iPhone Conrolled Parrot AR.Drone Quadricopter Gets Augmented Reality Chase Game For iOS

This game is called AR.Pursuit and it'll make controlling your flying machine all the more fantastic with augmented reality – available at the end of November in the Apple App Store. It's a two-player game where you control your AR.Drone VS a friend's, blasting away at them with missiles and machine guns, playing cat and dog in a real world / virtual reality world simulation. It's so weird! It's so wild! It looks like so much fun!

If you're unfamiliar with the AR.Drone experience, take a look at our Hands-on post and come on back after you're done. Then take a look at this game. There are two roles: "pursuer" and "pursued." The pursuer is equipped with both an automatic machine gun and missiles, the machine gun firing whenever the frontal camera detects the pursued AR.Drone, while the missiles are fired by shaking your iPhone/iPod touch/iPad. Once you hit your opponent, you switch roles, they now act as the pursuer and you the pursued.

Once your iDevice is connected to your AR.Drone, one player just has to select "create" and the color of their opponent's color and type of hull. The second player selects "join," the components of the first person's flier, and the game is on! What you view through your iDevice is a view of your AD.Drone is seeing. Each game lasts between 1 and 9 minutes, roles are defined randomly at the beginning of the game, and the app will cost $2.99. Cheep! Check out the full press release below, and check out the fun preview video!

AR.Pursuit: The first game in Augmented Reality especially developed for the AR.Drone

SOUTHFIELD, Mich., Nov. 18, 2010 — Parrot, a global leader in wireless devices for mobile phones, announces the availability of AR.Pursuit, a game in augmented reality that takes advantage of the exceptional technical and flight capabilities of the Parrot AR.Drone.

Available end of November in the Apple App Store, AR.Pursuit enables players to measure and challenge their piloting skills.

The rules of the game

AR.Pursuit is a two-player pursuit game, where a player has to escape from the other one, as in the game of cat and mouse.

The "pursuer" has two kinds of virtual weapons to reach its opponent:

- Automatic machine gun: as soon as the frontal camera detects the pursued AR.Drone, bullets are automatically sent in order to slow it down. When it is hit, the AR.Drone will physically 'react' to the attack and the escape maneuvers will be more difficult for the pilot.

- Missiles: when the opponent is locked on the screen, the pilot of the pursuer AR.Drone has to shake his/her iPhone/iPod touch/iPad to send a missile.

When it is hit by a missile, the "pursued" becomes "pursuer" and so on. At half time, the roles are automatically reversed. The winner is the player who has the longest escape time during the entire game.

A technological first

Once the Bluetooth of the iDevice is on, each player connects to his/her AR.Drone in Wi-Fi and launches AR.Pursuit.

One of the players selects the "create" option on the main menu and indicates his/her opponent's color and type of hull (indoor or outdoor).

The second player selects the "join" option in the main menu and also indicates the characteristics of his/her opponent. Then the game can start.

Each player can see on the screen of his/her iPhone/iPod touch/iPad what the AR.Drone is seeing. Each action, a shoot received or launched, will also be visualized on the screen via the magic of augmented reality.

Note: If the game is played with indoor hulls, players should place the colored stickers (sold with the AR.Drone) on it.

AR.Pursuit is an enthralling game that makes the most of the extreme maneuverability and stability of the AR.Drone, and which dives the players into a world where real and virtual are mingling... A first!

* Game time: 1 to 9 minutes (3 minutes by default)

* The roles of each player are arbitrarily defined at the beginning of the game.

* Game available around Nov. 26 in the App StoreSM

* Price: $2.99