Over the last 2 years we have seen growing interest in Augmented Reality in various events – panels, dev camps, meetups – and many more. Due to growing demand for knowledge and expertise in augmented reality (AR), a group of AR industry insiders, backed by the AR Consortium have put together the first commercial event dedicated to advance the business of augmented reality.
Well, ISMAR is still the best AR event for the scientific community. If you want to learn about (or present) the latest advancements in AR research – you should be in Seoul this October for ISMAR 2010. However, for the rest of us, who wish to take advantage of AR in practice, in the commercial world, and build a business around it – there was a gaping hole.
For established and start up AR companies (such as Total Immersion, Metaio, Acrossair, Ogmento, Circ.us, Mobilizy, Layar, Zugara, Neogence, whurleyvision, Chaotic Moon Studios, and many more) – are2010 is a stage to showcase their products and services; a venue to form partnerships, learn about latest innovations, and most importantly speak with clients. Bruno Uzzan, CEO of Total Immersion will wow the audience with a cutting edge augmented reality show; Peter Meier, CTO of Metaio, will speak about his companies latest products. Early stage startups and individual developers will receive guidance from Cole Van Nice (Chart Venture Partners) for how to build a successful company in the AR space, including raising funding (from VCs that actually invest in AR), licensing technology and IP, legal aspects, forging partnerships, etc. Christine Perey will speak about the scope of the mobile AR industry today and it’s growth trajectory.
For Developers –
For developers, are2010 is a window into the latest AR algorithms, engines and programming tools. Learn from case studies and post mortems delivered by experienced developers from the leading companies in the space. Blair MacIntyre, director of the GVU Center’s Augmented Environments Lab at Georgia Tech, will speak about his experience with tools and technologies while developing augmented reality games. Daniel Wagner, one of the leading mobile AR researchers in the world, will bring developers into the wonderful world of mobile AR. Patrick O’Shaughnessey, which has lead the development of more webcam-based AR campaigns than anyone else I know – will share his knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Mike Liebhold, Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future , will speak about Technology foundations of an Open ARweb. Gene Becker, co-founder of AR DevCamp, will dive into augmented reality and ubiquitous computing, and Sean White, a pioneer in Green Tech AR will suggest concrete examples of how AR can help save the planet
For Mobile, Hardware, and Platform Companies
For Mobile, Hardware, and Platform companies (such as Vuzix, Nokia, Qualcomm, Intel, QderoPateo, Microsoft, Google, Apple etc.) are2010 consists of a captive audience to launch and showcase their latest devices, processors, AR glasses, sensors, etc. The best collective minds of the AR commercial world will be onsite to articulate the market demand characteristics and help influence the design of future hardware.
For Clients and Agencies –
For clients and agencies in entertainment, media, publishing, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more – are2010 offers everything you need to know about AR: how to leverage augmented reality to advance your brand, attract and keep your customers, and how to build successful campaigns and products that will delight users, including postmortems of landmark augmented reality projects.
Jarrell Pair, CTO and a founder of LP33.tv, will speak about “Augmented Reality in Music Entertainment: Then and Now”, Brian Selzer, co-founder and President of Ogmento, will deliver a crash course for clients and agencies about how to leverage AR in marketing campaigns. Marshal Kirkpatrick, lead blogger for ReadWriteWeb, will share the results of his AR survey collecting feedback from dozens of AR developers and their experience in delivering AR campaigns and apps. Kent Demain, designer of the visual effects in Minority Report, will open our minds with the talk: “Taking Hollywood visual effects spectacle out of the theatre and into your world”. And of course…
For any AR Enthusiast –
Are you an AR Enthusiast? If so, you’re going to feel like a kid in a candy store at ARE, with a soon-to-be unforgettable keynote by Bruce Sterling, demo gallery, exhibitors from leading companies, artists installations from AR artists such as Eric Gradman and Helen Papagiannis, and many more surprises.
If you are into Augmented Reality – are2010 is the one event you should attend this year.
Chris Sandor, a veteran AR researcher, who worked with some of the most distinguished AR labs and researchers in the world such as Graz University, Columbia University, TU Munich, and Canon Research – is now is the Director of theMagic Vision Lab at the University of South Australia.
Chris and team have recently revamped the lab’s website which is a good opportunity to revisit some of their work previously covered during ISMAR.
First a word on the lab’s name.
In his “Sermon on the flatlands“, augmented reality prophet Bruce Sterling cautioned the AR community to stay away from terms like “magic”: “Magic is cheezy and deceitful. Practicing a leisure domain is a problem” he argued.
