GDC 2009: First Augmented Reality Demo at a Game Developer Conference

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Ori Inbar

As soon as the exhibition floor opened today at the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, I rushed to visit the Vuzix-Metaio booth to witness the first consumer-oriented augmented reality booth ever to exhibit at GDC.

I was not disappointed. Just watch this clip.

Stefan Misslinger (Metaio) did a fantastic job  acting it out, don’t you think?

Vuzix also had on the display the upcoming-anticipated-long-awaited-soon-to-be-released 920AV AR glasses. It wasn’t in working condition, but Vuzix promised it will be released this fall.

When the event kicked off, I offered to serve as your eyes and ears; Peter Milford took the offer and expressed his curiosity about the latest from Vuzix. This one is for you Peter: yours truly posing with the goods.

vuzix920v

Now the key question is:

how would you rank the look of these specs on a dork-to-cool scale?

Filed under: AR Demos, AR Events | Tagged: , , , , |

« »

10 Responses

  1. Darkflame@gmail.com, on March 26, 2009 at 6:44 am said:

    Cool…ish.
    The wires at the side are dorky, and the whole thing dosnt look as streamlined as their concept.

    Still, if its under $500 and has decent, open, support I’ll be getting one.

  2. Blair MacIntyre, on March 26, 2009 at 9:25 am said:

    The folks told me that this is just an engineering prototype still, the final one will look a little different. It wasn’t functioning, for example. But, it sounds VERY exciting, if it lives up to the specs. We’ll be getting some.

    Oh, also: Ori, there’s no way this is the first AR demo at GDC. Remember Eye of Judgement? They must have demoed this. There are others this year, too (aren’t they showing an EyePet demo somewhere? And our Zombie game is in the NVidia booth on the Tegra).

  3. Ori Inbar, on March 26, 2009 at 10:32 am said:

    Thanks for keeping me honest, Blair…;)
    (This was my way of finding out if there was any AR demo before)

    I did see additional AR demos on the exhibition floor and will report about them soon.

  4. GDC 2009: More Augmented Reality Demos at Game Developer Conference « Games Alfresco, on March 26, 2009 at 10:41 am said:

    […] that will revolutionize video gamesGDC 2009: I Have Seen The Future Of Games and I Wasn’t AloneGDC 2009: First Augmented Reality Demo at a Game Developer Conference2008 Wrap Up: Top 10 Milestones in Augmented RealityAugmented Reality Made Simple in […]

  5. Serge, on March 26, 2009 at 11:25 am said:

    Hey Blair, Zombie AR is cool. Are you using Daniel Wagner planar tracker in it ? BTW it seems comments turned off in your blog.

  6. Thomas K Carpenter, on March 28, 2009 at 3:31 pm said:

    If they can get rid of the wires, I’d change my vote from dork to cool. I’m also really interested in how many applications are available. Otherwise, they’re a really expensive toy.

  7. The Future Digital Life :: AR Demo at Game Developer Conference :: http://thomaskcarpenter.com, on March 28, 2009 at 3:36 pm said:

    […] topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxOri at Games Alfresco shows off the new Vuzix 920AV glasses on his blog.  I’ve attached the video clip here, but I would stop by his site to read about the rest of […]

  8. GDC 2009 Roundup: a (tiny) spark of augmented reality « Games Alfresco, on May 4, 2009 at 8:50 pm said:

    […] it the first time AR demos (and more demos) were presented at a major Game Developer Conference […]

  9. ISMAR09 HMD Review « The Future Digital Life, on October 21, 2009 at 7:21 pm said:

    […] try their video glasses, which were interesting, but I would have preferred to try out the glasses Ori tried at GDC.   Paul did say that see-through AR glasses would be priced from $199-349.  This sounds like a […]

  10. Living in an Augmented Reality » Metaio demos some AR projects in Vuzix’s booth at GDC 2009, on October 5, 2011 at 12:46 pm said:

    […] posted a video of the demos, over on his blog.  He called it the first AR demo at GDC, which I don’t think is really true.  Sony must […]

Leave a comment