augmentedreality

It’s always fun to see augmented reality installed in public places. Though I have yet to see one in person the resulting videos always make it look like I have missed out on something special. How else could you feed a pack of dinosaurs or stroke a leopard in the middle of a busy shopping mall but though the magic of augmented reality.

Thanks to the National Geographic many shoppers were able to exactly that, and more.

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Copyright © 2012 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Original article post by Augmented Planet www.augmentedplanet.com [digital fingerprint= aug483920]

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When you think about augmented reality browsers, gaming is probably not something that springs immediately to mind. Sure other augmented reality browser platforms have dipped their toes in to gaming but these have mostly been location based affairs that require you to move from one location to another and hunt objects down.

Never one to follow the crowd, with the launch of Wikitude 7 and Wikitude’s new ARchitect Engine, developers are now able to create AR gaming experiences using industry standard development tools such as HTML, Javascript, and CSS for Android and iOS platforms. These new tools are designed to target both existing AR developers and the games developers community.

Developers have been quick off the mark to take advantage the new platform with several launch titles:

Bubble Tap which has been developed exclusively for Wikitude by Team Vienna Games, (MMO 7Million, Facebook Zombiees!) whose founders are previous staff members from Rockstar Games. Being one of the first games for the platform, Bubble Tap requires the user to tap a stream of bubbles floating around in virtual space. You’ll need plenty of space but its pretty addictive

Spice Attack is a play on the classic console title, Space Invaders. Instead of green invaders seeking to land and wreak havoc, Spice Attack features a series of seriously spicy chilis that would like to overheat terra firma. Aiming their mobile device to the skies, players must shoot down the invading Spice Attackers through a unique augmented reality interface.

Swat the Fly is a fast paced game that allows users to serve up a healthy bug crushing around them. Gamers can interact with their surroundings and must move and rotate to spot flies in the augmented reality view and quickly release a fly swatter to gain points.

All the games are surprisingly fun and available for free. Just install the Wiktiude browser from your respective store and you’ll find them on the home screen.

If you are a developer and you want to create your own games then point your browser at: www.wikitude.com/developer/sdk/download where you’ll find everything you need.

More about Wikitude games

 

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Copyright © 2012 This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Original article post by Augmented Planet www.augmentedplanet.com [digital fingerprint= aug483920]

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What will the home theater system of tomorrow look like?

This is the question Albert Hwang raises in his third part on spatial computing, I wanted to share today.

He continues to nicely discuss the details on possible virtual and mixed reality interaction forms as he did with his first two videos before. The living room feels more like a VR environment (such as a CAVE), but simulated with his (fake) see-through goggles, combining real and virtual.

Interaction is a crucial part for really working mixed reality and is often neglected. People use awkward devices like flysticks, spacemice, etc. often not using the full potential of the human physiognomy: people are seen as one handed, one fingered beings! But we could have much easier interactions, when more of these thoughts – like the ones from Albert – find an open ear.

I especially like the way objects flicker and seem electrically charged when crossing the wall and how he considers security issues like avoiding to bump into the wall, when getting to close, by turning off the VR information in that spot. Easy well thought out ideas with known pinch gestures in three dimensions! Enjoy!

To not forget a brief news flash:

• metaio releases their new version of the mobile SDK, including gravity aligned and feature tracking!
• The AR Summit in London will take place June, 13th! Check their program on augmentedrealitysummit.com.

The award winning augmented reality browser; Wikitude has recently been completely refreshed and the shiny new version 7.0  is  available in the various app stores.

Wikitude if you haven’t used it before is an augmented reality browser that displays a variety of content live in the camera window. Using Wikitude you can find anything from who is tweeting to the locations of the nearest pubs and bars around your current location. Unlike a map, Wiktude uses the camera to present the information so the locations are overlaid in augmented reality.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, the first thing that will strike you with the new version is the new featured screen which looks absolutely amazing. It reminds me of the Android Marketplace screen. Presenting featured content in such a graphical way simply begs the user to interact with the content and to explore.

