
Speaker 1: wee phenomenon, we mote phenomenon where yeah, you you you're
Speaker 1: shaking the phone with all your might because you really
Speaker 1: want this thing to give you kay. And the next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you've just tossed it thirty feet and
Speaker 1: it's then it explodes as we have seen. You know,
Speaker 1: I iPhones and iPods can't explode if put under x
Speaker 1: an incredible pressure. Apple says that's not their fault. Yes,
Speaker 1: they say it's because of incredible pressure. It's not. It's
Speaker 1: just the way. Yeah know, we're both about to explode.
Speaker 1: We're both under incredible pressure now the Yeah, So that
Speaker 1: is part of my conspiracy theory that Apple, or at
Speaker 1: least some some application developers possibly in league with Apple,
Speaker 1: are trying to destroy iPhones. Watching right, so you have
Speaker 1: to go out and buy another one. I bought touches either.
Speaker 1: We should totally do a tech conspiracy theories podcast. We've
Speaker 1: talked about that. We actually have it on the list.
Speaker 1: Tech conspiracies is on our list of topics to cover.
Speaker 1: We just haven't hit it yet. So if any of
Speaker 1: you really want to hear a tech conspiracy podcast, write
Speaker 1: us and let us know and uh, and we'll bump
Speaker 1: that up the list. Think of a couple more than
Speaker 1: that we already like the ones that we're inventing as
Speaker 1: we go along. Maybe some that actually have other people
Speaker 1: believing them besides us. I mean we might have convinced
Speaker 1: some people today. Let's get back to our men a reality.
Speaker 1: We we boy talk about a rat hole. Actually, there
Speaker 1: are other applications, um that I can think of, um
Speaker 1: around here one of them. Um. There there are some
Speaker 1: that basically will use your information. Uh. Even even iPod
Speaker 1: users can find it because you can. It will use
Speaker 1: your WiFi information to get a rough idea of where
Speaker 1: you are. And then if you kind of tell what's
Speaker 1: going on and and say, well, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a restaurant around here, here's the place you
Speaker 1: can go. If you're looking for shopping. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't overlay information like augmented reality like we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: does but it does give you perspective on what's around you,
Speaker 1: and that that does make a difference. It does augment
Speaker 1: reality and some capacity, just not as thoroughly as it's
Speaker 1: not assarily immersive as the other option. Right and just
Speaker 1: down the street from us, Uh, there's the Georgia Tech
Speaker 1: Augmented Environments Laboratory, and they prefer they prefer augmented environment
Speaker 1: to augmented reality. Uh. It is because it captures our
Speaker 1: interest augmenting the user's perception and emphasizes our focus on
Speaker 1: the interaction between the user and their environment. UM. I
Speaker 1: can kind of understand that it's sort of similar to
Speaker 1: the way virtual reality experts prefer virtual environments now because
Speaker 1: the well, I mean, I'm not suggesting that this is
Speaker 1: why augmented reality changed, you know why they they are
Speaker 1: shying away from the term. But for virtual reality at
Speaker 1: any rate, it's because virtual reality got overhyped in the
Speaker 1: nineties and then kind of collapsed in on itself once
Speaker 1: the public realized that their perception of what virtual reality
Speaker 1: was and the reality of what virtual reality was were
Speaker 1: had a huge gap. And once that huge gap was realized,
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh, is that all it is an interest
Speaker 1: completely disappeared. So then you had all these virtual reality
Speaker 1: people saying, you know what, let's change the name of
Speaker 1: what we do because it has a stigma on it.
Speaker 1: Now I'm guessing the same sort of thing applies to
Speaker 1: some people who have been working in augmented reality, because
Speaker 1: it's a term that's been around for a while. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the neat things that one of the projects
Speaker 1: they had that um, I'm actually really curious about his
Speaker 1: was for Oakland Cemeteries Sunday in the Park event. Now,
Speaker 1: Oakland Cemetery is an historic cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, which
Speaker 1: is where we are, and uh, it's a phenomenal cemetery.
Speaker 1: Actually suffered severe damage in the tornado that hit us,
Speaker 1: you know, several months ago, many many many months ago. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of I think it's pretty much recovered
Speaker 1: from that at this point. But yeah, they had a
Speaker 1: Sunday in the Park event where the some of the
Speaker 1: people from the Augmented Environment Lab showed up and had
Speaker 1: a Voices of Oakland project where it was an audio
Speaker 1: only augmented reality experience where you would tour the cemetery
Speaker 1: and hear stories by a ghost. Wow. So as you
Speaker 1: as you moved through the cemetery, the appropriate audio would
Speaker 1: play on its own. And I'm thinking this is brilliant.
