On August 30, Sony will be showing off its new dynamic lighting technique for the PlayStation 4 that has been used to great effect to bring us the suite of SmartAR. The demonstration will be held in Osaka at the, I shit you not, the Hatsune Miku Magical Mirai 2014 show, for which Sony Computer Entertainment is a sponsor.
The reason that this lighting technique is notable at all is because it fixes one of the biggest problems that AR technology has had till date- objects rendered within the augmented reality don’t respond to lighting and shadows in the real world, which means they look artificial and disconnected from the real world. The new dynamic lighting model fixes this by having the rendered object to respond to, and interact with, light and shadow in the real world.
That’s actually pretty neat, although, considering that AR remains largely a gimmick with not much in the way of actual, meaningful applications to gameplay, I don’t think this will amount to anything much in the end. We’ll see, though.