While the new look and feel will get most of the attention, under the hood there is also a number of improvements. For example, 7.0 now supports location based triggers, audio and animation. Location triggers in particular are exciting because they enable actions to occur when a user visits a location. A developer could for example trigger an audio recording of a famous landmark when the user comes within range. Developers are also able to build their own user interface in CSS/HTML/Javascript so buttons can be placed on the screen to perform custom actions. This gives the developer more control over content and limits design only to the imagination.

The Wiktude browser has been voted AR browser of the year for 3 consecutive years so the formula is working, the new version is definitely staking an claim early to make that  a record breaking 4. If you haven’t looked at Wikitude for a while, or if you want to try out an augmented reality browser then the new Wikitude is well worth a look.

Wikitude is available for:

• Android
• iOS
• BackBerry
• WP7
• Symbian

Download links are here: www.wikitude.com/tour/wikitude-world-browser/download

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ARE is almost upon us, but if you are unable to make the Augmented Reality Event being held in the US later this week, fear not because the event will now be streamed .

For $99 you can watch the entire event in the comfort of your own home or office and you wont miss any of the action. The event begins on Tuesday at 9am PST. For full details of the agenda visit the event website at: augmentedrealityevent.com

For more info on streaming go to: www.augmentedrealityevent.com/video

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Dear metaio ecosystem, The year has started off with the launch of our metaio Mobile SDK 3.1 which brought the vision of an Augmented World one step closer by being the first AR SDK delivering full 3-D object tracking. We believe that Augmented Reality will see mainstream adoption only by combining Great Technology and Useful [...]

Hi everybody!

I’m finally back alive after some stressful but interesting cool days! Our big conference is now over with over 900 participants and two days packed with high tech demos, including the AR and mixed reality demos and the talk from Keiichi, Irina from metaio and myself on Augmented visions and current R&D. I guess, it’s a bit difficult to write unbiased on the event myself, but nevertheless I will give a quick overview of the AR related demonstrations we had! (Videos with the demos will be available during the next weeks.)

I’m very happy to get your stories by mail, comments or facebook entries, if you’ve been there and like to add your thoughts! OK, here we go with my favorite four in a short gallery overview style!

Interieur Design with AR

This demo uses a real car as the canvas for 3D augmentations. With marker placements inside the interieur you can customize your car. Place markers to exchange the gear shift, the navigation system, etc. A great way to show how we can easily interact with the computer data within the real space and overlay this with additional information. Customizing and previewing your own version of a product is a big deal and this demo helped to define a possible version of it.

Canon Mixed Reality HMD Demo

We are cooperating with Canon and their R&D to make use of their HMD setups and their own mixed reality tools. The combination of their hard- and software with our 3D renderer shows a very cool way (sorry, I’m biased) of a virtual product (in this case a car) experience. The great thing is, that the stereoscopic video-see-through HMD has a great visual feel when wearing it: Canon has found the right optical lens setup (well, they are Canon) to give you the illusion of actually looking through the video cameras without offsets. Moreover their tracking is pretty robust (markers on the floor plus gyro-sensors within the HMD) and fully real-time responsive. There was no lag at all. Can’t wait to have Canon release their HMD into the wild!

tabletAR with Real-Time Lighting and Reflections

Our developers put up another demo, running finally on an Android Asus Transformer tablet: the virtual car will be rendered on a big workstation and gets reflection, lighting and surrounding information from a connected spherical camera (the Ladybug3). With this combination we are able to get real-time data to work with our renderer: we update reflection, image-based lighting on the go and also add some noise and other filters to have a great match of virtual to real. Finally all gets streamed to a tablet, giving a light-weighted access to the virtual window.

Projection-based Augmented Reality

Last but not least: the demo our team and myself prepared in joint forces with Extend3D. We wanted to take the other way round: to bring the virtual stuff really into the real space to get a haptic feedback and a natural interaction. You wouldn’t need glasses or a tablet at all. The projection based augmented reality has always been one of my favorite approaches, and I’m very glad we could put this up first time for the conference! I’ve been always posting projection mapping videos from around the world, but the difference is: with the integrated tracking we can now easily move the object (here with markers) or also the projection system itself during run-time! Thus we can spin the objects around or move the projector to another side pointing at the real white object – always giving the correct overlay of the 3D information!

