Qualcomm has demoed a new AR technology at its Uplinq conference in San Diego that allows gamers to build terrains with anything around you before transporting it into the game you are playing.

Demoing the new technology, which will be available to games developers in spring 2014, Jay Wright the company's head of AR used a Sony Xperia Tablet Z and a 3D sensing camera similar to the Microsoft Kinect from camera sensor company PrimeSense, called the PrimeSense Capri.

In the demo, Wright showed how he could quickly take a coffee table with a tissue box, a vase, and other objects and put them in a 3D landscape in which to play.

Using a sub-technology within SmartTerrain, called SmartMesh, the software then works out the structure of the objects and assigns a mesh to them accordingly.

A quick press of a button covered the coffee table in grass, made the objects into rock structures and populated the game with enemies.

Gamers will then be able to add further characters by physically scanning the object with the phone - or in this case, tablet - to enter them into the game in a similar way to games like Skylanders and the new Disney Infinity but without the need of a special plinth.

Wright says the game physics adapt and change according to what you've got on the desk.

At the moment the concept is still just that, but should be winging its way into apps by this time next year.