There were so many news items this week, I couldn’t cover them all even if I wanted to (though, I might cover some of those next week):
An interesting article at SPRXMobile’s blog (creators of the ATM finder), looking at the augmented reality hype cycle. I had some reservations about the way Maarten’s divided the different AR applications to generations (as you can read in the comments section), so I may write my own take about it soon.
An excellent presentation given by Thomas Purves at Refresh Events – “Designing for an augmented reality world“, where he covers some technological and sociological aspects of AR.
Advertising Age 2 – the rebuttal: “Augmented reality has huge promise, but in the short term it’s a niche technology for a niche audience. … Let’s just hope our desire to hype it AR as the next big thing won’t harm it. “(Augmented Reality: Can the ‘Stars Wars’ Effect Sustain Engagement?)
The new Star Trek movie has some AR in its ARG (but I don’t really CARE).
Quote of the week comes from Joshua Falken (is that a WarGames reference?), as a comment to the “Augmented Comedy” post:
The widespread usage of standard AR toolkits for non-science by self-proclaimed “AR researchers” is the root cause for the bad reputation that AR has now. If one mentions AR / MR as an area of interest to, e.g., computer graphics or computer vision researchers, one immediately is flagged as a mediocre me-too person. Unfortunately, these stereotypes are now applied to good and bad AR researchers alike. Therefore, a funny clip, but the topic, unfortunately, is very serious. Just ask all the people who have found it practically impossible to acquire research funding for AR topics for the past several years already.
You should go read that thread. Have a look at the replies Falken got and express your own opinion!
Finally, to kick-off the coming week, here’s a fun little video of some guys putting the Living Sasquatch application to good use:
According to him it’s “100% random! good for stuff for casinos online ;) because it works with physics so it’s impossible to manage”.
But beware Diego! There are new competitors in the AR advertisements business! Brian Selzer found that ADmmersion.com has a very similar service. No videos yet, though if you register you can try their very basic FLARToolKit demo.
Combining several proven technologies, ADmmersion™ brings advertising to life like never before – giving consumers access to an interactive experience like none other.
For the first time, consumers aren’t just watching ads – they’re part of the experience and can interact with them directly.
Admmersion.com comes to us from DCSI, a company that according to its site, specializes in those LCD screens at grocery stores that show endless ads. It’s good to see they are trying to diversify their business.
Those crazy kids at Georgia Tech. In the last couple of days, we have seen augmented reality used to make you laugh, amazed and uncomfortable, so naturally someone, somehow had to make you scared. That’s where Georgia Tech comes into the picture –
… we are interested in how to create systems where the user loses the sense of mediation, and begins to respond to being immersed in a blended physical/virtual as if it was a single “world.”
Our approach to exploring AR and Presence has been to develop an AR presence questionnaire in parallel with a physiological presence experiment analogous to the UNC VR “pit” experiment, which leverages a strong physiological reaction (fear of heights) to measure presence.
The experiment asked the participants to preform certain tasks around that pit, while their heart rate, galvanic skin response and skin temperature were measured. By doing so, the researchers hoped to develope a quantitative measurement of how immersive was the AR experience. Sadly, they don’t report on their results yet, but you can tell from the video that some participants were shaken by the event.
Next time, they’ll confront volunteers with an approaching virtual train and have paramedics on stand-by.
Eric Gradman dropped me a note about an art installation he presented two weeks ago at an event named Mindshare:
So says Eric:
Live video captured by a camera and is re-projected on the wall behind the camera, functioning like a “magic mirror.” But the CLOUD MIRROR software alters the images on the way to the screen. It runs an algorithm that tracks faces from frame to frame and also examines each frame for 2D barcodes printed on attendee badges. By pairing each face with a badge, and each badge id with a database row, the CLOUD MIRROR can identify by name whoever is standing in front of the installation.
It’s very similar to this Squidder’s video, but adds more ways to embarrass yourself and others. More (mostly technical) details can be found here, but in a nutshell it’s based on ARToolKitPlus, OpenCV for face recognition, and lots of python.
(Remember, you can too drop me a note about any AR related news by sending a mail to rouli.net ~a~t~ gmail.com)
When I get sick of all that marker-based novelty augmented-reality, I protest and complain. But it seems that when Anatoly Zenkov had the same feelings, he created the first (?) comedic clip about AR, entitled “Me Too”:
It’s time again for another weekly linkfest, but first, let’s take a moment to a recognize a historic event. This is the 100th post here at Games Alfresco. Last week featured this blog’s 500th comment. Let’s hope that by the 200th post, AR will take a more substantial part in our life.
Now, without any further ado, here are some other AR news from around the web:
Georgia Tech’s has a new infomercial for their mixed reality design class.
Study finds that when it comes to in-car navigation, augmented reality is better than 3D egocentric view aids (such as plain old GPS devices). Who could have guessed?
Geocaching using augmented reality is such a neat idea, I’m surprised no one before Jacob at Trimagination thought about it.
Looking for an AR primer? Rusty Henderson has one covering the basics (with many videos), and Tom Carpenter has some more details.
My team has figured out how to build most of Rainbows End. Just matter of time and funding now… /evil scientist cackle/
I guess that if they really achieved that feat, funding will not be a problem.
And finally, the weekly video comes from GeoVector (which I previouslly covered here). It’s a concept video from 1995 and contains some interesting ideas. It just shows that even
if you think that you have a novel idea, someone has thought about it before. Jump to 4:51 for a really cool augmented frogger:
Geisha Tokyo Entertainment’s ARiS, the augmented reality maid featured in the clip above that Ori covered here, is on her way to become the first virtual AR celebrity. No only does she appear in primetime tv, she now got her own book deal.
The new “official guide book“, is 64 pages of ARiS goodness. It features ARiS’s secret till now biography, tips and tricks, her development process and an interview with her voice actor. Apparently, also included are some markers for ARiS’s living room and shower so after buying the book she will no longer need to live on your desk. You can see a video of her new rooms at the book’s site.
Alas, you can order the book only if you live in Japan. It will be available starting from early June. Via CScout Japan, where you can find some more details and pictures.
My name is Rouli (pronounced like wooly) . For the last couple of months, I’ve been blogging on augmented reality over at Augmented Times, where I cover the coming “AR revolution”. When I first became an AR enthusiast, over a year ago, I’ve found Games Alfresco an incredible source of goodness. That’s why I was honored when Ori approached me with an offer to combine forces, in hopes of creating a central AR hub, a place for AR fans and proffesionals alike.
This post is the first step in creating such a hub, and in the following weeks I’ll be publishing some of my posts both over here and on Augmented Times. Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about this collaboration!
Once a week I write a post detailing all the news that didn’t get their own post, a “Linkfest”. So, for the first time on Games Alfresco, here’s this week’s linkfest:
Finally, the following video was doing the rounds this last week –
It’s iVisit‘s SeeScan, an application under development for Windows Mobile that intends to help the visually impaired, but could have other uses for AR (a bit more information here).
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.
Now the key question is:
how would you rank the look of these specs on a dork-to-cool scale?
Games Alfresco 