2008 Wrap up: Top 5 Augmented Reality Holiday Greetings

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Ori Inbar

’tis the season for best wishes, and nothing shows your real feelings better than an augmented reality greeting card.

Here are the top 5 AR holiday greetings of 2008.

5. Happy Holidays from Tellart

Vodpod videos no longer available.

If you want to try it yourself – go to Tellart

Thanks Makezine for sharing.

4. Virtual Santa from Metaio on your iPhone

Download from the App store or see the whole story at Metaio.com

Thanks Jan for sharing.

3. A XMAS card from Special Moves

Try it yourself at specialmoves.com

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Thanks Ian Tait for sharing.

2. Augmented Reality Christmas Cookies

This one was the coolest, but unfortunately the video was removed from youtube by the user.

Just imagine cookies that when viewed through the AR software web cam show 3d objects floating on top…

Thanks ARtweets for sharing.

1. AID DCC and Katamari

Step 1: Print this
Step 2: Go to www09.aid-dcc.com
Step 3: Enjoy

Thanks Digital Stew for uncovering.

***Update***

Total Immersion just came out with their own New Year AR Greeting Card

Funky AR christmas greetings accompanied with latin-rap

***yet another update***

This time a Valentine greetings card by the folks from teh Warehouse

Filed under: AR Events | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

What You Need to Build an Augmented Reality iPhone App

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Ori Inbar

Want to build an Augmented Reality iPhone app?

“First, learn from others’ experiences”

OK, how many augmented reality apps can you find on the iPhone app store?

None.

That is – none yet. Not until Apple makes public its live video API – because without live video – there is nothing really to augment.

So in the meantime, whom can we learn from?
Let’s take a look at select iPhone apps – with a special focus on kids. After all, we want the NEXT generation to get hooked on AR.

See how kids interact with iPhone apps…
See how screens are organized…
See the space required for finger touch…
See how much content can be crumbed into a screen…
See how to use the accelerometer…
See for yourself…

…and most importantly – enjoy!

Word Magic – learn to spell

Interactive book – Interactive book gone wild on the iPhone

Shapes, Colors, Sounds – that’ll keep the toddler busy for 5 minutes

Memory game – how wide is your finger?

A Fast Collection – how long do you play an iPhone app?

3 year old experience – playing through the eyes if a 3 year old

Apps for kids

iChalky – Clever use of accelerometer with a stick figure

Pinch ‘n Pop – there is a use for finger pinching besides zooming

Advanced editor – how many functions can you cram into an iPhone?

Watch more reviews on iPhone Apps for Kids

Filed under: AR Education, AR Games | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

2008 Wrap Up: If the Augmented Reality Industry Got a Report Card

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Ori Inbar

From the authors of “Top 10 Milestones in Augmented Reality“, here comes a second installment in the 2008 Wrap Up series.

This time, Games Alfresco rates the progress of the Augmented Reality industry in 2008, using some self-invented, non-partisan, and mostly-gloomy key performance indicators.

But don’t be dispirited.

According to the proven 5 stage transition model below, AR has left the “Desperation” stage, and is entering the “Pacification” stage. We are not looking back.

ar-kpi-2008

Here is the 2008 progress report of AR’s 10 key performance indicators:

(for info about mentioned people, products, companies -
refer to the previous post)

1. Public awareness ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (2/10)

Yes, the buzz around AR is building, but in an anecdotal survey – none of my acquaintances has ever heard about AR (until I started raving about it)

2. Influencers ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (3/10)

Will Wright and Bruce Sterling made headlines on this blog when they highlighted augmented reality as the future of gaming. Otellini (Intel CEO) demoed AR during his CES keynote as the future of mobile. Not bad for a technology no one has heard about.

3. Awards ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (5/10)

Wow. 2008 was a year of AR awards and acclaim. From the Nokia Mobile Innovation Challenge Winner through the Crunch50 and Android top 50 finalists – augmented reality was a big winner this year.

4. Online Dialogue ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (2/10)

An industry can be measured by the intensity of the online dialog among its constituencies. Apart from one great annual event,  sparse blogs, and a handful of largely passive forums – AR enthusiasts behave like introverts when it comes to tackling major issues online (emails and hallway conversations don’t count…). Despite growing buzz and awards, online AR dialog is dismal.

5. Aesthetics ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (2/10)

Aesthetics was not a conspicuous quality of the augmented reality industry this year. Except for a few isolated cases (e.g. LevelHead, Better Than Reality, The Hunted House, Tagged in Motion) AR still looks pretty geeky. Got artists?