Chris brings to his defense a no lesser sci-fi luminary, Arthur C. Clarke, which famously coined the third law: “Any sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
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What do you think about the usage of the term “Magic” in conjunction with AR?
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Now to substance in the revamped site:
Humans perceive their environment primarily through vision. Our goal is to enhance human vision with computer-generated graphics in order to amplify human intelligence on a world-wide scale. Our vision is shared by a large and growing community that is investigatingAugmented Reality.
The lab focuses on 2 key areas:
Mobile Augmented Reality Visualizations (melting, distorting, xray)
The following X-ray Vision is one of the more inspiring videos in AR
The next video depicts a technique called “melt vision” which is useful when a user wants to see points of interest hidden from view (occluded) and could also double as a simulation of a building demolition:)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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The second area of the lab’s focus is dubbed:
Visuo-haptic augmented reality systems
In laymen’s terms, it’s about combining visual and touch.
In this video a user, wearing a head-worn display, can see the virtual car and feel the car with his right hand through a haptic device called Phantom.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
This technology has huge potential in training newbies and experienced professionals in many fields such as healthcare, design, manufacturing, and many more.
To wrap up this AR Lab review –
Here is a classic: AR Weather, received our tongue-in-cheek award of the “most down-under demo” during ISMAR 2008. All I have to show is this image that depicts an AR application that overlays snow on a sunny day in Australia.
If you would like to showcase your work in augmented reality labs – let us know!
Marshal Kirkpatrick, the lead blogger for Read Write Web – one of the first tech blogs to dive into the fascinating field of augmented reality – is working on a research report about the use of AR for marketing.
In order to generate data for the report that best reflects the market reality – he has put together a survey.
In fact, he prepared two surveys: one for webcam-based AR applications, and a second for mobile AR applications.
Here’s Marshal’s message:
We hope that people in the industry will be
interested in anonymously contributing their knowledge so we can all benefit from the aggregate results. The intended respondents for these surveys are people who have built or have hired other people to build AR apps. The intended readership of the results are people who are interested in hiring AR developers. We hope this information will help more people feel comfortable hiring AR developers, that more information will be good for the AR economy and the people who want to be a part of it. We’ll be sending the results out to everyone who participates, along with a discount code if you’d like to purchase the larger research report this will be a part of. If you’ve got any questions you can email me at marshall@readwriteweb.com Thanks for you time taking these surveys.
This is a most welcome collaboration between ReadWriteWeb and Gamesalfresco, and we intend to share the highlights of this initiative on this blog.
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Expect a talk by Marshall about this initiative at this year’s most anticipated AR commercial Event – coincidentally titled the Augmented Reality Event, scheduled for Jun 2-3, 2010 in Santa Clara, California.
Don’t you love going to conferences that take place in your home town?
And how about being invited to talk about your #1 passion?
Double awesome.
Last November, I was lucky enough to participate in a panel about augmented reality at the Web 2.0 Expo. (In all fairness, it was part of Web2Open co-located with Web 2.0)
The fun actually started the night before at a meetup organized by John Havens which was a great warm up for the real deal.
John also moderated the panel which included the following participants:
Robert Rice, CEO of Neogence delivered as usual a great intro to augmented reality and explained the virtues of the AR Consortium;
Jack Mason (Global Business Services, Strategic Programs and Social Media at IBM)
opened our eyes to the possibilities (and concerns) revolving around AR;
Erik Manley: Manager, Digital Media at GEand Michael Eisenreich: Technology Leader for GE’s company-wide Internet presence – proudly presented what I describe as the first high production augmented reality campaign ever. It’s probably one of the key reasons AR went off the charts on Google trends in the first quarter of the year.
Matt Szymczyk, CEO of Zugara, demonstrated Fashionista, a virtual dressing room his company just launched with Rich Relevance. Who says AR is just a novelty? This is a very Cool and practical use of augmented reality on webcams.
Marco Neumann, CEO and Founder of KONA, and the Organizer for New York Semantic web meet up gave the…semantic web back story behind augmented reality.
All great guys and gals, enthusiastic about augmented reality, and…doing something about it.
Yours truly gave a little schpiel about Ogmento and demonstrated the upcoming (currently in beta) learning game for the iPhone: Put A Spell Learn to Spell with Augmented Reality.
Here is a video of my 100 slides under 5 minutes intro (seriously):
The crowed was not huge but very engaged. In the spirit of the web2Open unconference most of the interesting discussions happened afterwards.
