Augmented reality clothing brands, like Zappar, certainly aren’t restricted to making fashion to be adapted by LARPers. I suspect, for now, they may be restricted to fashion for geeks though.
What a piece of AR clothing does is transform, on screen, when viewed with the right app. The best way to describe it is to show you a Zaphat video.
The window into the alternative reality is what makes me think of LARPing possibilities. I certainly don’t mean that fantasy LARPers can do without actual werewolf masks.
However, a cyberpunk style LARP could begin to reflect the net as well as meatspace with affordable technology like this. It could be something as simple as Zaphat “gangs” in the game. Lost your device? You can’t be sure which gang the person you’re talking to in meatspace belongs to.
Alternatively, the tech could be used for something like aura detection or a different method of representing obfuscation powers in a vampire LARP.
The fantastic John Carpenter movie, “They Live”, also springs to mind. Couldn’t LARP that without something like Zaphats or a competitor product but it becomes a very interesting LARP posibility with it.
What do you think? Possibilities or is this gamer barking up the wrong virtual tree with this idea?