We’ve shown two demos here: a 1:18 Camaro model, that changes laquer and turns on and off head-lights, blinker, etc. You could preview your designs, overlay maintenance information, etc. The second demo is an adidas shoe, colored white (with a diffuse finish to get the best reflections in all directions). You can customize the looks in real-time and we hope to see it in stores someday… just put on one dummy show and preview all personalized versions without switching! :-) The best feedback we got was, when people first went passed our booth, thinking “well, there is a colorful shoe on a table, so what?” … when only they realized, that it was projected on! :-)

Well, ok, that’s all for today. I hope I could give a good sneak wrap-up. Hope to get videos online soon! Allright, see you next time!

PS. If you happen to be in Munich: join us next week Tuesday (8th of May) for our next Stammtisch!

What’s a better pun: the Singularity or that creepy 1997 Sam Neill movie.  We have all sorts of events coming up that should (and shall) be brought to your attention. ARE- the Augmented Reality Event in Santa Clara, May 8-9. Join metaio as … Continue reading →

I let metaio Business Development “Guy” Brendan Scully pinch-hit for me on this one. I’ve made a huge mistake.  Greetings fellow augmenteers, this is Business Development Guy Brendan Scully coming to you live from the new metaio San Francisco headquarters here … Continue reading →

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Universal Pictures and Aurasma have teamed up to create an amazing augmented reality experience that brings 3 of their most iconic characters to life.

With the Universal 100 application available free from the Apple App Store you can watch King Kong climb Nelsons Column, see a T-Rex at Buckingham Palace or the DeLorean from Back to the Future at Westminster Bridge.

For the best experience you should visit the actual locations and use your iOS device to view the landmarks  bringing the characters to life, or if London is not convenient, simply install the Universal 100 application and point your iOS device at the following pictures.

Also watch out for the special augmented reality DVD/Blu-ray DVD sleeves from Universal.

Currently some of you may know that I am in the process of writing my second augmented reality book that will focus on image recognition technologies for iOS. As such I get to play around with some fantastic technologies and have learned to look beyond the pretty graphics that they deliver.   The tracking technology used by Aurasma is awesome. If you want to learn more about Aursama take a look at their home page www.aurasma.com. I have to squeeze in a chapter  into the book somehow.

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Over the last few years I have had tested a few augmented reality in car applications that claim to make driving safer. Mostly though they have been for the iPhone so it’s a pleasure to add an Android application to the mix.

iOnRoad despite its iOS sounding name is a free Android application that uses augmented reality to inform you if you are driving too close to the car in front. It works by using the camera to detect objects in the camera view and determines how far away they are. By working out your cars speed from the GPS the application can calculate the stopping distance and give you an early visual warning if you are getting too close.

The videos below shows the application in action.

iOnRoad

 

I wouldn’t recommend you rely on any kind of application for stopping distances as many factors should be taken into account, weather, road surface etc, but if you test it I’d be interested in how you found it.

You can get iOnRoad from here.

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Hey everbody!

Busy days for me. Because next week it’s my company’s conference, the RTT Excite. It’s a two day event Thursday+Friday) in Munich, showing lots of industry VR systems and visualization technologies. The great thing: we will also have lots of mixed and augmented reality demos, ranging from tablet, mobile based systems to workstations with high-end graphics with AR plus a cool new projective Augmented Reality system, I’m currently developing with my colleagues!

Furthermore, I will be holding a workshop session on Augmented Reality on Friday (27th) and we will have a great guest speaker before that session: it’s Keiichi Matsuda talking about his visions on AR (you sure remember Domestic Robocop or AR City 3D). I’m happy that he found the time to join me next week! So, if you are in Munich, Germany, be sure to register for the RTT Excite! Videos to follow afterwards!

Meanwhile…

While waiting, you could check out Mark’s arOCCUPY movement. A new installment comes on May, 1st and hopefully many people will join. You can also get in touch with Mark to get your town listed!

arOCCUPY May Day is a non-violent action meant to send a message to the 1%. The global community will be heard in the heart land of the 1% and maybe in your hometown! Artists and activists from around the world are called to join the arOCCUPATION of May 1st 2012. Brooklyn based Devotion Gallery will show the AR intervention live, on site in the NYC’s Financial District. Devotion Gallery website here.

If not joining on the street, you might realize how the google project glass future will really look like: the ADmented Reality. :-)

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