Special Message from Mark Billinghurst: Introducing FLARManager – Can Building AR Apps in Flash Be Easier?

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Ori Inbar

July 1st 2009  Press Release

ARToolworks Releases Commercial License for FLARManager

ARToolworks is very pleased to announce that it is able to offer commercial licenses for the popular FLARManager software. FLARManager is a software framework developed by Eric Socolofsky that makes building FLARToolKit Flash based Augmented Reality applications easier.

FLARManager decouples the marker-tracking functionality from Papervision3D, and provides a more robust event-based system for managing marker addition, update, and removal. It supports detection and management of multiple patterns, and multiple markers of a given pattern.

Most importantly, FLARManager sits on top of FLARToolKit and makes it much faster and easier to develop flash based AR applications, typically half the time or less of developing a straight FLARToolKit application.

Philip Lamb, CTO of ARToolworks, says “We are delighted to be able to provide commercial license for this outstanding tool. This will enable FLARToolKit developers to build Flash AR applications quicker than ever before, and is the perfect compliment to our existing product line.”

FLARManager will continue to be freely available under a GPL license from http://www.facebook.com/l/;http://transmote.com/flar/, but ARToolworks has the exclusive rights to sell commercial licenses to those companies that do not want to share the source code of their applications as required by the GPL license.

The developer of FLARManager, Eric Socolofsky, says, “I’m excited to be able to offer FLARManager to both the commercial and experimental community.  FLARManager began as an effort to bring FLARToolkit to a wider audience, and this commercial license will help to expand the reach of augmented reality and new interfaces to the web.”

For a limited time, ARToolworks is selling FLARManager for a reduced price of only $295 USD for a single product license, and also selling a discounted bundle of FLARToolKit and FLARManager licenses together. FLARToolKit is required to use FLARManager.

Please contact sales@artoolworks.com for more details.
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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on June 28, 2009 by rouli

This week on the linkfest, it’s trains, snails and mobile phones:

In last week’s linkfest I reported about the strange event named “The World Series Of ‘Tubing”, where two players play card war with Youtube videos render via augmented reality. Surely, such description doesn’t make the event any clearer, but luckily the guys behind it have put the following video on Youtube to explain it all:

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Your Favorite Augmented Reality Games Of All Time

Posted on June 27, 2009 by Ori Inbar

Our inaugural post from early 2008: “Top 10 AR demos that will…” sparked huge interest. Since then, we have witnessed loads of AR games swarming the market.

Well, that may be an exaggeration – but the industry has certainly transitioned from delivering mere demos to actual games; from proof of concepts to commercial products; from “Yay” to “W00t!”

We have covered these AR games before, but Today is your chance to choose.

Vote for your all time favorite augmented reality games!

Our only rules for nomination:

1) It’s a fun game

2) It registers computer graphics on reality

3) It runs on commercial off the shelf hardware.


Here are the 18 nominees in chronological order (when first surfaced on the web):

go!

1. The Invisible Train

2004 – Graz University (PDA, Gizmondo)

2. Catapult

March 2006 – Gizmondo (Gizmondo)

3. Eye of Judgment

May 2006 – Sony (Sony EyeToy)

4. AR Tennis

June 2006 – Fanta/HIT Lab NZ (Nokia)

5. WizQubes

March 2007 – MXR

6. Level Head

October 2007 – Julian Oliver (webcam)

7. ARis

July 2008 – Geisha Entertainment (Webcam)

8. Kweekies

October 2008 – Int13 (Nokia, iPhone)

9. Ghostwire

October 2008 – A Different Game (Nintendo DSi, Nokia)

10. Tower of Defense

December 2008 – Sergey Ten

11. Topps

March 2009 – Total Immersion (Webcam)

12. Scope

March 2009 – Frantz Lasorne (Goggles)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

13. Do the Dip

April 2009 – MacDonald’s (webcam)

14. ARhrrrr!

May 2009 – GA Tech and SCAD-Atlanta (Nvidia Tegra)

15. Candy Wars

May 2009 – GA Tech and SCAD-Atlanta (Gizmondo)

16. Art of Defense

May 2009 – GA Tech (Nokia)

17. RubberDuckzilla

May 2009 – Oasis (webcam)

18. InVizimals

June 2009 – Sony (PSP)

-*-*-*

Which are your favorites?

Share with your friends and find out their favorites!
(share button at top right of page)

The winners will receive the lucrative –

“Games Alfresco Hall of Fame Award”

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Zugara’s Mirror has Great Features (except one)

Posted on June 26, 2009 by rouli

Los Angeles based, but Japanese named interactive marketing agency Zugara has launched a couple of days ago a new application named “The Webcam Social Shopper“.
Basically, it’s a magic mirror application that let’s you try on different clothes. But, there’s so much more to it – the user interface is engaged via motion detection, and you can take a photo of yourself with your new virtual clothes, and share it on facebook with your friend. However, one thing this application fails to do, is to show you whether any of the clothes fit, as they all stay static and don’t interact with your body movements. I don’t expect this application to improve the 3.57% conversion rate state in the next video.