6. Hardware ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (4/10)

The excuses are over. Powerful, mobile, affordable and cool devices are here and ready to take you on an augmented reality experience. You can leave your backpacks at home. Sure, AR experts are not yet satisfied and are waiting for next year’s gadgeteria – but the potential is palpable – you can almost taste it .

7. Tools and engines ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (3/10)

Tools and platforms are the irrigation required to grow a healthy industry. 2008 was marked with more releases of new AR tools and engines than ever before. Not sure how many are being used, though.

8. Applications ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (2/10)

Wikitude and Tonchidot hinted at the flavor of what’s in store. The masses are not using such apps yet. Heck, they don’t even believe in their existence…

9. Market Size $$$$$$$$$$ (2/10)

It’s always challenging to estimate the size of a market occupied by mostly small private companies, especially when no analyst firm has picked up the glove. An educated guess would put it at no more than $50M. A miniature industry, for now. One day it will overshadow the gaming, movies, TV, tourism, and the advertising industries.

10. Business models ♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ (1/10)

Non-existent. Unlike AR’s revolutionary technology, the lion’s share of its business models are very traditional: AR companies get paid for delivering projects for clients.

AR has the potential to nurture new business models and growth that will take advantage of its world changing capabilities. What would you pay if we could deliver the world’s information into your personal field of view?

***

Not on the list:
I purposely left out typically important industry indicators such as R&D expenditures, registered patents, published papers, etc.

You may ask why. If you did, here is my reasoning: the AR industry has been very strong on research in the past 10 years but very weak on adoption and commerce. That’s exactly why we should focus on what drives the latter.

***

Despite important milestones reached by the AR industry in 2008, its key performance indicators seem quite somber.

I give it an overall 3/10 (Pacification stage).

But cheer up, keep in mind the kid’s evolving smile (above): the AR industry is in its embryonic stage. Companies in the space are still laying the groundwork for a soon-to-come major leap forward.

After all, in 10 years everyone will use augmented reality, right?

Filed under: AR Events | 1 Comment »

2008 Wrap Up: Top 10 Milestones in Augmented Reality

Posted on December 14, 2008 by Ori Inbar

2008 was a great year for augmented reality.

This emerging technology is on a 15-plus-year-long journey from the lab and into the mainstream. With too many events to list, 2008 marks an important year in that quest.

Here is the countdown of the top 10 most important AR milestones of 2008:

10) Otellini’s CES keynote showcases AR technology

The year started with the largest consumer electronics show CES. Total Immersion’s demo had the attention of the entire consumer electronics community during Otellini’s (Intel CEO) 2008 keynote.

9) Video game gurus recognize AR as the future of gaming

My personal idol in the game industry, Will Wright, delivered the best augmented reality quote of the year. When describing AR as the way of the future for games, he explained:

Games could increase our awareness of our immediate environment, rather than distract us from it”.

Futurist Bruce Sterling made controversial statements about games in 2043 in front of a developer only audience in the Austin Game Developer Conference . Here is one statement that stood above all:

“What do the games of 2043 look like? “I think you would call [them]  ‘augmented reality’”

8) ISMAR 2008

The world’s most important augmented reality event, ISMAR 2008, was more significant than ever. It  demonstrated, above all, the level of maturity AR research has reached.

7) High end mobile AR devices hit the market

2008 gave rise to a flood of new AR-worthy mobile devices: iPhone 3G (see below), Android based G1, Itelco’s IDOL, HTC’s Touch HD, Blackberry’s Storm, Nokia N97… It also signaled the dawn of hands free AR with prototype glasses and contact lens (see Top 10 devices.)

ar-device-comparison3

6) iPhone and App store

It might not be the best AR device but it certainly has the most buzz. In 2008, the iPhone was highly sought after by game developers and researchers. The App store which amassed 10,000 apps in half a year, offers an instant distribution model for AR games. In 2008, the iPhone was the gadget to beat.

5) Native mobile tracking engines released

AR engines and tools did not stay behind in 2008 and delivered new tracking engines for the hottest platforms du jour. Some notable examples include ARToolkit for iPhone, AR in Flash, and Studierstube ES for mobile phones. See the entire collection of engines and tools.

4) AR apps win acclaim in major competitions

AR made headlines in 2008 with 2 applications that dribbled into top 50 lists: Tonchidot made the Crunch50 and Wikitude made the Android 50 finalists. Total Immersion won another award at NVISION ’08 for Best Application of Visual Computing.

sekai-camera

3) AR games win awards

Ghostwire may or may not be the first AR game to win a game award. But, 2008 was certainly the first year were 6 out 0f top 10 games were selected as finalists in game awards such as Nokia’s Mobile Innovation Challenge.

