“The gaming press is certainly having fun talking up the potential game-changing (sorry) impact from all this on that industry, and for good reason: The iPhone 3GS was already a first-class handheld gaming console even without the traditional buttons and joysticks,” San Miguel reports. “The accelerometer and the juiced-up processor provided a handy platform for developers to take their own games to the next level, and most of them came through, judging from the continued success of the App Store and the interest in writing for it.”
“So now those developers have a gyroscope to think about as it works in conjunction with the smartphone’s existing accelerometer, compass and super-fast A4 processor — the same one found in the iPad. Now gamers can set themselves up in open space via a new way to control their characters or vehicles in a gaming app,” San Miguel reports. “And if it will work for the iPhone 4, why not the next versions of the iPad and the iPod touch?”
San Miguel reports, “But I want to hear some talk and read some thoughts about how the six-axis capabilities in the gyro/accelerometer/compass ensemble will affect next-level development of augmented reality apps. I have to admit that I’m a sucker for AR toys like Layar, which pop up balloons with Yelp recommendations, Wikipedia info and Twitter activity over whatever you’re looking at live with the smartphone’s camera. It’s my own heads-up display on the world, and I rank the PCQ (personal coolness quotient) at warp factor 9. So now developers get to integrate a gyroscope into those particular applications, and there’s nowhere to go but up — while pitching and rolling.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “jax44” for the heads up.]