The Nintendo DSi, now with camera, went on sale in Japan on November 1st; next year in the rest of the world.

We were excited when it was announced in September, and thought it could energize the augmented reality games scene. So, here it is, not just with one camera - but two!

Eurogames shares their hands on experience with the newcomer. If you have a fetish for unboxing new products, get your fix with 1Up.

Aaah, but here’s the rub: the cameras boast a mere 0.3 MP each…

Nintendo’s strategy of taking advantage of inexpensive technology and creating new and compelling game experiences has been wildly successful in the past with the DS and the Wii.

Will developers’ ingenuity be able to beat the DSi constraints (cpu power, resolution) and make it play cool AR games?

Still remains to be seen. Until then, take a look at this basic augmented reality software loaded on the DSi:

• change the color of your shirt - virtually - with the touch of a stylus
• face recognition that makes you look happy, angry or sad,
• or if you are more into felines, why not grow cat-ears-and-whiskers?

When you’re in pursuit of the ultimate augmented reality game, you’d better be riding on an ultimate augmented reality device.

So far, we have been hitchhiking “lesser evils” such as described in my “Top Mobile Devices Compete“

The conclusion was grim:

No big winners on this list.
Some have to be hacked to do AR; some might not see the light of day; others don’t even have cameras.
[What in the world are MIDs with no cameras doing on the list, you ask?
Patience my friends. The MIDs are coming. They will have cameras in no time.]

A couple of days later, before you could say “Intel’s-Atom-based-mobile-internet-device”, a MID with a rear camera was announced; and it speaks Italian: Ciao Itelco IDOL!

Itelco IDOL

Those of you following the MIDs evolution, will immediately recognize it as a rebranded Aigo 8880 or a Megabyte M528 or maybe a SFR M! PC Pocket… all various rebadged configurations of Option’s Compal JAX-10 design unveiled at Intel’s IDF this August.

This time with a confirmed rear camera.

It is on sale on Itelco’s site for 449 euros (~$573).

Itelco apparently rushed to publish it and had no time to fully translate the specs. Luckily, Poketables were there for us:

[The 320g device includes] a 800MHz Intel Atom Z500 CPU, [running Linux] 4.8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen, and 4GB SSD…integrated 3.5G, 3-megapixel rear camera, and GPS.

I am inclined to announce the IDOL as the front-runner in the race for augmented reality device greatness, but since I am yet to receive a first hand confirmation of its use in an AR scenario, I’ll settle for an update of the “2008 High End Round Up”

.

Nice. Finally a contender with no major flaws. Back to the pursuit of the ultimate augmented reality game.

Let us know when you try the new ragazzo on the block.

We have a winner.

Nokia just announced the winner of its Mobile Game Innovation Challenge. And it’s all…augmented.

I believe the first to break the news was the Earth Times.

In our previous coverage of the competition, we spotted 6 out of the top 10 finalists as augmented reality games. It was a good day.

Kudos to Different Game studio and their creation: Ghostwire, an augmented reality game where players can use the camera on their mobile device to find ghosts.

Just in time for Halloween. How felicitous. Arg…

Different Game is walking away 40,000 EUR richer. Back to Sweden to complete the game and make it a mega success.

***

Update: Stephan from Int13 unearthed the trailer of Ghostwire, and he claims it isn’t a real augmented reality game because it doesn’t register in 3d.

He’s right. But is the experience breaking away from traditional virtual games and encouraging the player to explore reality?

See for yourself in this clip. Or read an interview with creator Tom Soderlund on PoketGamer

One of the most popular posts on this blog has been, and still is, my “Top 10 Augmented Reality Devices“.

Based on the feedback, you appreciated the condensed collection of various categories of devices, as well as the suggested criteria for evaluating upcoming devices. What you were missing is a practical head to head comparison of the top devices.

So ,here it is: the (mostly) complete, (roughly) unbiased, and accurate (at best) comparison of the top mobile devices for high end augmented reality.

How do you become a high-end AR device?