Speaker 1: I would love to see this used again for for
Speaker 1: a Halloween ghost to Worth of Oakland Cemetery. It would
Speaker 1: be amazing use of theater and technology. Now I'm a
Speaker 1: big theater person, so for me, this is really exciting
Speaker 1: because I think of it in terms of performance. And
Speaker 1: of course that's just one small project, but I thought
Speaker 1: that was really neat that that was the sort of
Speaker 1: thing they were They were looking at applications that would
Speaker 1: really get people interested in the technology. That's true. I
Speaker 1: mean it's just gonna be I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: one of those things that in fiction it's going to
Speaker 1: be a big to do. You know, you're gonna see
Speaker 1: it on TV and in the movies, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be all high tech and stuff. But in reality, it's
Speaker 1: gonna just trickle out piece by piece until it can
Speaker 1: become more of a more affordable. Yeah, you you kind
Speaker 1: of see it the technology, because I don't think people
Speaker 1: are gonna want to walk around with you know, special
Speaker 1: glasses in a big camera on top of their heads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way, the way, the way it's usually shown in
Speaker 1: television is not with special glasses or anything, but it's
Speaker 1: always like holograms and things like that, things that are
Speaker 1: we're still many many years is away from perfecting the
Speaker 1: technology necessary to get even the most basic form of
Speaker 1: what they're showing as being commonplace and television. But that's
Speaker 1: TV for you, you know, I mean, you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta take siliberties. If you were to show the real
Speaker 1: augmented reality as it stands now, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people would just be bored. Well right then, kind
Speaker 1: of like you are. Yeah, well no I'm not bored.
Speaker 1: I don't really have anything else to add. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: then I guess that moves us on to our segment
Speaker 1: of listener mail. Now, this listener mail was sent to
Speaker 1: us from someone who signed it as London. Now I
Speaker 1: could city possibly if so, they are very verbose. Um,
Speaker 1: I could say the name that was on the email,
Speaker 1: but I'm not gonna because it wasn't in the actual signature.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna call this person London, this girl
Speaker 1: lady London, I guess because she refers to herself as
Speaker 1: a lassie at one point. Now London wrote us a
Speaker 1: very long and thoughtful response to our our podcast on
Speaker 1: video game systems, and I'm just going to read a
Speaker 1: section of it, because if I were to do the
Speaker 1: full letter, it would be a podcast all on its own.
Speaker 1: When I was a wee lassie of seventeen, all my
Speaker 1: friends had great computers and systems it was, and my
Speaker 1: top level console was a first generation Nintendo and the
Speaker 1: old Attari I had from my Nanni's house. Now, I
Speaker 1: guess I make up for my childhood poverty with the
Speaker 1: fact that I have a top of the line alien
Speaker 1: Ware computer and each of the three consoles out at
Speaker 1: the moment we Xbox three, sixty p S three. Listening
Speaker 1: to your podcast, I reflected on what I use each
Speaker 1: system for and thought maybe this would help you too,
Speaker 1: since you were thinking of getting another system, so this
Speaker 1: I thought I'd share this because our listeners may be
Speaker 1: thinking the same thing. The Xbox is primary use in
Speaker 1: our house is as a media center, while the PS
Speaker 1: three has the same B center capabilities, the UI and
Speaker 1: general usability isn't nearly as good. I personally despise the
Speaker 1: Xbox controller, and in my opinion, no self respecting gamer
Speaker 1: can play a fighting game properly on that system. The
Speaker 1: only game I regularly play on the Xbox at the
Speaker 1: moment is Geometry Wars Evolved two and sometimes a rousing
Speaker 1: game of un I'll skip around a little bit. UH.
Speaker 1: The p S three I didn't purchase till earlier this
Speaker 1: year after the price drop. The reason I ended up
Speaker 1: getting it is because it is one of the best
Speaker 1: Blu Ray players on the market. I was a little
Speaker 1: hesitant because of the lack of backwards compatibility, but I
Speaker 1: ended up keeping my PS two and just putting it
Speaker 1: in the bedroom. Turns out I pretty much never used
Speaker 1: the PS two. Uh. Skipping around a little bit more
Speaker 1: down to the WE excuse me why I turned some
Speaker 1: pages the WE We originally got mainly for WE Sports,
Speaker 1: Mario Kart and rock Band. While they are fun games,
Speaker 1: I now own rock Band World Tour for the p
Speaker 1: S three. Should that itch strike and I found that
Speaker 1: now I've got a three six EMPs three, the WE
Speaker 1: sit silently and patiently off to the side. I can't
Speaker 1: honestly remember the last time I turned it on. I
Speaker 1: do think that WE is ideal for new gamers such
Speaker 1: as my mother, who's still two finger types. I don't
Speaker 1: mean that negatively, just as a fact of the matter.
