The VR/AR Global Summit was held on the 21st and 22nd of September in Vancouver, Canada this year and 3 companies have unveiled an interesting joint project. Shape Immersive, Occipital, and the creators of CryptoKitties have teamed up to work on a new game exploring a mixed-reality experience. In short, players will have to save little kitties from the dreadful ‘Kitty Kong’ almost in real life.

Alex Chuang, Co-founder and CEO of Shape Immersive, shared some details in a post on Medium.

Who’s Behind It

Shape Immersive, a promising startup, plans to build a decentralized spatial mapping protocol so that spatial data will be universally available for anyone. It will help with developing applications in augmented reality. The use of blockchain and a spatial data marketplace will allow for creating a safe network to use geospatial data. Basically, it will be a huge database of spatial data that anyone can use.

Occipital is a science lab/technology company that successfully builds full stack computer vision hardware as well as has released innovative spatial apps like Canvas and TapMeasure.

And who hasn’t heard of CryptoKitties? It is considered to be the most popular blockchain game. It is centered around breedable and collectible characters called CryptoKitties. Each cat is unique and exclusively owned. They are also digital assets that come in form of non-fungible ERC 721 tokens.

A New Kind of Game Experience

Alex Chuang seems to be very positive about the possibility of working with “a familiar IP like CryptoKitties.” He noted that “by digitizing the physical world, virtual characters can understand our physical environment and interact with it. This creates a sense of wonder and magic for the end users.”

CryptoKitties’ Bryce Bladon is also excited about the Kitties coming into “real life.”

“With blockchain technology, digital assets like CryptoKitties are given life — but with augmented and virtual reality, they can come alive.”

According to Alex Chuang:

“This new multiplayer mixed reality experience is powered by Occipital’s depth sensor and its mixed reality framework, Bridge Engine. The depth sensor is used to scan the physical space, generating an accurate 3D model of the world that the AR devices can track on. This makes occlusion (hiding virtual objects behind physical objects), collision (colliding virtual objects with physical objects) and casting of virtual shadows on real-world objects possible.”

The co-founder of Occipital, Jeff Powers, noted that a convincing mixed-reality is not possible without understanding the environment. He considers it to be one of the key elements for “increasing believability and immersion.”

Combining blockchain and augmented reality is a groundbreaking experiment. Popularizing AR by bringing adorable little characters like CryptoKitties into the mixed-reality game is definitely a clever move and a game-changer. The Lumi Wallet team absolutely loves and supports such innovative and forward thinking and will continue to bring you more news about this industry. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit and join our Telegram public chat.