If you’re snug in my hand, have the power to track natural features and objects in live video, while interacting with the overlaid 3D graphics at 24 fps — and all looking good on the display - welcome to the high end club.

Now, take a deep breath, click…and dive right ahead: 5 devices, 22 criteria, rated from bad->fair->good->excellent, with no frills.

Contribution by Daniel Wagner

No big winners on this list.

Some have to be hacked to do AR; some might not see the light of day; others don’t even have cameras.

[What in the world are MIDs with no cameras doing on the list, you ask?

Patience my friends. The MIDs are coming. They will have cameras in no time.]

Have you seen any better high end device?

Should Nokia sneak up there?

What would you like to see next on the list?

Game Developer Magazine just published its Top 20 Publishers of 2008.

How many augmented reality games have these formidable companies published?

Sweet Fanny Adams. Diddly squat. Zilch.

Here’s a summary of the Top 20, with links to individual profile pages:

20. Midway
19. Eidos Interactive
18. Codemasters
17. LucasArts
16. Disney Interactive Studios
15. NCSoft
14. Capcom
13. Namco Bandai Games
12. Vivendi Games
11. Konami
10. Square Enix
9. Microsoft Game Studios
8. THQ
7. Sega of America
6. Take Two
5. Sony Computer Entertainment
4. Ubisoft
3. Activision
2. Electronic Arts
1. Nintendo

The article recaps the publishing landscape:

This year’s list seems to have been influenced somewhat by which companies could adapt with the times…most of the publishers in our top 20 have a decided console focus, demonstrating that the adaptation of new forms of games into the existing model will take some time.

Sure. When a game title costs upwards of $20M to develop (not including marketing) you got to sell a whole load of it. You can’t take risks.

Darvin said that if you can’t adapt, you’ll die. I will argue that in 10 years these publishers (and affiliated studios) will disappear from the list. That is unless they open their minds and wallets to reality games.

I have raved this month about a flood of augmented reality games coming to the iPhone, Google’s Android, and Nokia mobile devices. So what am I ranting about today?

Well, these mind-blowing games are not coming from the above top publishers; they are emerging from the fringe. Tiny boutique studios aren’t trying to predict the future; they are bringing it forward by pushing the envelop of game experiences.

If I were a betting man, I’d say these risk-taking-tiny-boutique-studios will top the charts in the future.

Forget the iPhone. Forget Google’s Android. Today is Nokia’s day.

As of Today, Nokia is playing in the big leagues of Augmented Reality. It just announced the top 10 finalists in its Mobile Game Innovation Challenge.

Guess what type of games made it to the top?

Augmented, augmented, and more augmented.

To make my point, I have filtered out the “traditional” games and put on the list only games that smell like augmented reality spirit. Here they are:

1. Active Tecnologia e Consultoria Ltda. (Brazil) with Cinemarena – set in a movie theatre, controlling avatars on the big screen

Sounds pretty augmented to me.

2. CreatePlayShare (India) with Ball – play any ball game on your mobile or even create your own new game

Reminds me the legendary SymBall, one of the first augmented reality games on a phone.

3. Different Game (Sweden) with Ghost Wire – use your mobile device to communicate with ghosts

Blurring the line between real and virtual couldn’t be more spooky.

4. Eclipse Interactive (UK) with Watchers – conspiracy adventure game that uses Nokia Maps and other real world tools to find locations

Sounds more like a mixed reality game, but hey - let it benefit from the doubt. Today, we are celebrating.

5. Int13 (France) with Kweekies – augmented reality virtual pet game

We were expecting Stephan and the Int13 team to come up with great augmented reality games on the iPhone. Well, they have first delivered for Nokia. Wish them success.

6. TechnoBubble (Spain) with Fun Cam – a mixed reality game that connects your camera on your mobile device to the TV

I don’t really get it - but since it’s a self-proclaimed mixed reality game, we’ll include it.

There you have it: 6 out of the 10 top games in Nokia’s “Mobile Innovation Challenge” fit in the augmented reality category. That’s a landslide victory!