One AR game did not win any awards this year, but was certainly an audience favorite (the most hits): Cyber Figure Alice – the first adult only AR game.

2) Major investments in AR research

Media Power made significant investments in augmented reality research organizations around the world. If the $5M for GA Tech GVU donnation and $2.7M for NZ HIT Lab donnation don’t speak for itself, the results are already showing:

1) Record commercial deals

The AR market picked up steam in 2008 with high visibility deals such as Total Immersion’s with Six Flags (“magically superimpose clown masks on riders” as their waiting for the Dark Night ride) and Metaio (book deals with publishers ArsEdition and Knowledge Media). Metaio also scored a lucrative advertising contract to promote the MINI.

What, in your opinion, was the most significant augmented reality milestone in 2008?

Whatever you do, don’t miss “If the Augmented Reality Industry Got a Report Card”

Subscribe (top right) to get the complete 2008 wrap up series.

Filed under: AR Events | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments »

Get High on Reality

Posted on December 10, 2008 by Ori Inbar

It’s not what you’re thinking…

In my pursuit of the ultimate augmented reality experience I have stumbled upon many slogans, some good:

Then, I hit one slogan I was not expecting.

But before I tell you about it: Did you know Elvis once reached out to Nixon in order to help him combat communism, drugs, hippies and…The Beatles?


Presley was going to work on a new vigilant rock musical and came up with the slogan: Get high on life.

I didn’t believe it as well, until I saw it on the History channel.

First I was shocked.

Then I had this scary thought: what if we slightly modify it to inspire the augmented reality movement?

Young and old spend countless hours in front of the screen, comforting their brains with games’  reward mechanism.

From a brain function perspective – it is not fundamentally different from the way the brain works to satisfy an addiction…

***We interrupt this post to bring you breaking news  from Pew Internet***

Findings:

  • 53% of US citizens over 18 play video games, with 21% playing every day or almost every day.
  • 81% of the 18-29 demographic play
  • as do 23% aged 65+ (wow)
  • 76% of students play video games

***Back to our post***

So, there you have it: instead of getting high in virtual worlds – we say go out and play (with AR) and Get high on Reality.

Did I just said that!?



Filed under: AR Events | 1 Comment »

9 Movies that Will Inspire Your Next Augmented Reality Experience

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Ori Inbar

Movies have used special visual effects to augment reality in cinema since George Melies did it first in 1899.

George was a French magician who took advantage of an emerging new technology – moving images – to invent a totally new experience in theaters.

Today we are on the verge of experiencing “special effects” in our field of view anywhere we go (see demos) thanks to emerging augmented reality technologies.

Walking backwards from 1907 to 2008, here are 9 movies to inspire your next augmented reality experience.

1) 1907 – George Melies – the Hilarious Poster

Characters in a poster come to life in this incredible movie from the inventor of special effects.

2) 1988 – John Carpenter‘s They Live!

This underrated sci-fi movie introduced bad acting and a classic AR story: a homeless drifter stumbles upon a pair of sunglasses through which you can see the world for what it really is. He can uncover the communist aliens that control the world.

3) 1988 – Who Framed Roger Rabbit

The first movie to mix the real and the loony. Bob Hoskins has never been seen drooling like that, not even in Super Mario Bros.

4) 1996 – Space Jam

A second attempt to mix the real and the loony, this time with a stretching Michael Jordan.

5) 2002 – Minority Report

User interface for navigating vast amounts of data that span time and places.

6) 2003 – Terminator 3

Get real time data about people you meet. A very useful application when you’re looking to borrow cloths that fit. Here is the Girl’s Night version from the third installment.

7) 2003 – Pirates of the Caribbean – the Curse of the Black Pearl

Watch minute 0:30 to 0:50 for a spooky AR effect I’d like to try someday.

If the movie doesn’t run click here.

8) 2007 – MUTO by Blu

This one is real reality and took tremendous effort. An incredible inspiration to overlay the world with art (which could be made easier with AR).

9) 2008 – Iron Man

Augmented Reality for (very) rapid prototyping, now for bringing peace to earth.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Arthur C. Clark famously said “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” which brings us back to the magic of George Melies.

Which movies inspire you to create new augmented reality experiences?

*** Update: Reader contributions ***

10) 2006 Stranger than Fiction

From Robert Rice: How an augmented life of a person obsessed with numbers might look like

11) Denno Coil

From Jonas Hielscher: Animated, but visionary take on a world with pervasive augmented reality

12) Fight Club

My son reminded me of this “virtual furnishing your apartment” scene in this brilliant anti consumerism movie

Filed under: AR Demos | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

The Making of ARf: Me, My Dog and i-Phone

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Ori Inbar

Blair MacIntyre sent me a nice proof of concept of an augmented reality virtual pet running on an iPhone.

