Pokémon Go, the latest “AR” infused sequel to the classic Nintendo franchise is sweeping the world on mobile phone platforms. But what would it look like running on a dedicated augmented reality headset? Developer CapitolaVR decided to find out by building a Pokemon Go inspired test game for their brand new Microsoft HoloLens.
All potential issues with Pokémon Go’s classification as an augmented reality title aside, the game has been incredibly popular since its launch earlier in the month, going so far as to bump Nintendo’s stock points by a significant margin. And many are indeed hopelessly addicted to the “gotta catch ’em all” formula that has defined the core appeal of Pokémon since inception.
But what would Pokémon Go look like were it running on a headset build from the ground up for augmented reality applications, instead of general purpose mobile phone hardware? Developers over at CapitolaVR in Amsterdam decided to try and this is what they came up with when targeting their shiny new Microsoft HoloLens AR headset – complete with interactive hand gestures. You can see the results in the video above.
Built in Unity with the HoloLens SDK, the developers tell us that they’ve been “amazed” at how easy it was to quickly get an AR application up and running on Microsoft’s Development Kit. And whilst you may think there are elements of this video, tracking in particular, which look a little shonky, bear in mind one important thing: Capitola only received their HoloLens yesterday. An impressive endorsement of Microsoft’s development environment then and potentially encouraging for developer adoption in the future.
No word if CapitolaVR plan to take this concept further, but we’ll let you know if they do.