We will be back at Porter Novelli’s office (Thanks John for hosting once again!) for the upcoming Augmented Reality NY (ARNY) meetup this Tuesday, featuring an amazing line up of speakers and demos: 1) John Swords – Circ.us – his latest AR game developed for Cisco Systems
2) Ryan Charles – Zagat– New Augmented Reality view integrated into Zagat’s flagship restaurant rating and review app, Zagat To Go
3) Noora Guldemond – Metaio – LEGO application and mobile markerless tracking
4) Dana Farbo – President of Acrossair – will present the fresh new Acrossair AR Browser
5) Craig Kapp – NYU – Whisper Deck – will introduce an experimental interface to access information using AR
These days, AR Meetups are all the rage – sprouting like mushrooms around the globe: From Los Angeles, to Palo Alto, Chicago, Raleigh, Toronto, London, Manchester, Switzerland, and all the way to New Zealand). Here’s a big shout out to all our friends around the world – and thanks to Chris Grayson – we now have a live stream channel for all AR meetups – so you can participate in real time from the comfort of your home!
(though it’s much more fun being there in person)
A special message from Presselite Co-founder Antoine Morcos:
I take the liberty to contact you to let you know that our new application has been approved by Apple today, we are very proud to announce Nude It for the iPhone, now available on AppStore.
Nude It app shows your friends naked! Nude It is a funny Augmented Reality application for the iPhone that lets you see through clothes. Simply point your iPhone at a friend (less than 6.5 ft / 2 m from you), and using Nude It scanning technology, you will see him or her totally in the nude. Please, note that you must clearly see your friend’s face on the screen to get good results.
Of course, we were inspired by whoisthebaldguyblog Nude It amazing video to develop this application, we hope you will like the result.
You can find all details about the application on presselite and here’s the iTunes Link
In my pursuit of the ultimate augmented reality game – 2009 was a landmark year. From 0 to 30 selling games in 4 months is nothing short of stunning (and makes my 2010 prediction of 10x more AR games – not too bold…;)
Games on my iPhone
2009 was the year AR games broke from the lab into the hands of consumers – and this post celebrates that achievement.
So how to start reviewing the flood of AR games?
By Platform? By Genre? By commercial success? By Game Mechanic? Let’s try these out.
By Platform
Augmented Reality games have been developed for a multitude of platforms such as PC/Mac, Nokia phones, Windows Mobile phones, Android phones, PDAs with cameras, Nintendo DSi, and the Gizmondo. But, in 2009, the most lucrative platform for developers, with the broadest distribution by far was…surprise, surprise – the iPhone. In fact, all games on our list – save for one exception – were developed for the iPhone.
So the traditional way of reviewing games by platforms won’t do for this year’s review.
By Genre
Another popular approach to group games is by genre. When it comes to AR games genres, there’s a bit more variety than platforms: this year we have seen mostly shooters, but also horror games, a treasure hunt, and even one driving game.
Still, the limited variety this year does not merit a breakdown by genre, just not yet.
By Commercial Success
I would have loved to provide you with a sorted list of games by revenue. Unfortunately, this information is not yet public. My guesstimate is that the most commercially succesful AR game of 2009 was in fact released for the PSP – not the iPhone. You guessed it: Sony’s Invizimals (Developed by Novarama). Lay traps (markers) around your real environment, and use the PSP Camera to hunt down invisible animals and capture them. Simply described by users as “like having a real life pokemon…”
In addition to introducing a unique experience, Invizimals boasts a high production value and critics have been raving about it with a 7.7 average rating.
A quick look at Amazon’s rankings (UK only) reveals that this game is #1 among PSP simulation games (and that is before it has even reached the US!)
However, comparing these indicators with Apple’s app store rankings will be like comparing apples to oranges (pun intended). Hence, this year I resort to slicing and dicing the AR games of 2009 – by game mechanic.
By Game Mechanic
The term “Game mechanics” is defined by game design scholars as “a construct of rules intended to produce an enjoyable game“. What fascinates me in Augmented Reality is that it enables a whole new set of mechanics never before seen in video games. In 2009 we have barely scratched the surface. No one knows what new game mechanics AR will unleash next, but it will surely be a lot of fun, alfresco.
Following our Letter to Apple, a new iPhone SDK was released (a coincidence?) with the ability to overlay graphics on live video. This, enabled a totally new game mechanic for the iPhone, and although Apple failed to offer public access to the iPhone’s live video (an essential capability for analyzing pixels for aligning graphics with real world objects) – the iPhone became overnight the preferred device for Augmented Reality Games.
So what’s the crop so far?
