Augmented Lakes and Rivers
On the illustration of waypoints
One design option the GPS Mission designer offers, is to add pictures to waypoints and riddles. The most intuitive way to use this option probably is to add pictures of the places one guides the players to. But since this is what players will see in reality anyways, I was trying to think of what else this option could be used for. It could be pictures showing details the player has to look for (like I described here).
Another possibility is adding pictures of what is not there in the real world and in this way augment reality. And what to augment it with? Well, there is countless options. The first series of missions I used illustrations this way was the "Virtual Fishing" series. The story is really simple: Being located at (or even in) rivers or lakes these missions enable players to do some virtual fishing. The pictures one receives on location show all kind of things that one virtually pulled out of the water. The "Virtual Mushrooms" work pretty much the same way only that it´s imaginary mushrooms one encounters in the woods.
While these are landscape-specific missions, a more site-specific variation is the time travel missions I was reporting on last week. Here players will receive pictures of past events that took place right where they´re standing at - things, that can´t be seen at present.
There is many more options one could think of like virtual companions or characters one meets to name a concept I am working on at the moment. I am curious to see what else GPS-Missions will augment the world with.