The Great Disappearing Act

Posted on October 5, 2010 by rouli

If you thought that augmented reality can only place virtual object in real environments, think again. AR can also be used to ‘delete’ real object, making them transparent.

Case in point, Francesco I. Cosco’s work presented at ISMAR09 (which reminds me that ISMAR 2010 is less than two weeks away!). In this work, Cosco and other researchers from the University of Calabria, Italy and the Rey Juan Carlos university in Spain, tried to add haptic interaction to an augmented environment. Problem is, haptic devices are visually not attractive, and aren’t really a part of the scene. The solution they came up with was quite ‘magical’:

More details on Cosco’s home page.

Cosco F. I., Garre C., Bruno F., Muzzupappa M., Otaduy M. A. “Augmented Touch without Visual Obtrusion”. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2009.

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Highlights from Metaio’s insideAR

Posted on October 4, 2010 by rouli

So Metaio was nice enough to upload all of insideAR talks online (wish that the organizers of ISMAR10 will follow suit). However, most of us don’t have a day to spend watching all the talks, so here are some of my favorites (note that I’m a tech head, so your mileage may vary) :

Sadly, no videos of Metaio folks drinking excessive amounts of beer in the Oktoberfest, but I keep my hopes high for next year.

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on October 3, 2010 by rouli

Lots of exciting news this week!

As for this week’s video, we have Sky Canvas, an iPhone application with a brilliant concept behind it, from Shiodome Innovation Studio, Japan. A part of their PaPaCo Design Project, Shiodome tried to create an application that can be played together by a father and his son. With Sky Canvas, the two can form clouds in the shape of animals by tapping and blowing air to the microphone. Unfortunately, the app is not available outside of Japan, so I can’t really test it, but as you surely have understood by now, I dig the concept:

Have a great week!

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3D Hologram ON your iPhone

Posted on October 2, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

From the guys that brought you NudeIt.

I had cold shudders thinking of what people might actually scan into a hologram if this were real.

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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