And it’s not all: the three most innovative game concepts will be offered by Nokia Publishing pre-production contracts. The first winner will be awarded 40,000 EUR, the second 20,000 EUR, and the third 10,000 EUR.

Congratulations to the top 10 finalists (including the non augmented reality games…). The winners will be unveiled at Nokia’s Game Summit in Rome next week. May the best win.

***

It’s been a good month for AR games; news have been embracing the iPhone, Google’s Android, and Today - Nokia.

Which begs to say: ready or not - here comes a groundswell of games to a reality near you.

Tom Spring from PC World put together a nice collection of Android apps for T-Mobile’s G1.

The lion’s share of these apps is compelling thanks to their novel use of camera, GPS, communication capabilities - or all combined.

Tom listed 15 Android “killer apps”. I pick 4 apps which could inspire the augmented reality world.

You will judge if they “kill”, Bill.

1. BreadCrumbz

First step towards user generated Geo tags

BreadCrumbz is a different kind of navigation application.

Navigate-by-Pictures: Navigate your route using pictures instead of a map (there’s also a map, if you like).

Users Create Routes: Easily record routes using your smartphone. Share them with your friends, share them with the world.

2. CitySlikkers

Attempting a real-world social network

City Slikkers is a Pervasive Game (alternatively Location Based Game) which takes place in the real-existing city. It is designed to connect a large number of players through-out the world and change the way the surroundings are seen. The central idea behind the concept is to give people the opportunity to symbolically interfere with the everyday urban environment and come into contact with previously unknown people.

3. ShopSavvy

Using the oldest Marker technology: barcode

ShopSavvy™ is a shopping assistant developed exclusively for Google’s Android mobile phone platform and is one of T-Mobile’s featured applications in their 2008 US and UK launch. Users can scan the bar code of any product using their phone’s built-in camera. ShopSavvy will then search for the best prices online and through the inventories of nearby, local stores using the phone’s built-in GPS. ShopSavvy won Google’s Android Developer Challenge and is available in Google’s Android Market.

4. Get a Life

Getting folks out of the house is a good thing

Locate your friends and family- LifeAware gives you the ability to create your own network of friends and family members and locate them. Unlike other location services, LifeAware will provide you with their last known location, providing insight even if their phone is off or out of range.

Establish safety zones for family members - Create geographical zones and setup notifications for when a family member enters or leaves the defined zone. Setup a zone to be notified when Johnny arrives or leaves school, or when a loved one arrives at their destination when taking a trip.

Tag locations for yourself or for sharing- Tag locations you visit, or find on the map and share with the members of your network.

Send locations- Send your current location or location of your choosing to friends in your network, or to any email address. Send the favorite meeting place to friend and have them meet you.

Now, you be the judge!

The iPhone hype still rules the augmented reality devices charts, but as Walter Mossberg claims in his in-depth test drive:

that will all change on Oct. 22, when T-Mobile and Google bring out the G1, the first hand-held computer that’s in the same class as Apple’s iPhone.

Google's G1

iPhone

TechCrunch has its own view on the comparison.

Here’s my quick comparison of the two devices through an augmented reality lens:

They both have similar screen quality (480×320 65K color), a nice touch screen, similar CPU speed, GPU for graphics acceleration, accelerometers for sensing movement, and are both in the under $200 price category.

G1’s Screen size is reportedly narrower than the iPhone (3.2” compared with 3.5”) yet is bulkier (weighs 5.6 ounces to 4.7) and is much thicker; but it has a better camera resolution (3.1 mp compared with 2mp), though similar to iPhone - it can’t record video.

A downside for developers is the very low memory allocated for third party apps (128 megabytes) and the 1G storage space (expandable up to 8GB) which would seriously limit/irritate developers.

On the positive side it has 5 buttons, a real keyboard (you care?), a compass… and most importantly it’s built on Android, an open (yet unproven) Operating System  - which means easier to adapt for the specific needs of augmented reality applications. On the flip side, some developers hate the restriction that comes with Android: program in Java.

Bottom line, these are worthy competitors - each with its own advantages and caveats.  The real winner will be determined, as always, based on whoever offers the best content and the best reality experiences.

