Magic, Games, Education, and Live Coding at the Augmented Reality Meetup in NYC

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Ori Inbar

Magic, games, education, even live AR coding – we had it all last night at the Augmented Reality Meetup NY (or as we fondly like to call it ARNY.)

51 AR enthusiasts showed up in an amazing location (Thanks Sophia!) – out of 211 registered members – but who’s counting…we are all about quality ;) What I like about this group is that it represents all walks of life: developers, gamers, attorneys, artists, journalists, magicians, even a police officer!

ARNY’s purpose is to help advance the business of Augmented Reality, by bringing together the best of AR with the best talent in NYC. And have fun while at it.

Thanks to Chris Grayson, the “revolution” was “televised” (aka live streamed)

In case you want to remotely take part in this meetup, or any other AR meetup around the world – there is a site for that: ARmeetup.org. (Last night wasn’t recorded due to a Ustream glitch)

Yours truly kicked off the evening with a recount of AR at GDC by the Numbers. Sony Move was the most exciting AR news at GDC.

Then, a fantastic lineup of speakers took the stage:

1) Alejandro Echeverría – Student at Engineering School in Chile, who came all the way from Chile just to be with us (seriously he’s a visiting student at NYU) – presented Games for learning with AR. I loved the simple yet memorable approach to use movement and augmented reality to teach kids about electricity.

2) Patrick O’Shaughnessey – Patched Reality – FLAR in Five: building a FLAR app “from scratch” (mostly) in five minutes. Patrick which is one of the most experienced AR developers out there received the bravery medal of the evening for demostrating live coding!

The feature presentation of the evening was next:

The man you’ve all been waiting for. He’s been traveling all over the world, blowing people’s mind with his AR magic show – and today he’s here, live at ARNY. Ladies and gentleman please welcome – Marco Tempest!

3) Marco Tempest – The highly anticipated Augmented Reality magician brought the house down.

See a live account of the show, along with a rare explanation of how it all works – in the video below:

4) Ohan Oda – Archemist – Augmented Reality Game with Goblin XNA

Last on on the program was another kind of magician, returning fresh from a demo at the game developer conference in San Francisco; he’s known for Goblin XNA – a development framework for AR applications for the Windows platform, and an avid AR game developer. This time, Ohan demonstrated his latest gravity-based AR game using Vuzix Goggles: Arble.

Here’s a video of a previous game with a similar mechanic.

UPDATE: Here’s a live video by ARNY member David Polinchock.

Next was my favorite part – high energy conversations in smaller teams. That’s where the true magic happens. Free beer courtesy of Topp didn’t hurt at all; the discussions went on late into the night.

UPDATE: Check out live commentary by AR aficionado Dan Romescu – all the way from Germany.

But wait, there is more!

Have you registered to the Augmented Reality Event (ARE 2010 in 2-3 June, 2010 – Santa Clara, CA)?

You are in luck.

Here is a discount code for the first 100 folks to register to the event (before the end of March). 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.

Watching AR prophet Bruce Sterling, and gaming legend Will Wright deliver keynotes for this price – is a magnificent steal. And on top, participating in more than 30 talks by AR industry leaders will turn these $254 into your best investment of the year ;)

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