Weekly Linkfest

Posted on September 26, 2010 by rouli

Got a little bit addicted to Google AI Challenge, so I haven’t updated as I should have during the last week. Luckily, still have time for a quick linkfest:

Last week I had a video in Dutch, this week we have a video from Lithuania. It seems that in Lithuania the national sport is augmented basketball (or am I making this thing up?). More details, in Lithuanian, here.

Have a splendid week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

The First Fun Augmented Reality Game on the iPhone App Store Was Just Submitted

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Ori Inbar

Since September 2009, we have seen many quasi-augmented reality (AR) games on the iphone, some fun concept AR games (on other platforms and devices with no real commercial distribution).

Today I had the pleasure to play the first truly fun, truly AR game on the iphone – and I loved it.

It’s called AR Defender, developed by the talented team and our good friends at Int13.

With close to 30 frames per second – it’s a huge achievement from a technical perspective (even though they are using their proprietary marker).

And it’s looks great. The game play is a mix between a simple table top game, and a typical to Tower of Defense game, nicely adapted for the AR experience. Few seconds into the game you forget you are aiming at a marker and get immersed into the game play – wow!

That together with the fact it’s available on the app store may lead to commercial success that we haven’t seen before with an AR game.

This is VERY encouraging, because Games Are The Killer App For Augmented Reality.

Check it out:

The game should be approved by Apple soon – so when it does – try it and let us know what you think!

Filed under: AR Games | Tagged: , , | 15 Comments »

Augmented Reality Will Be The New PowerPoint

Posted on September 22, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

Total Immersion created a five-minute augmented reality presentation for Bill Chang, EVP of the Business Group of SingTel, to visually illustrate the complex process of business cloud computing in a simple-to-understand manner.   In doing so, they’ve shown us the future of presentations, at least for CEOs and other business rock star positions that can afford the service.  It’s possible weather reporting schools will have an uptick in students as presenters learn how to work the screen.

Who would want to use PowerPoint if you could have augmented reality to amaze your audience?  I know I wouldn’t.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 6 Comments »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on September 19, 2010 by rouli

Layar, Pongr, Lumus, The Artvertiser – and the one linkfest to rule them all:

For this week’s video, I’ve got one that is a couple of months old but I’ve never found the right time to feature it in a post. It’s a video demoing the thesis work of one Willem Van den Eynde. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t read Dutch (?) that well. Still cool for a thesis:

Have a great week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Three Fun Things To Do With Augmented Reality

Posted on September 16, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

I can see you’re a little bored (yes, I’ve hacked your webcam) and I’ve scoured the Intertoobs to find some augmented reality to cheer you up.  From free to over one hundred dollars, here are a few ways to inject a little spice into your boring life.

Free – AR on Webcams

Does it work for Chatroulette (don’t click that unless you have a strong stomach)?

Less than $5 – Chatterbucks

Money talks…

More than $100 – Playstation Move “Start the Party“

Beer not included.  Comes out on September 19th.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Is There Such a Thing as Pregnancy Induced Stupidity?

Posted on September 14, 2010 by rouli

warning – this is another one of my nasty posts. Reader discretion is advised.

Is there such a thing as pregnancy induced stupidity? If you examine Simubaby‘s premise you might reach such a conclusion. How else would you justify its business model? Simubaby, the brain child of the Spanish Atlantis Virtual Reality is a commercial product harnessing the power of augmented reality to help pregnant mothers-to-be visualize how their fetus looks like. Unlike a similar solution from Talking Dog Studios, this one comes with a belt.

Nothing to get mad about you say? Well, you haven’t heard the price yet.
It’s 60 euros (77 US dollars). And that’s after a price cut from 80€. But, don’t think of it as 60€ for an ugly belt just so you have somewhere to put the AR marker. No, you also get access to some amazing AI:

With the advice of experts, we have recreated the most important stages of your baby’s growth and with the aid of an artificial intelligence system.

In case you still think that’s a product worth paying for, then I’ve got news for you! I’ve recently secured access to some magic beans, guaranteed to increase your baby’s intelligence using the aid of quantum entanglement system. Only 59.99€ for a bag of 10 beans, and shipping is free.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Tasbeeraman – An Augmented Reality Hand Movement Detection Game

Posted on September 13, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

No licensing issues here, really…

I applaud the robust hand tracking, but could the game be something new rather than a Pac Man rip-off?  Come on Total Immersion.  You guys are better than this.

Learn more on the Total Immersion blog.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on September 12, 2010 by rouli

Kind of slow week, but we still have some tasty links for you:

As for this week’s video we’ve got a little fun game from Total Immersion’s Partner C4M to promote French pasta brand Lustucru. Unlike previous TI games, this one is iPhone based, though there’s still a webcam version. It’s called Germaine et les Martiens:

Have a great week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

More Augmented Reality X-Ray Systems

Posted on September 10, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

Augmented reality will make superheros of us all.  A preview of what you can expect for ISMAR2010 from Magic Vision Lab.

Sandor, C., Cunningham, A., Dey, A., and Mattila, V.
An Augmented Reality X-Ray System based on Visual Saliency
To appear in: Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, Seoul, Korea, October, 2010.

In the past, several systems have been presented that enable users to view occluded points of interest using Augmented Reality X-ray visualizations. It is challenging to design a visualization that provides correct occlusions between occluder and occluded objects while maximizing legibility. We have previously published an Augmented Reality X-ray visualization that renders edges of the occluder region over the occluded region to facilitate correct occlusions while providing foreground context. While this approach is simple and works in a wide range of situations, it provides only minimal context of the occluder object.

In this paper, we present the background, design, and implementation of our novel visualization technique that aims at providing users with richer context of the occluder object. While our previous visualization only employed one salient feature (edges) to determine which parts of the occluder to display, our novel visualization technique is an initial attempt to explore the design space of employing multiple salient features for this task. The prototype presented in this paper employs three additional salient features: hue, luminosity, and motion.

We have conducted two evaluations with human participants to investigate the benefits and limitations of our prototype compared to our previous system. The first evaluation showed that although our novel visualization provides a richer context of the occluder object, it does not impede users to select objects in the occluded area; but, it also indicated problems in our prototype. In the second evaluation, we have investigated these problems through an online survey with systematically varied occluder and occluded scenes, focussing on the qualitative aspects of our visualizations. The results were encouraging, but pointed out that our novel visualization needs a higher level of adaptiveness.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Upcoming Qualcomm Developer Challenge

Posted on September 8, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

This fall, Qualcomm is going to host a $200,000 Augmented Reality Developer Challenge.  The details for the challenge haven’t been released yet, but the total amount of prize money should have would-be developers planning their products as we speak.  The challenge will start when they release the Qualcomm AR SDK.  More details can be found here.

ANTICIPATED TIMELINE

  • Fall 2010 – AR SDK available for download. Challenge commences.
  • Early November, 2010 – Submission site opens. Developers may submit apps.
  • January 7, 2011 – Submission site closes.
  • Mobile World Congress 2011 – Winners announced and showcased at Qualcomm events.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Next Page »