The World's Smallest Shooting Game Is Played Using An Electron Beam Generator
The project, led by Professor Takayuki Hoshino of Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Engineering in Japan, allows players to control a small triangle shooting at enemy blobs on the display, much like in Atari's 1979 game Asteroids. This version, though, is "nano-mixed reality", where the digital world interfaces with the real world on teeny, tiny scales.
“The system projects the game ship onto real nanophysical space as an optical image and force field, creating an MR where nanoparticles and digital elements interact,” Hoshino said in a statement. “The game is a shooting game in which the player manipulates a ship and shoots bullets at real nanoparticles to repel them. Through this, we successfully demonstrated real-time interaction between digital data and physical nano-objects.”
The enemy blobs in the videogame are real nanoparticles, minute polystyrene balls. Players can move their character, the triangle, around using a joystick – what they are actually doing is manipulating the scanning patterns of an electron beam. These beams are used to generate complex electric fields, whilst also providing real-time images of the nano-scale particles. Players can then "fire" the electron beam "nano bullets" at the enemy nanoparticles, moving them around at will.