Madison Avenue has unleashed an onslaught of Augmented Reality products and services, notably Virtual Sean and Virtual Mirror. As with any new technology, it all comes down to execution, and so far almost all of my experiences have felt gimmicky. There are, however, some notable exceptions on which I’m keeping my eye: video gaming and mobile devices. Nintendo’s Wii console proved to consumers that gaming can be experienced with natural gestures, escaping the shackles of traditional handheld controllers once and for all. Now, Sony’s Playstation Move and Microsoft’s Project Natal push the experience even farther with camera and motion-based systems that mimic a user’s every move. Stunning the game industry at the 2009 E3 conference, Microsoft’s Project Natal was demonstrated through games in which the user can interact with his environment using nothing more than natural body gestures. It uses an infrared sensor attached to the Xbox 360 console to track 48 skeletal points on a human body. This level of detail not only allows for tracking arm and leg motions, but even individual fingers and facial expressions, prospectively bringing to an end the era of stiff mugs that are part and parcel to ordinary gaming.

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