Sony debuts new augmented reality technology for use in future games

PS4 augmented reality
That's some fancy AR tech you've got there

The hunt for Sony's elusive sold-out camera is going to get a whole lot harder after you watch these videos.

Here's the skinny: The first video shows how AR cards can interact in real time and calculate collisions and fluid motion on the fly. That's a fancy way of saying, "look! You can move water back and forth without the system crashing."

Is this going to sell a boatload more PS4s on its own? No, probably not. What it does show us, though, is that those Japanese engineers are hard at work implementing new ways for us to play next-gen games.

The second video has something a bit more exciting to anyone who's ever watched Jurassic Park: dinosaurs. My Japanese is a bit rusty, but it looks like a lighting source is getting processed in real-time and causes the dinosaur to react to its changing environment. Plus, there's a catchy J-Pop number about 0:55 in.

Again, we're not looking at the next The Last of Us (though you can look forward to that coming to PS4 in the coming months), but lighting recognition and AR cards could have practical uses in playing trading card games like HearthStone or Magic: The Gathering.

We wrote in-depth about how augmented reality was slowly fading away because of the major advances in virtual reality, but is it truly time for AR to step into the limelight?

Check out the videos and post your thoughts on what you'd like to see this tech be used for in the comments below.

Via PlayStation Japan

Nick Pino

Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.