The name "Nintendo Amusement Park" is actually a misnomer, because an amusement park is a collection of rides, games and other forms of entertainment. It's really a single "ride" -- a real-life interactive adventure that allows players to dress up as Mario or Luigi, enter the Mushroom Kingdom and perform the actions that the heroes perform in the video game. Players can jump over obstacles, land on and ride moving platforms, and smash enemies. They can even collect gold coins and punch power-up boxes

How do you give normal human beings the superhuman abilities Mario and Luigi have in the video-game world? You help them jump, of course -- and jump high. Jumping is just one requirement, though. The other is the world itself -- the Mushroom Kingdom complete with its moving platforms, obstacles and enemies. The designers plan to use a variety of mechanical systems and objects to duplicate these effects and create a large, navigable obstacle course. When complete, the Nintendo Amusement Park will be a 100-meter-long course that fully replicates the side-scrolling, platform action of "Super Mario Bros." To simulate the various worlds and levels of the video game, the designers will build different challenge areas -- or courses.

That's the ultimate vision, anyway. Right now, the park exists as a much simpler prototype, with plans for a gradual, phased implementation of the more complex gaming environment. Let's look at the prototype in greater detail.

The Prototype
The Nintendo Amusement Park prototype recreates the core elements of "Super Mario Bros" on a smaller, simpler scale. Although it's fairly crude, the prototype demonstrates the basic principles and technologies necessary to recreate "Super Mario Bros" in the real world. Those parts are:

• A motorized truss that acts as a support structure and attachment point for the suspension system.
• A suspension system that boosts players' jumps.
• A harness that connects players to the suspension system.
• An obstacle course that replicates the physical challenges of the video game. The obstacle course in the prototype consists of inflatable objects and foam props placed on the ground, balloons attached to the background sheet and boxes suspended on wires from the overhead truss.

Future Models

The addition of a sliding overhead track allows players to move along one or two axes, giving them greater mobility. Second-generation models will also use stronger bungee cords and add another dimension of movement.

In third-generation models, the overhead track moves along two axes, enabling a player to enjoy three dimensions of movement:

1. The suspension system enables the player to jump vertically (one dimension)
2. One axis of the track enables side-to-side motion (second dimension)
3. The second axis enables movement along the length of the course (third dimension)

In the second- and third-generation versions of the Nintendo Amusement Park, a stagehand will control movement along the overhead track. He will anticipate the movement required to navigate the course and pull the player along. Ultimately, the goal is to eliminate the stagehand and introduce a motorized winch to control players' movements. The motor will wind and unwind stunt wires on a set of spools. Stunt wires will replace the bungee cords because they aren't limited by elastic forces.

A simple motorized winch can't detect and interpret a player's movements, though. That's why the designers want to incorporate a haptic winch to control player's movements. A haptic winch would be controlled by software and move the player automatically. It responds to data supplied by infrared cameras located on the track and from strain sensors mounted on the suspension cables. When a player jumps, the sensors and cameras detect information about his force and direction and feed it to the computer program. This program makes split-second calculations and triggers the motor on the winch, which winds up or spools out the cable accordingly. The result: Players get an appropriately-amplified boost. They can take off from the ground with amazing acceleration, or land as gently as a feather. They can even perform double and triple jumps.

This elaborate maneuvering will be necessary because the future versions of the park's obstacle course will run for hundreds of yards and use foam crash padding, both to create obstacles and to protect players from impact injuries. The future Nintendo Amusement Park will also have mechanical platforms that move up and down. Hydraulic actuators, which can lift and hold heavy objects without brakes, will move the platforms. Pressure feedback systems, like those used in elevator doors, will prevent players from getting crushed if they get trapped between platforms.

Reality Check

Let's take a brief look at each to better understand physically-augmented reality:

• Augmented reality (AR)
  In an augmented-reality system, computers are not used to recreate the real world. Instead, they add virtual information to a user's sensory perceptions. Most augmented-reality systems rely on "see-through" devices, such as goggles, that overlay graphics and text on the user's otherwise normal view of the environment. See How Augmented Reality Works for an in-depth look at this type of technology.

  Augmented-reality displays overlay computer-generated graphics and text onto the real world.

• Physically-augmented reality
  Physically augmented reality uses objects, props and mechanical systems to transform the real world into a fantasy world. A theme park is a good example of physically-augmented reality, except the users in most theme parks are passive observers. In physically-augmented reality, users actively participate in the fantasy.
• Virtual reality (VR)
  Virtual-reality systems, like augmented-reality ones, use computers. In virtual reality, however, computers replace the real world entirely. Jaron Lanier, VR's founding father, defined virtual reality as "a computer-generated, interactive, three-dimensional environment in which a person is immersed."

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