The HIT Lab NZ has just released a professional version of it’s popular BuildAR AR scene building tool. This allows non-programmers to easily build AR scenes. The professional version includes a number of new features such as support for audio and video, multiple objects on AR markers, 2D image and text loading, VR viewing mode, and much more.
The software is available as a free beta now, and then will be commercially available for a low cost from July onwards. It can be downloaded from: http://www.buildar.co.nz/
Using BuildAR Pro, compelling AR scenes can be build in just a few minutes.
Today Layar introduces a new revenue stream in Augmented Reality. Publishers on the Layar platform now have the possibility to offer priced Augmented Reality experiences on multiple mobile platforms such as iPhone and Android. The content store is seamlessly integrated into the Layar Reality Browser, which is already used on more than 1.6 million mobile devices globally.
The Layar Payment Platform is setup to support multiple payment providers and multiple currencies, ready to serve the different local markets. Layar deals with legal, administrative and tax rules enabling the publisher to focus on their core activities: creating valuable experiences. The first payment provider is PayPal, supporting payments to residents of United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. More countries, currencies, payment methods and payment providers will be added regularly.
Any publisher ready to start exploring the medium and monetizing their content can go to http://www.layar.com/create.
The first publishers to seize the opportunity include among others:
* Berlitz City Guides: Berlitz helps people experience the city’s highlights: the best attractions, coziest restaurants, most comfortable hotels, coolest places to shop and most fashionable nightlife.
* Mouse Reality for Disney World and Disneyland: Helps find and navigate all attractions, shows, shops, dinning, transportation, and more in Disneyland and Disney World.
* Eyetours: Explore Puerto Rico’s natural beauty and rich cultural heritage through exclusive video content of historical sites, museums, restaurants, parks and more.
* UK sold prices: Find out for what price that house was sold.
Raimo van der Klein, CEO of Layar: “We have built a great future proof platform that will make Augmented Reality a flourishing marketplace for content, services and goods. Seeing the current interest from especially the retail, tourism and gaming industry we are sure this will fuel the growth of the Augmented Reality medium even further.”
Hubert Haarmann, Director eBusiness of Berlitz: “For Berlitz Publishing this is a great opportunity to forge ahead in the new medium of Augmented Reality using Layar. It helps us sell products successfully, now and in the future.”
Publishers can start selling their content without upfront investments. Layar facilitates payments between the end-user and the publisher. Publishers receive 60% of the net proceeds. The costs for the platform, legal, administration, banking and others are covered by the remaining 40%.
Android users who are residents of United States, United Kingdom, Canada or Australia can start buying layers right now after installing the new version of the Layar Augmented Reality Browser. The iPhone update is soon to follow.
About Layar
Layar is world’s leading Augmented Reality Platform on mobile. The Layar Reality Browser currently has more than 1.6 million users and comes pre-installed on tens of millions of phones from leading handset manufacturers and carriers by the end of the year. Over 500 layers are published on the Layar Platform with over 2000 in development. These layers are developed by the global community of 3000 Layar publishers and producers, and by leading brands and agencies. Layar is located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The company is funded and has 32 employees.
The free Layar Reality Browser is available on Android devices and iPhone 3GS. The Layar Platform is available for anyone to create their own Augmented Reality experiences on.
We are just 50 days away from the Augmented Reality Event (2-3 June, 2010 – Santa Clara Convention Center, California) – the best place to experience the latest and greatest of the augmented reality world.
2 days, 3 tracks, 30 hours of sessions, 40 AR companies, 76 AR experts speakers…and you!
Click the image to see the details
For updates and the latest news about the event checkout the website ARE2010.
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If you are interested in participating in any of these activities – submit your proposal today!
1) “Startup Launch pad” – Five AR startups present their business models and products in front of an expert panel: VCs, Entrepreneurs, and industry luminaries – hosted by a major media outfit. Winner receives: “ARE Best startup prize” (to be announced.) Submit your proposalhere and add: “Startup Launch Pad” in the title. 2) “The Auggies” – Teams get 5 minutes each to present on stage and compete for the coolest live AR demo. A panel with Bruce Sterling, Jesse Schell, Mark Billinghurst and a Jay Wright, will comment on the demos – American Idol-style. Winners will be determined by the audience and receive the prestigious “Auggies Award.” (to be announced.)Submit your proposalhere and add “Auggies” in the title. 3) ARE Press Conference – If you are planning to announce a new product or service – secure your spot in the press conference that will kick off the event. Submit your proposalhere and add: “Press Conference” in the title. 4) Exhibition and Sponsorships – A small number of booths is still available in the exhibition hall ($995 for 10′x10′.) Grab them while they last!