Remember WIFI ARMY? It was a very promising AR game for Android (made it to the #7 spot in my top 10 AR demos). But they went silent…their website is down. If you see something - say something.

ZDNet just published Gartner’s top 10 disruptive technologies for 2009:

1. Multicore and hybrid systems
2. Virtualization and fabric computing
3. Social networking
4. Cloud computing
5. Web mashups
6. User interface
7. Ubiquitous computing
8. Semantics
9. Augmented reality
10. Contextual computing

But keep in mind we are looking at a serious downturn which means only a few of the top 10 will actually get funded in 2009. The remaining technologies on the list (including #9) are dubbed by Gartner:

“projects to ponder in the future…”

Well, after all they are talking to CIOs and IT execs that need to play it safe: avoid technical disasters, keep the business side satisfied, and stay within budget - not the ideal breeding ground for disruptors…

Still, a nice tip of the hat by Gartner to the field of augmented reality, and it did raise some eyebrows among industry pundits. Matt Asay was so dazzled that he called his article:

“Gartner’s ‘augmented reality’ on IT spending”

They say any publicity is good publicity, and this case is no exception.

On a second look at the list it hits me: we will actually need every single one of these 10 technologies to design a great augmented reality experience.

In my pursuit of the ultimate augmented reality game, Jonas Hielscher popped on my radar. Jonas recently completed a residence at the Better Than Reality project for artists at the V2_Lab. I couldn’t resist asking him about his experience. Here are the results of the discussion.

games alfresco: Hey Jonas, thanks for taking a break from your art and joining us for a quick conversation; how about a quick introduction?

Jonas: Hi Ori, thanks for your interest in my work!

About me: I am a German artist, working as an assistant professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in the field of 3D and interaction. In my artistic work I develop experimental games and media installations that explore the boundaries between the real and the virtual world (portfolio)

This year, my specific focus lays in exploring the possibilities of augmented reality. At the beginning of this year I gave an augmented reality game workshop at Mediamatic in Amsterdam, together with Julian Oliver. There we helped the participants develop small game ideas with ArtoolKit: a software library for building Augmented Reality applications using physical tracking markers.

Mediamatic Workshop

Back in Cologne, my students at the Art Academy were so enthusiastic about the results, that they also developed a small ArtoolKit project for the annual school exhibition.

Cologne Art Academy School project

And now I just finished 6 weeks of intensive work with the Augmented Reality system, they developed in V2_lab, Rotterdam.

V2_Lab Residency: Last Pawn

games alfresco: Tell us a little bit about the Better Than Reality project, how did it start? What was its objective?

Jonas: Two years ago V2_lab started developing the first version of their augmented reality system in collaboration with the artist Marnix de Nijs (NL). That resulted in the first public user test of a project called Exercise in Immersion 4 during the Dutch Electronic Art Festival 2007 (DEAF07).

After this presentation they went on refining the system and invited three artists-in-residence. They where chosen to explore various sub topics: Marnix de Nijs (NL) will continue his Exercise in Immersion 4 project, Boris Debackere (BE) researches spatial sound, and my focus was on 3D and visual aspects of augmented reality. In the fall of 2008, a series of workshops will be given, open to (art) students, artists and other professionals who are interested in artistic use of augmented reality.

The system V2_Lab has developed a software/hardware platform called VGE (V2_ Game Engine), based on Ogre3D with Scheme, OpenAL, Blender, ultrasound positioning and SIOS (Sensor Input/Output System developed at V2_Lab). The user wears a head-mounted display that shows a mix of 3D visuals and real world video taken by a head mounted camera.

Within this framework, I developed two small experimental projects during my residency. Inspired by the novel ‘Through the looking glass’ by Lewis Carroll, I wanted to create a dreamlike mixed reality environment, where real and virtual merge in an absurd experience. An important aspect for me was the connection between the virtual and the real elements.