A quick search for augmented reality games on the app store reveals this amazing list:
Let’s make sense of it.
360 Shooters
The top game mechanic of AR games on the iphone uses the compass and accelerometer (3GS only) to compute your orientation and overlay graphics on the iPhone screen as if the action is happening all around you in 360 degrees. Bottom line: it makes you move! (and no need to print markers…)
Kids would love it, right? It’s actually a double edge sword. When I asked my daughter (12) to test such a game she raised her head from facebooking in her immobilized position and asked: “will I have to move”?
This is typical to gamers. Take one of the gaming world luminaries, Tim Schafer, who recently told Wired: “When I’m gaming, I like to sit on the couch and move as little as possible”
Here is a chronological list of 360 shooter games on the iPhone. The first game to take the plunge and be accepted on the iPhone app store was:
1) Fairy Trails
Released by Freeverse on September 26
Vodpod videos no longer available.
As a developer of best selling apps for the iPhone, Freeverse decided not to go for the obvious shooter and delivered a fairy tale based theme with pleasant visuals and sounds. A clever design choice given the technical limitations: flying fairy things tend to fly slowly, all around you, and grabbing them with fairy dust (by tapping) is not as intense an action as shooting spaceships.
Turn your iPhone into a magical creature-detector with Fairy Trails! This augmented reality game opens a window to the fairy world, revealing fireflies, colorful butterflies and the ever elusive fairies. Shake your device to power the detector and then scan your surroundings…to merge the real world and game world in spectacular ways! Simply tap the creatures to collect them in your jars.
Reviews are enchanted by the new mechanic but are largely neutral (“a novelty?” by PocketGamer).
One element missing from Fairy Trails is a radar view that shows where the creatures are located around you – an element that was added in subsequent games.
2) Arcade Reality
Released by ToySpring on Oct 9th 2009
(Originally released in 2007 on Palm Treo and previously reviewed on games alfresco)
Toyspring didn’t go too far with the theme choice: shooting aliens. Once you overcome the tacky-wacky design it can get pretty addictive. It has a functional HUD (with a radar view showing alien ships in 360 degrees) and is reminiscent of classic Arcade shooters: the center of the screen is the cross hair – press the shoot button to kill. For my son (16) it is a throw back to the good ol’ days of Chuck E. Cheeses.
For over 30 years millions of aliens are slaughtered daily in video games. Until now they could not attack us in the real world…
Unlike most games where you only train your fingers, you must actually move to play Arcade Reality!
Arcade Reality is a low-brow shooter game with addictive qualities and it led the way for other variations on the theme.
Is it a game? Or is it a simulation of real life mosquitoes hunting?
Mosquitoes is a bare-bones game that uses the compass+accelerometer mechanic to overlay mosquitoes (and their annoying buzzing sound) on live video in 360 degrees. Tap a mosquito to kill it. That’s it.
Some people thought it was a sham. Just riding the AR wave.
However, the key issue is the mechanic. It doesn’t work in a believable way. There is no proper coordination between player movement, visuals on the screen, and the consequence of tapping the screen. It feels somewhat random.
The theme is compelling: Hunt for ghosts in the real world.
Use your iPhone as a set of Ghost Goggles to see into the ethereal plane. Ghosts actually exist in specific locations everywhere. Using Augmented Reality technology, ARGH determines where you are and where you’re facing, and shows you what ghosts exist around you.
Ghosts themed games land itself very nicely to the 360 shooter mechanic; ghosts don’t have to be perfectly aligned with the real world to look believable…
But is it fun?
Reviews weren’t too favorable. The best Wired.com found to say about it was: “ARGH festively debuted on this glorious Friday the 13th” and “could double as a fitness app”…but summed it up as “felt like a short-lived gag”
Still, ARGH was a brave attempt and we couldn’t wait to see what augmented reality games emerge next.
Fun fact: A similar game (Ghostwire) was previously developed for Nokia phones and won awards.
5) Fire Fighter 360
Released by Presselite Nov 10th 2009
I was excited to see the game announcement by Presselite, a creator of prominent AR applications. I was especially intrigued by the choice of theme: instead of shooting aliens, let’s use AR to do good (fight fires)!
The graphics and sound track seemed polished (90’s style), and the story was to die for. But was it any fun?
Here are snippets of my son’s reaction while playing:
– “I can’t lose a half baked game like this” (huh?)
– “ahhh…!” (when getting “burned”)
– “Just doing my job” (when succeeded in putting out a fire)
– “I can hear it but I can’t see it!” (missing radar view)
– “nice dramatic effects” (always positive…)
And here is his verdict: “it felt like I was nursing the game…please work for me game…” or in other words…he felt pity for the game.
