Locatory – Play with Gamaray

Posted on March 14, 2010 by rouli

Editor note: OOPS!
Originally this post was scheduled for early December, but somehow I forgot to publish it. Sorry Locatory guys!
——-

As veteran readers of this blog surely know, official development of Gamaray, an AR browser for Android was terminated, and its code has been open-sourced. Recently I’ve learned about an interesting project by a team from the Open University of the Netherlands, named Locatory, based on Gamaray’s code.

The game’s premise is admittedly not that exciting –

The concept of game is rather easy. Players can compete with each other and gather cards that are hidden in augmented reality. Once a card is taken, it can be dropped at a physical location (figure 3, B). When a card is dropped at the correct location, the player receives a point. (source)

but it’s exciting to see that one can create (semi) augmented reality games in relative ease (especially since Locatory’s own code is freely available). After all, how far is a game such as Locatory from a geo-caching game? If I were a student these days, I would have a go at it (adult life is full of compromises :/).

Learn more here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Gamaray’s Source Code is Free to Download

Posted on October 14, 2009 by rouli

As I blogged before, the work Gamaray, one of the prominent early AR browsers, has stopped. At the time, I was suggesting, like many others on Gamaray’s mailing list, that the man behind the project, Clayton Lilly, should release Gamaray’s code to the community. Lilly, I’m happy to report, have decide to do just that. In his recent post to the mailing list, he writes:

I’ve made the source code available in the files section, but there
are some things you should know:

1) Gamaray doesn’t use OpenGL, the 3D objects are all rendered in
software. This means the application will never support the kind of
animations or textures found in Layar and Wikitude 3D.
2) Much of the code is not very well thought out and I don’t plan on
spending any time explaining it.
3) I don’t plan on supporting an open source project, someone else
will need to upload it to a repository and manage the updates.

I would recommend starting fresh and just picking out the useful
tidbits.

So, if you are interested, the source code can be found here. At least one good thing turned out of this dire situation.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Death of a Browser – Gamaray No More

Posted on September 23, 2009 by rouli

Today is a sad day for many AR enthusiasts. Just yesterday I’ve asked how would Layar’s new 3d feature affect Gamaray. Now, I unfortunately know the answer. Clayton Lilly, the man behind the Gamaray browser, has decided to quit developing it. In a mail to Gamaray’s developers mailing list, Lilly writes:

After hearing the announcements made by Layar and Mobilizy yesterday I’ve decided to stop developing Gamaray any further. I’ll still support the existing version of Gamaray as best I can, although I would suggest applying for a Layar developer key or learning ARML. The main competitive features Gamaray had were 3D objects and its open http/XML architecture. Since Gamaray couldn’t compete against the other companies when it had these advantages, there’s no point in continuing now that both these features will be covered by the other browsers.

Gamaray was one of the first mobile AR browsers, and took the original approach of embedding 3d virtual objects from the get go. I first interviewed Lilly in June, when he had high hopes for Gamaray. However, even back then, Lilly was woried about the developing a platform:

Right now we are focusing on the creation of multiplayer AR games for Android, our first one being a tank combat game. Beyond that, it will depend on how the market looks, although we have lots of ideas.
We know that AR is going to be very big in the near future, but the challenge is knowing what to focus our efforts on. For a while we thought of creating a more general purpose AR platform, but I’m concerned that Google may already be developing a first person AR viewer for KML data and 3D models.

I hope that in a world where new AR browsers are created by the minute (I learned about two new ones just today), Lilly and Gamaray would find their niche, and maybe create that tank game.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on August 16, 2009 by rouli

Last week I published a poll, asking how do you define yourself – are you an engineer, an artist or maybe an Entrepreneur? As of writing this post, 75 readers have answered the poll, 34 of them (45%) identified themselves as engineers. I thought there would be more artists among you (15%), and was surprised by the percent of entrepreneurs (15%). The poll is still open, so you can still cast a vote.
Moving on to the weekly linkfest (it gets bigger every week!) –

  • Metaio blitzed the airwaves with two podcasts – Noora Guldemond (head of sales and marketing) interviews here and Peter Meier, Metaio’s CTO is giving an interview here. Sadly, I haven’t found the time last week to hear them, but I plan to do so in the next few days.
  • And it was a good week for SPRXMobile (Layar) as well. Aparently, Layar comes preinstalled on Samsung’s new Android phone, they were featured on The Financial Times, and things are only going to get better, since they are holding their first Layar event.
  • TweetWorld is Gamaray’s attempt to have an augmented tweeter application, joinning the ranks of Layar and TwittAround.
  • The BBC – Mobile phones get cyborg vision: “Not only could this form of rich, intuitive and easy to grasp data be the next killer app for the mobile, some see it changing our world view forever.“
  • ReadWriteWeb – Augmented Reality: A Human Interface for Ambient Intelligence: “Augmented reality (or AR) is fast becoming as ubiquitous a term as Web 2.0. The field is getting noisier by the day, and AR as a field of research now has to co-exist with its status as an industry buzzword“
  • A short introduction to programming AR applications for the Android OS.
  • Is this the first augmented shirt on Threadless?
  • CrashCorp demos a rudimentry AR application for the iPhone.
  • YDreams and Zugara join the AR consortium (can I join too?)
  • And Zugara (covered previously here) also launched what must be the second augmented reality game on Facebook (since last week Total Immersion had the first), CannonBallz (video). Just four years ago, we would have called this kind of games “Eye Toy” like, but today we have new buzzwords. Still, it is a well produced game.

Our weekly video is of a game created by Circ.us, to promote Chris Angel’s new show, “The five lives of Chris Angel”. Since it’s a puzzle game, and this summer turned me into a brain-dead blogger, I haven’t tried it myself to give an educated review. You, on other hand, can play it here, or just watch the embedded video below:

As always, have a nice week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Gamaray’s AR Explorer is Online

Posted on June 5, 2009 by rouli

Since one augmented reality framework per week is not enough, here comes another one for Google’s Android. While other Android AR applications provide information about landmarks seen through your mobile’s camera, Gamaray’s AR Explorer shows virtual 3d objects not seen with the naked eye. Obviously, the technology is in its infancy, and it’s quite a bold move on Gamaray’s part to release its application in such an early stage:

Right now, Gamaray is focusing on utilizing their framework for building multiplayer games, the first one being a tank combat game. Founder Clayton Lilly, admits that “For a while we thought of creating a more general purpose AR platform, but I’m concerned that Google may already be developing a first person AR viewer for KML data and 3D models”. I for one root for the smaller companies in this new ecosystem, so good luck guys!

(link)

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »