SINGAPORE : Top students from the Singapore-MIT Alliance Computer Science programme have unveiled new technological breakthroughs in the gaming arena.

The gaming applications - used on HP iPAC pocket PCs - are the first in the region.

It took the students just six short weeks to come up with the innovations.

The innovations employ sound, movement and gestures.

And if these students are right in their research, computer gaming in the future will no longer be desk-bound.

In fact, one may even get to play against someone on the other side of the world.

Donny, a masters student in the Singapore-MIT Alliance programme, said, "This game is different. You get to interact very physically with the game, you get to move about to control the characters. That's bringing the person back to the game itself..."

Donny is one of the 30 students selected to take part in the "Pervasive Human-Centric Computing" programme.

Jointly pioneered by National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and US-based renowned computing school, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it is the world's first distance learning programme for developing advanced interface uses for handheld devices.

One of the aims of the distance learning programme is to illustrate how advanced technology can be used to bring people together.

Cham Tat Jen, Fellow and Associate Professor, School of Computer Engineering, NTU, said, "Currently, they are just putting these technologies into games...but what gives them sense is how these technologies can be used in other kind of applications, like eldercare. (For example), how do you monitor the elderly with all the variable senses, and also in retail, smart homes?"

A total of nine multi-networked games were developed by the distance learning students. - CNA