Why so harsh?
Because flames – unlike mosquitoes, spaceships or fairies – do not just float in mid air, but usually come out of a specific object. The game mechanic limitations (inability to perfectly align graphics with objects) just didn’t work out for this game. Great attempt; bad game design choice.
XMG was able to generate nice buzz in the media during the game launch, and delivered high production value to support the hype. It also introduces multiplayer support (over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) so that players can work together as a team to dominate and destroy the aliens.
A new design choice in the game was introduced: you can tap anywhere on the screen to shoot an alien ship.
Pandemica transforms your device into a sub-field bio-scanner that can see the invisible alien organisms that are all around you. Your mission is to eliminate the enemy before they get you—and you get gooed. Unlock weapons such as: Missiles, CEB (Continuous Electron Beam), and the BFB (Bosonic Field Bomb) to complement your trusty standard-issue Laser.
Here’s my gamer’s perspective: robust game play, movement made sense, wasn’t a hassle to play…
The game was also a media darling with positive reviews: 5 stars by AppStore HQ and A+ by SlapApp
8) Cam Wars
Released by Gamedokan Japan on Dec 8th 2009
One more spaceships shooter, this time from Japan…
Spaceships attacks the earth.
You can shoot the lasers by touching.
Sweep away the enemies and save the earth!
Besides the Tokyo tower in the backgroung – there is nothing new about this game. In fact it’s a step backwards from previous attempts with this game mechanic.
And there’s more of the same from Gamedokan: SplatCam and Virtual Slingshot – all variations on the same mechanic. 9) 0ghost and 0santa
Released v1.1 by 0cog on Dec 9th 2009
Yet another Ghost themed game, this time from a self proclaimed leader in Augmented Reality (AR) and advanced software development located in Silicon Valley…
zeroGhost will turn your iPhone into a ghost hunting tracking device allowing you a glimpse into their plane of existence. While you hunt them, they try and steel your life energy until either you or they are dead. Problem is, there are many more of them, than you.
Couldn’t find any reviews or videos about this game, and the game site is very laconic. I typically buy and try games I review, and I would have tried 0Ghost myself, but not for $4.99!
A second game from 0Cog uses a similar mechanic – but this time – with a Christmas theme…meet ZeroSanta:
When you see Santa, throw snowballs at him and receive gifts in return. Be careful not to hit the reindeer or they will return to the North Pole with Santa.
10) Augmented Reality Dimension Invaders
Released by Rapidito Games on Dec 16 2009
The latest game to make it to the store has a nice screenshot, but doesn’t surpass the previous games in any other way.
They have broken the barriers between dimensions to come to our reality.
They are coming to kill the human race. They are coming to kill you!
But you have the most powerful weapon. You can see the enemy spaceships through your iPhone camera. You can look for them in the app left bottom radar, point them with the cross hair and shoot touching anywhere on the screen.
Tap anywhere on the screen, but you only shoot the alien in the crosshair.
Overall – I give it a “meh…”
Some reviews were more generous with a 8/10 by i4U
That concludes the list of 360 shooters launched in 2009. Best games in this category: Arcade Reality and Pandemica.
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Photo Augmenting (or Phogmenting)
What other AR mechanics are possible on the iPhone?
Several notable companies thought that overlaying graphics on a static picture taken by the user – is cool.
I want to believe these apps were originally conceived as true AR apps (overlaying graphics on real life objects) – but since Apple didn’t make the elusive video API public – they had to settle for a workaround: take a picture of your real live object – and then overlay AR as if it were the real world…
This mechanic did have an advantage. It didn’t rely on overlaying graphics on live video – a feature that became available on the iPhone only in September. The first game appeared as early as June.
Here is the lowdown of the next mechanic I like to call – phogmenting.
11) The Hidden Park
Released by Bulpadok originally in June 2009
A brilliant use of the photo augmenting mechanic:
The Hidden Park is a magical adventure that your kids will love. It’s an afternoon out for the whole family that won’t break the bank. It’s a groundbreaking blend of fantasy and reality. Enjoy.
It uses nice graphics and a story to get the young (and young at heart) outdoors to play a treasure hunt-like game.
It’s tied to specific parks – but the Park Builder allows you to localize the adventure for your own local park. Although it’s not using augmented reality in the scientific sense – it’s inspired by AR concepts and could transform one day into a magnificent AR game.
Bulpadok reused the technology developed for The Hidden Park to create another (free) app:
Briefly spotted in Apple’s top 25 application for kids games?