Dave Elchoness from Iryss, recently sat with me (virtually) to provide more details behind the scenes of the recent launch of Tagwhat.
Games Alfresco: Hi Dave! and thank for taking the time off your busy launch of Tagwhat for an interview with Games Alfresco.
How did you and Iryss get into Augmented Reality in the first place?
Dave: Thank you so much for the opportunity, Ori.
We were among the first developers in the world on the Layar browser. As GoWeb3D, we developed a number of the more popular layers including Wikipedia, FlickAR, Eat, Drink, Mazda, and UDR Real Estate.
In the second half of 2009, we decided to create our own proprietary AR platform. It was then that we renamed ourselves Iryss to better reflect our new business focus. In November, we demonstrated the integration of Iryss’ AR platform with active RFID (RTLS) data. Once we saw how we could deliver that data to the enterprise in AR via a very inexpensive consumer mobile device, we knew we have something exciting on our hands. We demonstrated that technology in the military training context (to track soldiers via AR as they moved through the training environment) but there are compelling applications in virtually every market from military, to healthcare, and retail. The feedback to our technology was tremendous as we could immediately replace laptops and cumbersome harness systems with a single consumer device loaded with the Iryss platform. We could equip every user of our technology with an unparalleled awareness of their surroundings as well as the ability to easily communicate with the added dimension of geo-contextual information using a commercially available mobile device.
Not wishing to focus solely on enterprise applications, we developed Tagwhat – our creation and distribution system which can be used in either the enterprise or consumer contexts. Tagwhat is now in private beta as of March 30. Take a look:
Games Alfresco: What exactly have you just launched with TagWhat? Who’s the target audience for this new product/service?
Dave: We have launched something very special and unique. Tagwhat is a create and share mobile AR system that is easy to use, fast, and free. Basically, Tagwhat allows users to place mobile AR through a robust on-line map interface or via mobile AR. They can attach multimedia, URL’s, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses to the AR tags, all of which are immediately accessible and can be directly launched from the mobile. What makes Tagwhat particularly compelling is that it applies social media principles for interaction. Users follow others in Tagwhat, thereby merging those users’ AR streams into theirs. Sort of like a Twitter stream. Users can place AR anywhere in the world, send their followers ‘for their eyes only’ directed tags, and comment on the tags of other users. We have also provided each user with a media center and private messaging service. Privacy is very important to us at Iryss. If users only want to share their information and tags with specific friends, they can do that. If they want to share their lives with everyone in the world, they can do that too. This not only protects our users, but also helps ensure that every Tagwhat experience is filled with pertinent data.
The target audience is tremendous. Since our launch, we have met with industry experts ranging from museum directors, to teachers, to writers, to social media experts, to mothers, to local business owners, and each of them has described completely different but equally powerful ways that they are planning on using Tagwhat to reach THEIR target audiences. After each meeting, we continually realize that we are dealing with much more than just a product, we’re building a protocol that’s letting people share information and communicate with their surroundings and each other in a way that has never before been possible. We are finding that Tagwhat’s intuitive way of viewing and processing information is a natural extension of people’s everyday lives. Because of this, Tagwhat is not only understandable, but more importantly, highly accessible for those who aren’t the most technologically savvy.
Games Alfresco: Tell us a little about the team behind it? Anything you can share about the development process? The technical challenges?
Dave: The founders are Don Cramer, Angus Shee, and me. Don is our CIO, an IT and development guru. Someone I met in Second Life as a technical wiz, everything that Tagwhat is technically, is due to Don’s amazing skill and work ethic. He is one of a kind. Angus is our CTO. A very accomplished engineer, Angus is able to combine the big picture with the finer details that are an important part of implementation. In my experience, that’s a rare combination. As for me, my background is as an attorney and executive. The majority of what I do is establish and articulate the vision for Iryss and Tagwhat.
