Augmented reality isn’t just webcams and smartphones (or really weird haptic floors.) Sometimes they’re windows into other places like this Winscape. While the name is unimaginative and makes you think it’s a Microsoft product, the idea is spectacular (albeit for only one person.)
Using an iPod, a Wii remote, and some other gadgetry (see this video for the how-to), the setup gives you a window into another place. We’re not talking a fireplace on your TV, but an interactive illusion. The views they choose were pretty mundane.
Though if I’m going to take the time to set all this equipment up in my living room and carry an iPod around my neck all the time, I want a panoramic view of a distant planet like Mars or the bottom of the ocean. Or give me a mock-up of my favorite science fiction and fantasy novels. What LARP’er wouldn’t want to have a window that looks out of Minas Tirith?
The makers of this call it Situational Telepresence. I’d call it a ‘window into another world.’
Available on the appstore and costs only a buck.
(and yes, I find it more augmented reality than many visual applications we have seen this last year. Although lacking a visual integration, it does extend your senses, and it has more interaction with reality than that firefighter game)
I’m back! (but not for long, following the augmented reality event I’ll be mostly offline for three weeks). Speaking of augmented reality events, this week’s linkfest is full of talks from other events that took place recently:
Total Immersion’s presentation on the augmented reality business event in Germany. You can skip the first part of TI’s COO Eric Gehl talk (he’s mostly demoing TI products), but on the second part he talks about making money of AR.
Zugara explains why augmented reality may have a Jan Brady’s complex. They also gave a talk about the potential of AR to GSD&M Ideacity (an advertisement agency). Here are the slides.
This week’s video demonstrates cooking with AR, a video showcasing some of Yoo Kyoung Noh’s concepts presented in her Object 2.0 project – a concept proposal for the system of the near future, where the Internet is integrated into physical objects and spaces. Via Beyond The Beyond:
The ISMAR10 committee is currently putting the word out that the deadline for submissions has been extended to May 31st. This year’s theme is “Borderless.”
The 2010 ISMAR Arts, Media and Humanities chairs invite artists, scholars, media practitioners, who can shed new light on emerging new relations within the future of Mixed and Augmented Reality. We would welcome musings, probings, discourses, insights, and imaginations to be presented in Seoul Korea October 13-16, 2010 in the form of long and short papers, art installations, panels, workshops or tutorials.
This theme of this year’s ISMAR conference is “Borderless” sparked by the convergence of Mixed and Augmented Reality, ubiquitous technology and global connectivity. In the rapidly emerging application of Mixed and Augmented Reality, how do we make sense of time and space now?
With no clear-cut boundary between what is natural and artificial, we are faced with ambiguity, transience, and contingency. How will melting the boundaries between real, virtual and imaginary realities transform our world?
For any questions about the Call for Participation contact the AMH Media-Communication Chair, Julian Stadon (J.Stadon@curtin.edu.au).
That’s the tagline of the new iPhone app Gigaputt from Gigantic Mechanic. Instead of clubs, you swing your iPhone in a Wii-like manner (though the accuracy is no where near the same) and hit your ball. Unlike most AR iPhone games, this one actually requires you to interact with your surroundings rather than just spin in place and hit random buttons. I’m sure there’s some way to include drinks and bar hopping into the game for the adult readers of GA.
A group of students at Technische Universitat Munchen, under the direction of Gudrun Klinker, created this augmented reality racing game. The setup is similar to the AR Drone game in that it uses a real vehicle, however, using the illusions of AR, they turned their LEGO Mindstorm robots into cars.
The students had two (analog) radio cameras and mounted each on one Lego Mindstorm Robot. With this constellation the player was presented the view on the world from a robot’s perspective. The students also placed markers on top of the robots which were being used to calculate the pose of each camera in relation to a common coordinate system (using one ceiling mounted camera). With this pose, the view of the virtual camera was matched to the real camera’s view. The students augmented the real camera images with virtual graphics such as the race course and some special items (speedup, rockets, etc). The goal was to drive as fast as possible four laps or to hunt down the other player before he can finish the race.
The calibration of the tracking system and the tracking itself was done using Ubitrack and its MarkerTracker Component developed at our chair.
We think because of some aspects this game is very special:
– The game is a twoplayer game, so you share the same virtual (and real) world between the two players.
– There are no markers in the camera view of the player since the cameras for showing the graphics and doing the tracking are not the same.
