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Mscape

Mscape
Mscape logo.png
Developer(s) Hewlett Packard
Operating system Windows Mobile
Type gaming platform

Mscape was a mobile media gaming platform developed by Hewlett Packard that could be used to create location-based games. The development of Mscape was discontinued (and its website mscapers.com shut down) on March 31, 2010.

The Mscape platform is flexible. HP encourages developers to use Mscape to create not just games, but also informational guides to points of interest, imaginative stories about places, and practical information about worksites. Mscape makes a player's GPS location an element of the gameplay. Events in a game are triggered by a player's location, and the player interacts with a game by moving from place to place.

Mscape is used to create mediascapes, interactive experiences made up of video, audio, images, and text. Mscape stores the digital media files in a structure that associates them with positions from a GPS system. Players play mediascapes on a Windows Mobile device, such as a mobile phone or a PDA, that's GPS enabled. As players move around, the device senses their position and activates the appropriate media files.

Mscape had its origins in 2002 as Mobile Bristol, a project that explored how mobile devices and pervasive information technology could enhance people's interactions with their physical environments and with each other in urban and public spaces.

With funding from the British government, researchers in HP Labs Bristol, the University of Bristol, and Appliance Studio collaborated on several trials, working with artists, writers, educators, and others to create a series of interactive, context-aware mobile experiences. In one trial, visitors to Bristol's harbor could virtually navigate the history of what was once one of Britain's busiest ports. In another, middle school students could experience life as a lion by walking around a virtual savannah.

In 2007, HP made the authoring suite and mobile player software available for download at no cost from the Mscapers community website.

Mscape has evolved from research in Augmented reality (which deals with the combination of real world and computer generated data) and from developments in location-based services (services available through a mobile device based on the device’s geographical location). The Mscape technology is also an example of Ubiquitous computing and a context-aware pervasive system.


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