Development is an extremely iterative process. We believe in functionality and simplicity. As one of the earliest in the consumer augmented reality space, we have numerous lessons-learned that are unique to augmented reality. The Tagwhat experience needs to make sense and every function needs to be useful. We use our product incessantly, look for feedback from our testers, and integrate the best changes immediately.
There are lots of challenges. Don puts the scare in them and they go away.
Games Alfresco: How do you differentiate Tagwhat from other social AR browsers such as Metaio’s Junaio, Tonchidot, and others?
Dave: Tagwhat is unique, period. I can’t speak for other technologies, but I don’t see Tagwhat as another AR browser. Tagwhat is a lot of things including a creation and distribution system, a communications protocol, and a social network. We have structured Tagwhat so that each of these aspects works hand in hand with the others. No functionality is an after-thought or just there for its “cool-factor.” Everything is truly integrated such that each functionality is made better because of the others. To be able to create an information-rich augmented reality tag, tie it to a relevant geographic location like your favorite restaurant, share it with your friends, have a threaded conversation about what they think or what they’re bringing, and then have everyone use the original tag to get turn-by-turn directions from all of their unique locations, text if they’re running late, or browse the menu on their way over is a mind-blowingly powerful experience. Something we dreamed about before Tagwhat. And there’s much more to come including partnerships with some great companies integrating their own content rich Channels, a Rewards system that seamlessly integrates local as well as national businesses which we believe will revolutionize e-commerce, and quite a bit more.
Games Alfresco: How do you see TagWhat evolving in the future? Iryss evolving?
Dave: Tagwhat will evolve first as a consumer application as we ‘plug in’ a ton of geo-contextual data that people will want to use. We are moving into a phase of showing new users ‘how/why’ one uses Tagwhat (keep your eye out for a great video series in the next couple weeks). As I mentioned earlier, we’re really not fans of technology that isn’t practical, usable, and enriching in our daily lives and we’re looking to show how different unique users incorporate Tagwhat into their lives.
As our consumer products mature, we will continue development on the enterprise side. We see a significant synergy with the Iryss/Tagwhat platforms and enterprise requirements of countless industry verticals and think that organizations will be very interested as they see the impact Tagwhat will have on the consumer market. At least that’s how things are sketched out today.
Games Alfresco: So how can we get started with Tagwhat?
Dave: I hope Games Alfresco readers take a look at Tagwhat on-line and in the Android marketplace. We anticipate an iPhone 3GS release in the coming weeks. For Games Alfresco readers, please input beta invitation code beta46 for access – and feel free to invite some of your friends.
Thanks very much for this opportunity. We’ve been Games Alfresco fans for some time.
Games Alfresco: Many thanks for sharing, Dave and good luck with Tagwhat!
Dave Elchoness will be speaking at the upcoming Augmented Reality Event (June 2-3, 2010 – Santa Clara Convention Center, California) among a great lineup of AR industry speakers. Only a few discount tickets are left – so use code AR245 andregister Today.
Marhsall Kirkpatrick- lead blogger for ReadWriteweb – recently lead a survey among Augmented Reality (AR) developers and marketers to figure out what worked and what didn’t in past AR campaigns. To the many readers of this blog that contributed to the survey – thank you!
The report is now available for purchase on the RWW site
Here’s an excerpt from the report’s description:
Become an expert on Augmented Reality (AR) in one quick read. Decrease your AR development time to market by learning from the first wave of early adopters of this new technology. AR offers a new marketing and product paradigm for a high impact, high value customer experience. In the ReadWriteWeb Premium Report Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Analysis of the Leaders, the Challenges and the Future, we profile successful companies and their campaigns as well as development lessons learned.
The report features:
Important players in the mobile AR market, their current campaigns and/or product implementations
AR development shops
Hidden costs associated with AR app development
Developer experience requirements for AR app development
Timeline for development of AR applications
Total cost and cost break down for developing a Webcam AR project
When live video processing will be enabled on popular mobile phones
The use of existing AR browsers as opposed to companies building stand-alone mobile AR
Marshall will share details about this report and explain the process behind the results – at the Augmented Reality Event (2-3 June, 2010 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, California).
If you don’t want to miss this talk and many other talks by AR industry leaders register to the event today! Few discount codes are still available for our devoted Games Alfresco readers:
Go to the registration page, type in code AR245 and you’ll be asked to pay only $245 for 2 full days of AR goodness.