Now, this application is only in alpha state, and a lot can change until it goes public. And admittedly, Zugara has some nice ideas on the future use cases of such application (e.g. shop together with your friends, online). Nevertheless, I think it’s too early for it to become useful. Maybe when Project Natal matures, but not now.

Oh, and lest I forget, this technology is patent pending. Great.

Update: Techcrunch had a similar article about Zugara a few days ago.

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Credit Wars Made Easy

Posted on June 26, 2009 by rouli

It was bound to happen. As augmented reality becomes more and more prevalent, it was all a matter of time till someone took credit for something he is probably not entitled for. Enter Chris Hughes best known for jailbreaking the first iPhone. Last February, at TED palmsprings, Hughes briefly showcased his work that “makes creating ‘augmented reality’ a cinch”.

(video was pulled down by TED, but here you can still watch it)

If this demo looks familiar to you, you are not alone. Ralph Hauwert, a Papervision3d developer, took offence at Hughes talk, and subsequent interview. According to Hauwert, Huges is taking credit for porting ARToolKit to flash, while he only took FLARToolKit and “followed a tutorial like this one from the FlashBlog, then gathered all his courage and energy to work with 2 opensource projects and take credit for it” (source).

Apparently, TED folks are working to fix things up. Till then, you can find more details over Hauwert’s blog.

[author comment: I published this post a few days ago at Augmented Times, and deemed as uninteresting enough for Games Alfresco. Per Ori’s request, I repost it here as well. Since a few days have gone by, you might want to check the featured links for more up to date information]

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Augmented Pool is very Cool

Posted on June 23, 2009 by rouli

Yep, it’s the silliest post title I’ve ever come up with. Nevertheless, this next video is really cool. It features both a robotic pool player and an augmented reality guidance system for human pool players (starting at 2:00).

It was developed by a team of researchers from Canada’s Queen’s university. Sadly, I couldn’t find much information about the augmented reality implementation. However, here’s an article about the robotic system, and I guess that once they implemented the robot, advancing to AR only required identifying the cue stick.

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on June 21, 2009 by rouli

This week seemed to be all about Layar. The blogosphere and major tech sites were all reporting about the “first augmented reality browser” (and we had our fare share in the coverage as well). However, there were some other AR releated news this week, even though the first item on this week’s linkfest is still about Layar:

Happy Father’s day! If you live in the united states and forgot to get something special for your father, don’t worry, you can still make him an augmented greeting card, thanks to internet developement agenct Mangrove:

Have a good father’s day, and a great week!

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The Emperor’s New Video Games

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Ori Inbar

Microsoft’s Project Natal made the news at E3, and ever since it’s only growing in mind share thanks to “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and, now, Stephen Colbert.

The highlight last night was the introduction of the “next next generation” of Xbox technology, the X-Xbox, a device that requires no controller, no screen and no console. (can only be viewed in Hulu approved territories)
Vodpod videos no longer available.

Funny. Will Microsoft ever ship another “Box”…?

But I saw something beyond the joke: A sign for the end of hardware.

Why would you need a console, a control, and a screen when you could have more fun without all of it? Really!?

Just put on your favorite augmented designer sun glasses, wear that chic augmented e-textile shirt you got from your mom (both communicating with the mini network computer in your pocket), and go out an play!

This, by the way, would also satisfy Obama’s plea to parents voiced in a speech to the American Medical Association this week:

“…raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.”

You will look just like Colbert in that clip – albeit expressing more subtle gestures, and having REAL fun.

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IBM Serves an Augmented Reality Wimbledon

Posted on June 18, 2009 by rouli

While SPRXMobile enables you to experience an augmented version of the Netherlands (and the whole world in the the future), IBM has more modest goals in mind. Available from next Monday on the Android store, IBM’s Seer Android Beta will add some AR magic to the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Using it, visitors can find facilities on ground (locating the nearest restrooms), but more impressively, they can “point the phone at a tennis court, find out the court number and also who’s playing and more crucially, who’s winning”.

As with Layar, IBM Seer Android Beta lets you choose between different layers of metadata (and it seems that unlike Layar, one can choose to see more than one layer at a time). Moreover, the not specialized name of this app (i.e. not calling it “IBM Augmented Wimbledon”) suggests that IBM may have more deep interest in augmented reality location based services. Days will tell if my hunch here is correct.

More details can be found here.
(via PicturePhoning.com)

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Transform to Optimus Prime

Posted on June 17, 2009 by rouli

Remember the days when new films were promoted using alternative reality games? Well, it’s got old fast, and this summer there’s a new technology in town. In the last month or so we already covered the following movie promotions:

Now, Transformers 2 is joining the party (do you need to be a sequel to get your own AR campaign?). Users can go to WeAreAutobots.com and try out an activex application that uses face detection in order to place a virtual Optimus Prime mask onto your face. You can also print a black and white marker in order to play with a virtual Bumblebee at the palm of your hand.


It was developed by creative marketing agency Picture Production Company using the technology provided by Total Immersion (and that’s why it’s not a simple flash based application). Decepticon leader Megatron refused to comment.

(via /Film)

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