Speaker 1: First person shooters should always, in my opinion, be played
Speaker 1: on a computer keyboard plus mouse for life. By the way,
Speaker 1: a while back, I tried to download the Window seven
Speaker 1: preview podcast. YadA, YadA, YadA, everything's mixed up. We are
Speaker 1: working on that. I want to respond a little bit
Speaker 1: to London here. Uh. First of all, I really enjoy
Speaker 1: your city. But second of all, Um, First the Xbox controller,
Speaker 1: you know she said she hated it. I love the
Speaker 1: Xbox controller. I hate the PlayStation controller. I have very
Speaker 1: long fingers and my hands are cramped when I use
Speaker 1: a PlayStation controller. No, I'm might after playing for half
Speaker 1: an hour, my hands feel like they're gonna fall off.
Speaker 1: They're just it's just too small. I like the Xbox controller,
Speaker 1: and I like that. I like the second generation original
Speaker 1: Xbox controller. Are you following me? The Xbox controller that
Speaker 1: came out with the very first Xbox is that was
Speaker 1: that was almost as big as the console. That was
Speaker 1: a little too big even for me. But the one
Speaker 1: that came up it was enormous. The one that came
Speaker 1: out after that, I loved. It was the perfect size
Speaker 1: for my hands. Uh. Now, you're not picky or anything,
Speaker 1: are you. I'm a little but so she so. She
Speaker 1: also mentioned that first person shooter should always be played
Speaker 1: on a computer. I have to disagree on that one
Speaker 1: as well. And the reason for that is that if
Speaker 1: you're using a mouse and a keyboard, most of the time,
Speaker 1: you're using the mouse with your right hand and you're
Speaker 1: using that to aim your your weapon, and you're using
Speaker 1: your left hand to move your character around, to strafe,
Speaker 1: to move forward, backwards, jump, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm left handed. I have never been able to use
Speaker 1: a left handed mouse because I've just always had computers
Speaker 1: that had the right hand mouse. So I've been stuck
Speaker 1: using right handed mouse. Um, which means I can't aim
Speaker 1: very well. I can't. I don't have that precision with
Speaker 1: my right hand. So it's why we don't call you
Speaker 1: dead eye right. Yeah, I'm I'm not the person to
Speaker 1: hand a sniper rifle too in a game on a computer. Uh.
Speaker 1: The controller helps a lot when I'm playing on a
Speaker 1: console because a lot of these games have a little
Speaker 1: bit of an auto aim feature, so it helps you
Speaker 1: when you're turning your weapon around and you're trying to
Speaker 1: fire on someone. Now, purists think that's terrible because they'd
Speaker 1: rather rely on their skill than on some sort of
Speaker 1: auto aim feature. People like me, who are at a
Speaker 1: disadvantage already in the game, appreciate the heck out of
Speaker 1: the auto aim feature because otherwise we would just spend
Speaker 1: the entire game getting shot in the head. And you're
Speaker 1: not the first person shooter player. That's why I didn't
Speaker 1: ask your opinion. So specialized controllers too, those are really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got one of those. I've got the first person shooter.
Speaker 1: That would be an advantage of having the computer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually have a first person shooter controller that um
Speaker 1: that I was really really good at. But I haven't
Speaker 1: played Xbox in so long that I would have to
Speaker 1: relearn how to use it because it's been ages. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that helped even out the playing field just
Speaker 1: a little for me. Well, thank you so much London
Speaker 1: for sending that email. And I know I did cut
Speaker 1: quite a bit out, but I did read the whole
Speaker 1: thing and I greatly appreciate it. And if any of
Speaker 1: you want to write us, please do. Our email address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about augmented reality. We have
Speaker 1: an article about how it will work because we're thinking
Speaker 1: more about the traditional lines and you never know what
Speaker 1: else might pop up. About various uh iPhone apps. You
Speaker 1: can find all that at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Crispy and I will talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
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