iPhone 4 gets a gyroscope and becomes a window into virtual worlds
14th June 2010 by Martin
Steve Jobs announced in his WWDC 2010 keynote that the iPhone 4 will have a gyroscope. The numerous developers in the audience applauded and are obviously looking forward to working with this new piece of hardware. This is not surprising as it adds exciting new functions for gaming in a 3D environment.
Until now iPhones have been equipped with an accelerometer which has been used in some games but was very limited in terms of sensitivity and precision of the movement. Now the accelerometer and gyroscope will work together and enable iPhones to sense precise motion on six axis – up/down, left/right, forward/backward. Additionally airplane-like movements like pitch, yaw and roll can also be detected. Similar techniques are used in Wii controllers and the upcoming Playstation Move.
The big difference here is that the iPhone will combine controller and screen, allowing the players to turn themselves while still being able to see what’s going on in the game world. When you try this on the Wii or with Playstation Move you will most likely end up watching your family sitting on the couch with the TV in your back.
Steve Jobs demoed the new feature by playing a game of Jenga (watch the video on YouTube). He moved the iPhone in certain ways to turn around the block of wooden tiles and touched the device to remove some of them. Afterwards he told the developers that this was a demo they quickly pulled together and that he can’t wait to see what the devs in the audience will be able to do with it. I can’t wait to see that either.
In the beginning developers will just dip their toes into it. After all, it’s a new playing field and the feature won’t be available for users with an old iPhone. Even if Apple sells a couple of millions of iPhone 4 devices fast it is a relatively limited market not leaving any space for expensive adventures. However we might eventually end up seeing games where players can walk around in virtual worlds, detect an enemy behind them and turn their whole body to aim at the target. Even greater are the possibilities for exploring 3D environments. You can look down to the floor, up to the ceiling, walk towards a window and lean out of it. There are a lot of options for first person shooters but also MMOs. These games rely on realistic virtual worlds and this can be the window to the world making its exploration more exciting than ever.
It will take a while until we see the first real approaches to something like this. Maybe it will also turn out that the iPhone’s screen is too small to create an immersive experience but it is to be expected that the much bigger iPad will eventually get a gyro, too. When this happens, the first experiments have been done on its smaller cousin and people will be ready for more.
The downside? Typically gamers aren’t weightlifters and holding an iPhone or an even heavier iPad straight in front of you for a long time will turn into an exercise. Also the iPhone’s battery is not ready for hour- long online gaming sessions yet. And you really don’t want to play a game where you turn yourself around 360 degrees with a cable plugged into the device. You might end up strangling yourself. The iPad#s battery last for about 10 hours but if you design a game which should allow players on both devices to join the same game world you have to keep the weakest link in the back of your head.
It is more likely that games will get adjusted and offer short bites of virtual world gameplay. Around 10-30 minutes per session should be fine until arms get weak or the phone’s battery reaches a level where one rather stops playing to have enough juice left for potential phone calls. Another option would be to include the gyro feature in mini games embedded into a more traditional game. That way arms could get a rest until for instance the hero has to do a certain task or starts a fight (bow and arrow tower defence anyone?)
What do you think? Will the gyro change the way we play on mobile devices and if so, what will developers be able to do with it?
Tags: Accelerometer, apple, Apps, development, gyro, gyroscope, hardware, iPhone, Jenga, virtual world, WWDC
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