In the first project, Last Pawn, a real table with a chess pawn stands in the middle of the room. Around the table are three virtual windows hanging in the air and a virtual avatar stands in the middle of the room. When the participant moves the pawn on the table, the avatar walks to a position in space. If the avatar ends up in front of a window, he opens it and a new virtual space appears behind it. Like this, different spaces and atmospheres can be experienced. Additional real theater light is controlled by the system to support the experience.

Last Pawn 1

Last Pawn 2

Last Pawn 3

The second project Human Sandbox was developed as a side experiment. Here, one participant equipped with the AR-system stands in the middle of the room, while another participant places several physical objects on the table. They track and manipulate the virtual objects seen by the other participant. With this system we were able to test and experiment with different objects much easier. An interesting result with this approach was that game logic could be developed without having to program it. You could play ‘Hide and Seek’ , just by putting and moving objects on the table.

Residency Sandbox

games alfresco: what was your first encounter with augmented reality?

Jonas: During the ARS Electronica Festival 2004, I saw several augmented reality projects. One very interesting piece was Augmented Fish Reality by Ken Rinaldo. Instead of augmenting the reality of a human, Ken augments the reality of a fish. Here, five Siamese fighting fishes are living in separated rolling robotic fish-bowls controlled by the fish themselves. The fish can steer the fish-bowl and come closer to other fish. They can see and communicate with each other, but always have to stay in their own fish-bowl. It is fascinating to watch and observe the fish’s behavior. You could say they were augmenting their own reality.

games alfresco: in the future, AR is poised to have a major role in the way we interact with the world;  what does it mean for the future of art?

Jonas: In our high technological western world with ubiquitous computing and the so-called “Internet of Things”, where RFID and other embedded applications are part of our daily environment, we can question if we already live in augmented realities. The augmentation of reality has become invisible through all kinds of services, like for mobile phones or our biometric passports.

I think, one goal of artists working with these technologies should be to make things visible again. So that the effect of it can be reflected and discussed.

games alfresco: AR seems to get more and more attention in the art world, what do you think has captured the imagination of artists?

Jonas: I think one major fascination is to be able to directly manipulate the experience of the real world to comment, reflect or just create new mixed reality experiences. It is also the fascination about the ability to give more information about people, objects and places, that would be normally concealed by their static structure.

games alfresco: More and more AR demos are surfacing in YouTube and elsewhere; what’s your favorite augmented reality demo?

Jonas: Definitely, Julian Oliver’s game Levelhead. It is the beauty of a simple but very genius idea. In the game the player holds a solid cube in front of a camera and on-screen it appears that each face of the cube contains a little room. The objective of the game is to navigate a character from room to room by tilting the cube. It is the little magic of holding this small universe in your hands, that really fascinates me.

games alfresco: what would be your dream augmented reality device (way to interact with AR)?

Jonas: During my residency I noticed, that I am not a fan of head-mounted displays. It is always the lack of technology you experience (small Field of View, Frame Rate, heavy equipment, etc.). With HMD you feel somehow amputated by giving up your perfect view of your eyes and diving completely into the augmented reality. Personally I belief more in the idea of having a window (like a small hand-held) to the augmented world. Then you are free to choose and compare between the real and augmented world.

games alfresco:  Totally agree. As you are winding down the residence at Better than Reality - what are you envisioning as your next project?

Jonas: At the moment I have lots of new ideas and inspirations. I have some new ideas for the game CollecTic, that I developed in 2006. I really want to develop a new and different version of it for the iPhone, which I think is a really great platform to develop mobile mixed reality projects for. The initial idea of CollecTic is, that you go hunting for Wifi-Hotspots in your neighborhood and play a kind of a puzzle game. What I really like about the game is that you discover the hidden infrastructure of the wireless network coverage through playing. The game also generates auditive and visual feedback of the hot spots. So hopefully I’ll find some time to give the game another boost for the iPhone with some new gameplay ideas.

Furthermore I have some new ideas about other augmented reality projects, but they are still on the cooking pan

games alfresco: Wow. Thank you, Jonas. This has been an eye-popping-mind-blowing interview. Can’t wait to see your video documentation of the Better Than Reality project.