Video: The most entertaining part of watching the modern Olympics is hoping you catch some kind of drama, scandal or debacle. And while the IOC has hoped that the addition of new sports such as mixed doubles curling will breathe new life into the games, the Olympics should instead introduce sports such as mixed doubles interactive Pong – now that I’d stay up late to watch.
Relying on a single LIDAR sensor (the same technology that lets autonomous cars see the road ahead) in the corner of a room that can track up to 12 different people at once, a design shop called Moment Factory created GRiD: A reimagined and gigantic version of Pong that swaps paddle controls for the movement of players.
The game is a two-on-two affair, with each team requiring both players to shuffle back and forth in order to move their giant paddle into position to intercept the bouncing ball. There are power-ups that can be activated as well, courtesy of question blocks that randomly appear in the game. Those can speed up gameplay, or give one of the teams a competitive advantage.
Balk at e-gaming all you like, but playing this game for half an hour looks far more physically demanding than Olympic curling.