So I thought, why not write about “the making of ARf”?

Shot a couple of questions to Blair and he conveniently turned it into a well structured interview. Thanks Blair!

Here it is for your edutainment.

games alfresco: Hey Blair, I’d like to write about ARf in my blog.

Blair: Great! :)

games alfresco: Is there anything beyond the video that I could share?

Blair: We (my student Kimberly Spreen, really) did this relatively quickly.  She figured out how to get video [on an iphone], and we’d been thinking about doing a virtual pet game for quite a while, so we decided to implement some of the ideas to test out the iPhone.

games alfresco: Could you share a description of the current features?

Blair: Right now, you can interact via the touch screen, and by moving the markers.  Kim did a nice little implementation of multi-marker tracking where you can just add new markers as you feel like and don’t need to preconfigure the multi-marker layout.  You can interact with the dog by touching it (touch its nose and it jumps up to lick, its tail and it chases it, rub its back and it rolls over to let you rub its tummy) or by touching the ground to send it somewhere.  If it gets near its water it drinks, near the other dog it plays, or near a smudge (that you put on the ground by rubbing the ground) it sniffs it (alas, the smudge looks like a little “pile”, which works, but wasn’t the intent).

games alfresco: Plans for a full game?

Blair: This is a project we’ve been thinking about for a few years, going back to our “Dart the Dog” project that we did in Director.  The goal is to explore what it means to let everyone have a virtual pet they can take with them, and interact with through different interfaces (desktop, handheld, handheld AR, etc).  Most importantly, we want the location (bedroom, living room, work, bus, bar, etc) and activity (sound level, light levels, etc) and presence of other pets to impact how the pet develops.

To handle the development, we are talking to some folks at an AI company, who are creating an engine for doing creature AI based on reinforcement learning.  They hope to have something we can use next year.  If we can get that, we will be able to really have pets that grown, change, evolve, etc.

A few company’s who are funding us are interested in this, so I hope we can devote some energy to it next year.  We’ll probably target a few platforms, but obviously the iPhone has a lot of appeal.  From a research perspective, I’m interested in it because there is the potential to release a research game and (with permission of the people who download it, of course), collect a lot of usage data.  Ironically, since the create AI engine is server based, I don’t know if we could handle a big success and provide the AI service to everyone who gets the game, but I’ll worry about that it we ever get there.

games alfresco: Can you share more details about the software? Is it a Jailbroken iPhone?

Blair: Official iPhone SDK, unhacked phones.  I have no interest in working with jailbroken phones;  the appeal of the iPhone is the potential for mass distribution to support broad evaluation and feedback.

Obviously, we have hacked the API to get at the camera, so we can’t release this until Apple creates an official API.

We are using StbTracker for tracking.  The rest of the software was written by us.

games alfresco: Cool. Thanks for showing us “under the hood” of ARf.

For a doggie game, the name ARf works nicely in English.

It could get weird when translated into:

  • Spanish – jau, jau
  • Afrikaans – blaf
  • Albanian – ham, ham
  • Arabic – how how
  • Armenian – haf, haf
  • Basque –  zaunk-zaunk
  • Bulgarian –  jaff, jaff
  • Catalan – bau, bau
  • Chinese, Cantonese – wow, wow
  • Chinese, Mandarin – wang, wang
  • Croatian – vau, vau
  • Danish – vov, vov
  • Dutch – waf, waf;
  • Esperanto – boj, boj
  • French – ouaf, ouaf
  • German – wuff, wuff;
  • Greek – ghav, ghav
  • Hebrew – hav, hav
  • Hindi – bho, bho
  • Icelandic – voff, voff
  • Indonesian – guk, guk
  • Irish – amh-amh
  • Japanese – wan, wan
  • Korean – mung mung
  • Latvian – vau, vau
  • Persian – vogh, vogh
  • Portuguese – béu-béu
  • Russian – gav, gav
  • Serbian – av, av
  • Slovenian – hov, hov
  • Thai – hoang, hoang

Filed under: AR Demos, AR Games | Tagged: , , , , , | 9 Comments »

How to Liberate Children from the Screen and Avoid Health Hazards

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Ori Inbar

Black Friday has gone by and cyber Monday came along with a flood of scary headlines:

“Report Ties Children’s Use of Media to Their Health”

“TV, Internet Causing Kids Harm: Report”

“Too Much Games Harm Health Of Kids”

“The National Institutes of Health and a nonprofit advocacy group, Common Sense Media, have another reason for President-elect Barack Obama to keep urging parents to “turn off the TV.”