In-Place Sketching for Content Authoring in Augmented Reality Games
By the all star team from Ben Gurion University (Israel) and HIT Lab (New Zealand):
Nate Hagbi
Raphaël Grasset
Oriel Bergig
Mark Billinghurst
Jihad El-Sana
When it comes to AR games – we are all still searching for “Pong” a simple game that will captivate millions of players and kickoff this new genre.
One of the challenges in many AR games, is the reliance on printouts of ugly markers.
Plus many games use the markers as controllers which is a bit awkward (especially to a bystander).
Sketching offers an alternative for a more natural user interface.
Sketching is more natural than drawing with a mouse on a PC, even more intuitive that a touch screen. That’s still the first thing that kids are taught in school.
It’s not necessarily a better interface – but it’s an alternative that offers a very intuitive interaction, and enriched the player’s experience. I believe it could create a whole new genre of games.
In place sketching in AR games has huge potential in gaming – but many questions arise:
What’s the design space for such a game?
What are the tools to be used?
How do you understand what the player meant in a sketch?
What’s the flow of interaction?
How do you track it?
What’s “In-place AR”? It’s when the augmented content is extracted from the real world (an illustration, an image , a sketch, or a real life object)
Here is the sequence of research efforts leading to this:
Here are 2 game prototypes the team created called AR Gardener and Sketch-Chaser. It is played on a regular white board.
AR Gardener
Draw symbols on the white board and 3D content is pulled from a database of objects to appeas in an Augmented Reality (AR) scene.
The sketch determines what object to create, its location, scale, and rotation.
The outer line sketched here defines the game anchor and is served for tracking; in this game it becomes a brown ridge.
Simple symbols drawn generate a couple of benches, a cabin, and in the spirit of the playground theme – rockers, and swings.
Virtual elements could also be created based on a real life object such as a leaf; here it is used to create a patch of grass using the color and shape of the leaf (and no, it can’t recognize that’s a leaf, or 3D object whatsoever)
The color of the marker could define the type of virtual object created: For example, blue represents water. Other objects that are put in it will sink.
Sketch-Chaser
In the second game you basically create an obstacle course for a car chase.
It’s a “catch the flag” or tag game. The winner is whoever has the flag for the most time.
First you draw, then play.
Once again, the continuous brown line represents a ridge and bounds the game.
A small circle with a dot in it represents the starting point for the cars.
A flag becomes the flag to capture. A simple square creates a building, etc.
The player adds more ridges to make it more challenging. Adds blue to generate a little pond (which also indicates a different physical trait to this area)
Then – graphics are generated, the players grab their beloved controllers and the battle begins!
This research represents an opportunity for a whole new kind of game experience that could make kids play more in the real world.
Many questions still remain, such as how do you recognize in a sketch what the player really means without requiring her to be an artist or an architect. Or where does the sketch fit in the game play? Before, after or during?
Now, it’s up to game designers to figure out what sketching techniques work best, what’s fun, what’s interesting, and what’s just a doodle.
Who want’s to design an sketch-based augmented reality a game?
Magic, games, education, even live AR coding – we had it all last night at the Augmented Reality Meetup NY (or as we fondly like to call it ARNY.)
51 AR enthusiasts showed up in an amazing location (Thanks Sophia!) – out of 211 registered members – but who’s counting…we are all about quality ;) What I like about this group is that it represents all walks of life: developers, gamers, attorneys, artists, journalists, magicians, even a police officer!
ARNY’s purpose is to help advance the business of Augmented Reality, by bringing together the best of AR with the best talent in NYC. And have fun while at it.
In case you want to remotely take part in this meetup, or any other AR meetup around the world – there is a site for that: ARmeetup.org. (Last night wasn’t recorded due to a Ustream glitch)
Yours truly kicked off the evening with a recount of AR at GDC by the Numbers. Sony Move was the most exciting AR news at GDC.
Then, a fantastic lineup of speakers took the stage:
1) Alejandro Echeverría – Student at Engineering School in Chile, who came all the way from Chile just to be with us (seriously he’s a visiting student at NYU) – presented Games for learning with AR. I loved the simple yet memorable approach to use movement and augmented reality to teach kids about electricity.