Fairies Everywhere reveals magical creatures in your own photos. Take a photo and you’ll see that fairies live all around us! All the time!
It’s an entertaining game for kids that creates memorable portraits for everyone – from dad to grandma and beyond. Get discounts to order prints of your fairy photos online.
As much as Hidden Park hit the spot – Fairies Everywhere was disappointing: how many times do I want to see the same fairies superimposed on my living room pictures…?
(Unlike the Hidden Park it didn’t really give any incentive to go alfresco)
13) – Drift
Released byHIT Lab NZ on Nov 5th 2009 (independent company from HIT Lab NZ Research center)
I tried hard to have fun with this game – but besides the believable engine roar and the cool music – I did not succeed…
To be fair, it’s likely this game was originally conceived as a true AR app – overlaying muscle car CG making doughnuts – on live video). It’s probably reverted to a static image to be allowed on the app store.
I can imagine this game being a tad more fun if played on dynamic video; players would be manipulating the iPhone to control the car around the marker-card laid in the middle of your own room.
While at it – HIT Lab released another game with a similar mechanic (photogmeting) – this time it’s a revenge against bugs dubbed: Splatter Bugs
One user comment I caught online says it all: “whew, the video saved me from getting this.”
Go geochasing friends and strangers with your iPhone. Play it inconspicuous like an agent, hidden like a ninja or offensive like a pirate. GeoChaser uses GPS to locate you and your opponents. Your positions will be displayed on a map.
Unfortunately, the GPS+compass combo isn’t accurate enough to help you identify targets. But it’s probably more fun than matching tweets with tweeters – as many apps do today.
“Laser tag meets urban paintball in an epic battle against your friends, a heart pounding adventure that puts you and your iPhone directly in the line of fire.”
The game looks awesome in the video. In reality, the players generate the fun – not the game. What’s its “added value”?
When shooting a photo of your opponent, it recognizes the color of your opponent’s shirt. If it’s a hit – it will make your opponent’s iPhone vibrate. Neat? Yes! Augmented? Ah…who cares. Is it enough to become a best selling game? It will have to do more than vibrate.
AR history buffs among you will remember this game was originally conceived way back in 2007 for the Android phone; does Wifi Army ring a bell? Or the Lumix Battle commercial?
The world is the battlefield, your phone is your weapon. Players organize in 2 teams armed with cell phones with the goal to locate and take pictures of their opponents. The phone compares captured pictures against a database of player faces and awards points for correct hits.
Nevertheless, Stage Two deserve kudos for thinking about fun before technology – and making it happen.
Toss virtual rings by flicking your finger onto a blue circle (drawn on on a white page). The circle is overlaid with an upright peg. Try to hit the peg. The farther the distance – the higher the points you score.
This was a huge surprise. The app is poorly designed, and it seems like it was put together in a haste. However, this is the only app on the store that actually analyzes the pixels on the screen (looks for the blue circle) and overlays graphics (the yellow upright peg) so it’s perfectly aligned with the circle. Yes it’s blinking, the tracking is far from being robust, and the game play is definitely not much fun…but it’s the closest thing to augmented reality you will find on the app store in 2009.
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A bunch of other games on the app store claim to be “Augmented Reality Games” as well. They weren’t. But they weren’t fun either, which is where I draw the line. Here’s the list of…
Games that didn’t make the list
Overlaying flying bullets aimlessly on a camera view doesn’t cut it for me. Not even if I have a bunch of switch weapons to choose from. And yet, such games sprung up like mushrooms after an October rain: MGD (Most Dangerous Game), Assassins FPS by Differentium, iPew by Wumbitz, Firepower by Todd Hopkinson, VRArsenal by Quickdecay, First Person Shooter by Blueriversa, HandsUp by Assaf Waisler (introducing a new weapon – kisses). hiBubble by BorderTown and Snowglobe by Maverick, get a special mention for breaking away from weapons, and blowing bubbles and snow respectively, instead. Does anyone play these games, or are they just too tempting to build?
Wanted Dead or Alive by Poulet Maison (House Chicken in French) has style. I admit. The sound track sets the expectations for a AAA game – but sending friends photos of my appliances riddeled with bullet holes – isn’t my kind of fun.
Games to inspire Augmented Reality Games
Location-based games could be considered the older cousins of augmented reality games. Together, they could form a very powerful gaming experience. Here are some inspiring location-based games:
iSpy by SplitP is based on an extremely simple yet clever concept: take photos of real world objects and challenge other people to try and find it – it’s all about getting out and experiencing the real world – games alfresco style.
