Giant killer robots from Hong Kong: Meet the augmented reality pioneer taking gaming and entertainment to a new level
Platform developed by the company of a Hong Kong-raised graphic designer could become a game-changer
Jason Yim may be on to a game-changer in the future of play among the tech-native generation. His digital marketing company, Trigger Global, has helped create interactive campaigns for movies from the series to In recent years, his team has been using augmented reality to enrich the experience of entertainment, including books and, more recently, tabletop games.
One of his current projects shows the power of this technology.
Imagine playing a game of chess with miniature robots as your pieces. In conventional board games you would roll a dice and physically move your pieces across the "battleground". But with this augmented reality video game, you hold up your tablet so its camera can capture everything that's on the table. The information is reinterpreted and realised on screen as an alternate universe in, say, a devastated city where your robots would clamber through ruins and attack opponents with missiles and cannons. It's chess where the pieces come to life on screen. That's the wonder of augmented reality.
It certainly felt like magic when he first came across that technology several years ago, says Los Angeles-based Yim, who was on a visit to give a presentation at last month's TEDx Hong Kong event.
"When you're just pointing at a poster or you're pointing at a print magazine, it just doesn't feel complete because it's obvious that it's … [just a] marker. But when you can point at an object and the object comes to life, where things are tracking with that physical object, there's magic there."
