Augment your real climbing skills

Of course, you now the VR experience preview The Climb. But that’s so un-augmented. ;-)
Why not go for a real climb, but still have the fun of digital enrichment around you while out and up there!

Jon Cheng created a demo a while back: use a projector to overlay the to-be-climbed track with beacons to reach right onto the wall. Touching/crossing those with your hands or body will mark them as complete and you can finish the defined climbing track in measured time.

Now Brooklyn Boulders has teamed up with Jon to install the system in their boulder halls as reported by wired. You can adjust the tracks to the specific setup and grips of the walls and predefine any kind of routes (from easy to hard) and display the current time and hall of fame. See it yourself:

I like the demo a lot! A simple thing, but great impact. If you go out climbing in the hall to be 100% analogue and physically present without digital fancy stuff around you, you might skip this one. But otherwise it’s a winning combination – little effort of simple technology (DLP, camera, laptop) resulting in a big fun digital upgrade to allow competitive climbing and a gamified, socializing approach. Without the need of changing the wall physically or to install additional buttons, triggers, displays, etc.

Cool demo! Can I have it installed in Munich, please?