Turf Wars by MeanFreePath is a very ambitious game that takes Zynga’s Mafia Wars to the streets – literally. Nurture a mafia family and gain turf in your hood. Imagine what could happen if added a pinch of AR to this scenario…
Take over real-world territory in your neighborhood with Turf Wars, the new GPS-enabled crime game for your iPhone and iPod Touch! Turf Wars is the massively multiplayer online game where you claim and defend real-world territory from other mobsters.
Parallel Kingdom is a mobile location based massively multiplayer game that uses your GPS location to place you in a virtual world on top of the real world.
Through this game, you can almost see how MMOs and virtual worlds will look like after migrating from PC screens to the real streets.
Booyah by MyTown – location-based games meet monopoly.
Get away from your pursuers in an augmented reality survival. Turn your everyday life environment into a playing field : you’re tracked down by ennemies’ satellites, escape from the area watching over, in the time alloted.
Eye Hound pulls you in with great graphics, sound effects, and promising a unique interaction – but the action is soooo000 repetitive that it wipes out all the positive points. It might be an alternate reality game – but not an augmented one.
Apps to inspire Augmented Reality games
Sometime apps can inspire games as well; watch out for these wanna-be-games apps as they evolve. They look like apps, they talk like apps – but when you do something good like checking into a bar – you get points, badges, or if you’re a frequent patron, you could even become the mayor of your favorite pub. These apps marry social networks with GPS to help you explore your city in new ways.
– Foursquare – introduced at SXSW in March 2009: earn points and unlock badges for
discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people
– Gowalla – a more playful take on Foursquare
– CauseWorld – same mechanics with a socially responsible spin: points you earn transform into sponsored donations to important causes.
Put a Spell (Developed by Arballoon; Published by Ogmento)
Have you been rejected from the app store? Tell us your story.
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That concludes our review of Augmented Reality games in 2009. Overall, we have reviewed more than 20 AR games, and identified several highlights and a handful of disappointments.
The biggest achievement of the year: tens of thousands of players got their hands dirty with AR games for the first time in history. And the promise is much bigger. Prepare for 10x more games in 2010.
And keep in mind: to make these games 10x more fun, we’ll need better design – not necessarily better technology.
Wanted! Game designers! Game designers! Game designers!
Happy New Year to our devoted readers and contributors. A million thanks to our own Rouli for an amazing coverage of the augmented reality scene. And finally, welcome to our fantastic new author – Tom Carpenter.
Previous apps by Acrossair were task specific: find the Nearest Tube, Nearest Places and Nearest Tweets.
Today, it’s joining the likes of Layar and Wikitude as multipurpose AR browsers. Congratulations.
Let’s take a look at the new browser.
First screen aggregates various information sources such as Panoramio, Stella Artois – LE BAR Guide as well as Acrossair previous apps such as Nearest Tube, etc. Scroll through the long list by swiping your finger iPhone style.
Once an information source is selected, you get to see the nearest as points of interests (POIs).
The heads up display is minimalistic, with just one pink icon on the top left to access more info – and Acrossair signature “stack” of POIs
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From the Acrossair site:
The browser uses awesome 3D navigation which you can see as you spin around. There is local data from property companies and big name brands which is represented in an augmented reality view. Holding it flat jumps to a Google maps view and when you spin around so does the browser to make sure you know where everything is in orientated.
What will be Acrossair next steps?
Will they open it for developers? for user generated content?
We’ll have to see how things unfold in 2010 which is promising to be a hot year!
If you missed our coverage of the morning – read part I.
Rain turned into snow and a ground breaking discussion was kicked off:
Yours truly proposed an open collaborative game development project: The Big NYC Game – a city wide augmented reality game for New York by New Yorkers.
And if you are wondering what happened at the (bigger) sister event on the left coast (HackerDojo in Mountain View) – here are some snippets:
Mike Libehold (IFTF) summarized the event with these words:
Turnout for the 12 hour ARdevcamp at the Hacker dojo was mind boggling. I estimated that at peak, 130-140 people were in and out of the space more comfortable for 70-80.
it was a barely disciplined massively parallel and fun! dialog (and party) in 40 discrete sessions, mostly technical and social, with exponentially complex interactions in between all day into evening. We asked everyone to log their session notes on the ardevcap wiki, but the huge crowd flooded the meager DSL connection from the building, complained they couldn’t post pages. I haven’t had a chance to explore, or inspect damages yet.