2) Patrick O’Shaughnessey – Patched Reality – FLAR in Five: building a FLAR app “from scratch” (mostly) in five minutes. Patrick which is one of the most experienced AR developers out there received the bravery medal of the evening for demostrating live coding!
The feature presentation of the evening was next:
The man you’ve all been waiting for. He’s been traveling all over the world, blowing people’s mind with his AR magic show – and today he’s here, live at ARNY. Ladies and gentleman please welcome – Marco Tempest!
3) Marco Tempest – The highly anticipated Augmented Reality magician brought the house down.
See a live account of the show, along with a rare explanation of how it all works – in the video below:
4) Ohan Oda – Archemist – Augmented Reality Game with Goblin XNA
Last on on the program was another kind of magician, returning fresh from a demo at the game developer conference in San Francisco; he’s known for Goblin XNA – a development framework for AR applications for the Windows platform, and an avid AR game developer. This time, Ohan demonstrated his latest gravity-based AR game using Vuzix Goggles: Arble.
Here’s a video of a previous game with a similar mechanic.
UPDATE: Here’s a live video by ARNY member David Polinchock.
Next was my favorite part – high energy conversations in smaller teams. That’s where the true magic happens. Free beer courtesy of Topp didn’t hurt at all; the discussions went on late into the night.
Have you registered to the Augmented Reality Event (ARE 2010 in 2-3 June, 2010 – Santa Clara, CA)?
You are in luck.
Here is a discount code for the first 100 folks to register to the event (before the end of March). Go to the registration page, type in code AR245 and you’ll be asked to pay only $245 for 2 full days of AR goodness.
Watching AR prophet Bruce Sterling, and gaming legend Will Wright deliver keynotes for this price – is a magnificent steal. And on top, participating in more than 30 talks by AR industry leaders will turn these $254 into your best investment of the year ;)
(on a personal rant – my submission for a talk titled “Put a Spell: Post Mortem of the first augmented reality learning game for the iPhone” was shamefully rejected!)
5
Number of Augmented Reality game demos on the exhibition floor
Sony EyePet and Move
Vuzix presented a game by Ohan Oda – Columbia University (video below shows a similar game)
AR Drone CES sensation by Parrot and Int13;
Nestle Cereal box as controller by 3DVia-Dassault Systemes;
(Metaio skipped the show this year and is betting on SxSW with ScavengAR)
6
Number of AR capable devices showcased at the event
iPhone, Android, DSi, Sony EyeToy. Plus Windows Phone 7, and Xbox Natal – promised to be released before the end of 2010 (NVidia mobile AR demo was MIA – missing In Action)
27
The least number of back-room meetings focusing on augmented reality which took place at GDC
(or in other words – meetings I was part of…)
100
Percentage of game developers familiar with the concept of augmented reality
(based on my anecdotal survey)
∞ (infinity)
Amount of inspiration at the event for designing augmented reality games
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So how does GDC 2010 compare with last year’s Tiny Spark of Augmented Reality?
In a nut shell: Augmented Reality made progress in mind share – but not yet in real impact on the game industry.
Wanted: Game Designers to build Augmented Reality Games!
In January, flying Augmented Reality Drones stole the show at the Consumer Electronics Show: a quadricopter controlled with an iPhone, that unleashes augmented reality games. What a knock out.
Now it’s time for the land-based vehicles to show what they’ve made of.
Seac02 just published an SDK for developing augmented reality games for the WowWee Rovio.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
The PC-based software (dubbed LinceoVR ) not only allows you to control the mobile-webcam Rovio , but can also recognize markers dropped in the perimeter, and overlay on top animated 3d models of enemy robots, weapons of augmented destruction, and more.
In fact, Andrea Carignano’s (Seac02 CEO) big idea is to empower young (and young at heart) out there to create their own augmented reality games.
Andrea explains:
“The Rovio is quite popular with several thousands of customers and a strong following among the tech community worldwide. This one of the reason we have chosen Rovio; the second reason is that you can use it even in an apartment or a really small room.
The LinceoVR (AR enabling) software will be available next week for €25 and the SDK will ship in 2 months and allow any user to create her own new simple game, share on the internet, launch in a browser, start the plugin and control the drone from anywhere in the world. Nice.
Games Alfresco 
