Leading up to the PS Vita's launch, Sony repeatedly reiterated the importance of augmented reality for their platform and how it set the system apart from mobiles and the 3DS. Unfortunately, when it finally did come out last month, the AR games were fiddly, glitchy and generally required cards that are easy to lose.
But the future may be bright for augmented games on the handheld as Sony has unveiled a surprisingly promising cardless software that links virtual and real world objects – Magnet. The software, which 3rd party developers will be able to use, somehow works out the position of tens of interest points to work out the Vita's real world surroundings, and then can stick virtual items on top of them.
Shown at GDC this week, videos of the presentation have now popped up online:
Diarmid Campbell, a programmer at the EyeToy R&D group at Sony London, and the person you can hear in the video, said:
The PS Vita is the only affordable portable device out there at the moment that has the power to do this.
During the slideshow, it was revealed that Magnet uses between 1 and 1 1/2 cores out of the Vita's 3 to work its magic.