The mass of expert devcampers was simply astounding and uniformly brilliant hackers, mobile techies, mappers,image recognition scientists, 3D, artists, media designers, nav, techies, game designers, a teacher a museum guy . . .
The dialog was multi-disciplinary, definitely friendly towards, but not closely focused yet specifically on an open ARweb, data interoperability, software and service ecosytems, APIs, rendering and UI conventions. I suspect all of these were discussed in some depth, but but not yet logged.
On a rainy Saturday morning, the Canal strip is already busy. Just a block away, a group of passionate (how else would you explain the Sat morning meetup) techies are hauling up the elevator to Topp’s Penthouse – The Open Planning Project. The coolest work place I have ever seen.
About 20 people are in the room + 10 on Skype (from Europe and the US)
In the spirit of unconference – all the rules are broken in the first 5 minutes…the day is kicked off with a session about PyGo Wave and a discussion about using Google wave (XMPP protocol) for distributed Augmented Reality.
Welcome to the NYC AR Dev Camp. In a few hours a parallel session will start on the left coast in Mountain View.
Next is introductions of the passionistas on location:
Sophia Parafina – Open GEO (and the organizer of the event – thanks!)
Tish Shute – UgoTrade blog + Using Google Wave for distributed AR on the internet
Omer Gunes From NYU MLP –
Steven Feiner – Columbia Professor for the AR lab
Don Schwartz – Demystifying tech, virtual worlds
Name – Local search, social search
Kate Chapman – web developer FortiusOne
Dimitri Darras – web dev
Ohan Oda – PHd from Columbia – Goblin XNA
Sean White – Columbia, Smithsonian institution
Ori Inbar – Games alfresco author, Founder of Ogmento – maker of AR games.
Dan Leslie – web consulting reflections delta: will launch a loc based social graph analysis tool (iPhone)
MZ – startup to develop a platform to use semantic data to enable virtual worlds
Jon Russek – film production + law + internet. Interested in AR as artistic medium for creativity
Bert Picot – entrepreneur – live entertainment ticketing. learn about AR
Steven Henderson – Columbia – AR for procedural applications
Matthew Pierce – a writer – interested in user experience
Davide Byron – developed the game Spads and Fokkers and code
Chris Grayson – Web developer and marketing consultant
Marco Neumann – KONA
Noah Zerkin – The inventor of the Zerkin glove
Who have I missed?
What shall we talk about?
Sean White volunteers to moderate the discussion, and collcts these topics on the board:
-egalitarian usage – relevance of AR to small businesses
-limitations of mobile devices (handsets) – how to overcome limitations in the near-mid term
-open marker system (database) to be implemented for global use (what role RFID might play?)
-what about voice recognition as input – multimodal (ARXML voice protocol?)
-computer infrastructure for sensor fusion (current apps only use limited sets of sensors) blue tooth?
-create a sound map based on a picture?
(Sean mentions an iphone app for hearing impaired)
-revenue models ?
-use AR for advertising, enhancing existing tech and business models
-Big NY game (location based, social, AR game built for NYC by New Yorkers!)
-where does AR meet traditional motion tracking?
-natural feature tracking
-intersection of AR and semantic web – using AR as basis for formal models on the web
-patent land mines? (GEOVector)
Lots of great topics. Sean proposes to group them into 4 categories and have a vote:
1) Business
2) Standards
3) Tech
4) Apps and games
Surprisingly, business and Apps get the most votes!
Now we are off to a lunch break (Denno Coil playing on the screen). Will continue after the break.
To get a sense how cool this location is – checkout this video (courtesy of Sean White)
Ohan Oda presents “his baby” from Columbia university: Goblin XNA a development tool for AR games based on the Microsoft XNA game development environment. See more info.
Questions range the gamut from -” what does it run on?” (anything as long as it’s a Microsoft platform…) to “how much can it be customized?” (practically anything – it’s open source!)
Our new project has been revealed today, we are very proud to announce a new Augmented Reality game called Firefighter 360 for the iPhone 3GS.
We actually used our Augmented Reality engine developed for Bionic Eye application to create this little game.
In this life-saving fire-person shooter, you play as a firefighter, rather than gunning down enemies, you will have to douse virtual flames spreading very fast in your real environment. As you physically turn around 360 degrees with your iPhone, you have to methodically extinguish the flames you see, thanks to the camera. The fire itself isn’t just a static “enemy” to be dealt with. Flames will propagate and spread if you don’t put them down completely, the fire itself is capable of doing you harm if you’re not careful.
OK, nuff said. Let’s get it on the App store pronto.
Games Alfresco 