Wow.

It took a “first report of its kind” – a review of 173 studies about the effects of media consumption on children – to undo tremendous efforts over the last few years to educate parents and policy makers about the benefits of video games (and internet and modern TV).

Books such as “Everything bad is good for you” and “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy” have argued successfully that these pop culture phenomena may prepare kids for the 21 first century better than other methods (cough*schools*cough).

So what’s up with this new report? Can 173 studies be totally wrong?

Well, if you look closely at the results of the report – its key finding is about the hazards of immobility: the couch potato syndrome.

As one reporter jokes: “Basically, these researchers found if you sit on the couch all day, moving little but your thumbs, you won’t get the proper amount of exercise. I ask you: Did it really take a three M.D.s to figure this out?”

Joking aside, is there anything we can we do about it?

Even the most charming kid-friendly president in modern history won’t be able to convince kids to give up their favorite pastime.

That would be as pathetic as Don Quixote fighting with wind-mills.

So how are we going to liberate children from the screen without losing them?

My answer is simple: give them reality experiences.

Let them rediscover the fun in playing and learning in the real world. By augmenting the world with what captivates kids in video games:

  • the cognitive challenge
  • the interactivity
  • the participatory
  • and the social activity

Steve Johnson explains in “Everything bad…”:

“video games…tap into the brain’s natural reward circuitry…to get kids to learn without realizing they’re learning…”

The technology to enable these new kind of reality games has been around for sometime. The techies call it augmented reality. For the rest of us – it’s just a new way to experience reality, to experience the world.

Every revolution needs a spark to light up. Sparks are mostly based on fear or hope.

The NIH report may have provided the spark for the augmented reality revolution, spurring a combination of both fear and hope for a better world.

Filed under: AR Games | 1 Comment »

A Formidable Mobile Augmented Reality Device? Meet the HTC Touch HD

Posted on November 29, 2008 by Ori Inbar

The new contender to become the mobile augmented reality device of choice is here: meet the HTC Touch HD.

htc-touch-hd-combo

PC World (Taiwan) hands on experience is pretty favorable.

With a far better screen (800×480 compared with iPhone’s 480×320) and a higher rez camera (5MP compared with iPhones 2MP) and its ability to record video (unlike the iPhone’s), it looks very promising.

The only big caveat is the high price tag ($776). It’s now available in Taiwan but poised to hit the EU and US by year end.

It will not have the screen size and the power of a MID – but it fits in a pocket, which is a plus for most of us.

As a result, the HTC Touch HD takes the place of the elusive Meizu M8 (still not out) on my top 5 mobile Devices for high-end AR.

Here is the updated round up.

ar-device-comparison3

Which one do you like best?

Filed under: AR Devices | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

How to Get the Next Generation Hooked on Augmented Reality – Today: Part II

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Ori Inbar

In my previous post “How to Get the Next Generation Hooked on Augmented Reality – Today” we explored the value of mobile educational games.

Most of these games were built for PDAs relying on a GPS, but did not include real time visuals of the real world (AR Tracking).

These PDAs are now obsolete.

In order to make it appealing for Kids, we’ll have to put in their hands something more trendy; iPhone, G1, Nokia N85, or a Mobile Internet Device (MID) come to mind.

But here’s the rub: will you give your toddler your precious smartphone? Your iPhone (God forbid) ?

What if electronics manufacturers raise to the occasion and create dedicated mobile devices for education?

Here are the Mobile Learning Devices already in progress:

One remarkable and noble project already in flight is project Inkwell.

The project’s ambitious goal is to create technology standards for the K-12 industry including defining the specifications for an Inkwell learning device. The design is by IDEO Spark.

It does not have a camera yet. But once mobile learning games break free – I am sure Inkwell will update its specs to include a camera.

Two other companies take a more commercially oriented approach (read: practical) introducing education oriented mobile devices (not yet AR enabled) such as 
VTech’s Create-A-Story

or LeapFrog’s Leapster and Didj.

These are less expensive devices that target a smaller niche.

Will these dedicated mobile learning devices be able to take a bite from the 800 pound gorillas in mobile gaming: Nintendo DS and Sony PSP ?

Will these devices drive the next generation’s Augmented Learning experience?

In my post about the new Nintendo DSi, I highlight the innovation and track record that has characterized Nintendo over the years. They will certainly fight the recent attempts in mobile learning devices with all their might.

Or will the iPhones and iClones of the world, with their massive adoption and cool factor, rule the mobile learning market after all?

What do you think?

Filed under: AR Devices, AR Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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