Yet another use of the BBC big screens for augmenting reality. This time it’s a project by a group of artists named “The Sancho Plan” who deployed the display in Bristol late last March. I don’t have any more details, but it seems the participants had a lot of fun:
Big Screen Augmented Reality from The Sancho Plan on Vimeo.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Art | 1 Comment »
It will be a challenge cramming all of this week’s links into seven bullet points and a video, but I’ll try my best:
This weeks video shows the work coming from the University of Ulster. At first, those may look like very simple games – and they are, for a very good reason. Intended to aid in upper-limb stroke rehabilitation, these let patients practice some of the finer movements such as reach, grasp, manipulation and release of objects. You can read more about it here.
Have a grand week!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: ARWave, HIT Lab NZ, Kooaba, Layar, mixare | 2 Comments »
Augmentizer, a free app for the iPhone, has the most amazing image recogn=ition algorithm. It can identify places, people, food and random object with little to no latency.
Alas, the algorithm works only on April fools day, since it requires the iPhone owner to press on one of six hidden buttons for it to work.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: augmentizer | Leave a comment »
Before you freak out and demand to know where to order one–it’s a concept video. But watching it makes me feel like a terminator booting up. I just hope they haven’t installed Vista on my OS.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: augmented reality, concept | Leave a comment »
Anybody feels like sponsoring an AR blogger trip to an AR event?
There were plenty of interesting AR links to share this week, but only seven won a place in this week’s linkfest:
This week’s quote comes from that talk with Paige Sez:
As we’ve talked about it before, it’s amazing that marketing and advertising are helping push forward AR, and it’s great. It’s fantastic. But it’s also the worst possible thing that could ever happen because it is such a singular way of looking at an overall ubiquitous computing experience. There are other ways.
And as promised, this week’s video is a demo of LookTel, it looks fantastic, and shows that there are some things that an old Windows phone still does better than a new shiny iPhone (well, at least till June):
Have a great week!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Imagination, LookTel, Qualcomm, Seac02 | Leave a comment »
Heavy Rain is an interactive drama video game developed by Quantic Dream for the PlayStation 3. One of the characters in the game, Norman Jayden, uses “Added Reality Glasses” to rapidly investigate crime scenes, analyze evidence, or just waste time. The following videos show examples of the ARI in the game.
Main Trailer (2 minutes)
Wasting Time (2 minutes)
The Augmented Office (4 minutes)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: AR Games, augmented reality, heavy rain, playstation 3 | 3 Comments »
Okay, probably most of you have read the title and said, so what. World of Warcraft is a game, and definitely not reality. Though don’t tell that to the 11.5 million players worldwide.
These “boss-kill” videos are common for the high-end guilds in WoW. They use the videos as a recruiting tool for good players. If you think WoW is just a marriage killing RPG then you’re wrong. At the bleeding edge of the game, guilds compete to be the first at completing new content – i.e. boss-mobs. These combats are intricate battles of coordination between twenty-five gamers using a host of dedicated UI mods and voice-chat programs to defeat the game. The top guilds are rewarded with sponsorships and top guildleaders translate their leadership into real jobs (a prominant Everquest guild leader got a job with Blizzard because of his exploits.) World of Warcraft is, in otherwords, a competitive sport.
So that’s the context of the video. The important augmented reality aspect comes around the minute and a half mark in the form of six colored discs on the virtual ground. The purpose of the colored discs is to show certain players exactly where to stand in the game. This is akin to wide receivers running correct routes so the quarterback can throw them the ball.
Most likely, a program like this will eventually be banned from use because it will trivialize battles and give guilds that use it an advantage over others. Just like any sport, a level playing field is important to keep top competitors interested.
World of Warcraft’s basis in virtual reality makes inclusion of “augmented” reality easy to pull off. The computer already has a complete knowledge of the world (because it has to draw it) and the screen provides the augmented graphics on the virtual world.
What other sports or competition could benefit from using augmented reality in this form? Could marching band competitions use the local spatial awareness of AR to tighten their formations? Or dance groups? Projection based AR could provide a rapid trainer for coordinating large groups.
But it’s going to be a long time before augmented reality gets banned as an unfair advantage in a sport or competition.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: AR Games, augmented reality, Blizzard, everquest, world of warcraft | 2 Comments »
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:
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.
Filed under: AR Advertising, AR Business | Tagged: AR Survey, Marhsall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb | Leave a comment »
Games Alfresco 