– The (real) robots are being overlayed with car models in the camera images so you do not get the the impression of playing against Lego robots. (O.K. sometimes you can see the robot due to a lag in the tracking or since it is not overlayed completely)
– And best: It was playable and is not only a concept :-)
Good job Christian Waechter, Eva Artinger and Markus Duschl. I think you’ll have a career in augmented reality.
Augmented reality has come a long way in a years time. Last year I got excited by research projects and gimmicky AR webcam advertising, but that quickly faded on the tenth plus iteration. It wasn’t until July that we starting having real AR products in the form of apps. Nearly a year later and still early in the development of the AR ecosystem, we’re seeing a more diverse use of the technology and that has me excited again. So I want to take a moment to go over ten cool things going on right now in augmented reality.
1. Battle of the AR Browsers
Wikitude, Layar, Tonchidot, Junaio, TagWhat and others hope to be the standard for the AR browser market. Layar has recently upped the ante with an AR content store and TagWhat takes it in a new direction by combining lessons learned with Foursquare and Twitter. I suspect one of the big boys like Google, Twitter or Facebook will eventually either create their own or co-opt the ideas from these early browsers into their current products. I’m not sure which horse to bet on in this race, but in the end we customers are the winners.
Using an Eye-Trek video headset, the guy at Tailormadetoys made a pair of AR glasses. I love the DIY culture and while they’re not see-through, I think all the right parts to make one are out there. This post from Team Hack-a-Day proves that the DIY makers are getting close, so why can’t one of the big makers get it done?
3. The AR phone – Ouidoo
The specs on this Ouidoo QderoPateo smartphone are in the WTF!? zone. While the phone won’t be out until the fall, the company claims it’ll have a 26-core CPU capable of 8-gigaflop floating point operations and include 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, 28GB of built-in storage, microSD expansion, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, built-in 3D map, accelerometer, digital compass, 5-megapixel camera with flash, 220 hours of standby battery life, and a sharp 3.5-inch 800 x 480 screen. Whew.
While I’m not completely believing the hype, and it could end up being vaporware, it certainly looks promising. Though it’ll have to work hard to compete with the likes of the iPhone and Droid.
Bionic eyes and augmented reality. It’s like peanut better and chocolate! Rob Spence is putting a camera into his eye to make movies with (and because its just plain cool.) And he’s also interested in combining augmented reality with his eye camera. They’ve come up with a promotional AR eyeborg t-shirt in the meantime.
Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, Marco Tempest, and the list goes on. It pains me to say that I won’t be able to make the inaugural event. I had a work conflict with that week, so I have to bow out of hosting the panel on AR glasses. But for the rest of you, I hope you’ll be able to make it. With AR on the rise and viable business options a-plenty, it’s a good time to network and see what everyone is doing with the nascent technology. This is the “can’t miss” AR event of the year.
Our favorite interviewer Tish Shute and longtime commenter Thomas Wrobel have been sheparding the AR Wave project and collaborating with people all over the globe. While it’s still too early to tell, this could end up being one of the most important AR developments out there if they can truly create an open source way of using AR. As they’ve been telling everyone, they’re trying to make a system that:
* Anyone can make content
* Anyone can make a browser
* Anyone can run a server
7. iPhone OS4.0
It almost pains me to get excited about an iPhone update that promises video access to make real AR work on that smartphone. We got fooled last September with the OS3.1. I’m hoping we don’t get fooled again (unless you’re the Who.)
I’m not even entirely sure if haptic floors fit into the augmented reality spectrum, but it’s so crazy weird and true, that I had to include it. I seriously doubt we’ll be seeing a commercial product anytime soon though (or ever.)
9. AR Drone
While the news on the AR drone is a stale few months old, I still think it warrants inclusion because it was a great product. The hovercraft alone was worth the price of admission, but the AR added a creative twist to it. I have no idea if it sold well, but it sure did capture the imaginations of a lot of geeks.
10. You choose!
Let us know what you think is the coolest thing going in augmented reality right now. Whether it’s a product only hinted at or one currently residing on your smartphone, we’d like to hear it. So let us know here at Games Alfresco in the comment section!
This week’s video is of a kid playing air AR guitar, a promotion to some Disney product, I think. On the bright side, it’s the first time I see augmentation of the torso (and not the head). Via Development Memo For Ourselves
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.
Games Alfresco 