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 »

geoPaste – AR Publishing for Everybody

Posted on September 2, 2009 by rouli

Last year’s Android Developer Challenge brought us such augmented reality applications as Wikitude and Enkin (which, until I’m proven wrong, is the first AR vaporware).
This time around, we are likely to see a surge in the number of AR applications participating in the challenge. An early bird, geoPaste, is coming to us all the way from Australia.

As can be seen in the video above, geoPaste lets you annotate reality right through your mobile phone, by sketching little pictures (or loading previously created images). Developer Gary Silva is concentrating at the moment on winning the challenge, but he has a grand vision for his app, “to make AR publishing available to everybody”.

After ADC1 I had also seen a Wikitude demo and saw their slant towards providing AR content for consumers, like Enkin ( and which Layar now continues ). From there I thought that AR publishing could be put directly into the hands of end users and was inspired to start working on geoPaste to try to realize that vision. My original thoughts were along the lines of digital graffiti, legal and harmless but at the same time indelible, hence my drawings metaphor.

Good luck on the challenge!
More details, over here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 6 Comments »

Robotvision is for Humans, not Terminators

Posted on August 28, 2009 by rouli

Mobile augmented reality becomes a crowded space really quickly, and I’m about to give up reporting about every application that pops into the lime light.
Anyway, Robotvision is another iPhone “augmented reality browser” developed by Portland based Tim Sears. To be released in September (once iPhone OS 3.1 is out), Robotvision boasts some unique features like using Bing rather than Google for local listings (which some would say is a wise decision), and being offered as a white-label infrastructure for other application creators (though, if you are looking to create an AR application for the iPhone you may also want to consider creating a layer for Layar, or using the open source iphonearkit).

Read more details at ReadWriteWeb.

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

Yelp introduces Augmented Reality to the iPhone via Easter Egg

Posted on August 27, 2009 by rouli

While I’m quite a skeptic whether Presslite’s Metro Paris application for the iPhone has “AR capabilities” in the version available on the appstore, there’s no denying Yelp’s application does.
Found by Robert Scoble (I’m pretty sure it was leaked to Scoble), and brought to my awareness my ReadWriteWeb, shaking your iPhone while on Yelp’s main menu three times, will open up an hidden feature named monocle. Monocle is nothing but an augmented reality view of Yelp’s listing, as shown in the next video (many thanks to Tom Carpenter for finding this one):

It only works on the iPhone 3gs, but unlike Metro Paris, it’s free, so don’t hesitate to tr y it out. Now, I don’t think that in the long run it matters whether Apple knew or not about this feature. Obviously, mobile augmented reality is here, and we are only about see more of it in the coming months. What should matter is what’s next? Where will innovation come from, if everyone is using the same compass and GPS combo?
I for one think that we are in the middle of the “AR browsers” season, but the next big thing, which better suits the technology at hand (imprecise compasses), is mobile AR games. What are your thoughts?

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

Augmented Times in Paris

Posted on August 24, 2009 by rouli

Just a short tweet, to show you I’m still alive (actually, it was a tweet a few hours ago). Unfortunately, I’m not in Paris, but working hard at the moment. However, this next video presents an iPhone app that augments Paris (and looks suspiciously like acrossair applications).

It’s called Métro Paris, and the augmented reality is actually a new feature for an old application (which apparently is the top non-free application on the French iTunes). More details, here.

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

Layar, Layar, Layar

Posted on August 17, 2009 by rouli

If you read this post, you are probably an avid reader of this blog.
If you are an avid reader of this blog, you are probably interested in AR.
If you are interested in AR, you probably know that Layar had a fantastic day, at least PR wise:

As a matter of fact, this day was such a success for Layar, that it seems that layar.com and layar.eu are quite slugish, probably due to a surge in visitors. Is it too late for Mobilizy (Wikitude) and acrossair? (I really hope not).

Even more details, on Layar’s blog.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 5 Comments »

Two More AR Browsers to Join the Party

Posted on August 14, 2009 by rouli

Are you a Wikitude or Layar supporter? Maybe Sekai Camera fan? The battle for supremacy at the augmented reality browsers market is getting more complicated by the minute, with two new contenders joining the fight.
First, acrossair which brought us the Tube Finder, is now showing off a very slick “general purpose” AR browser for the iPhone 3GS:

Next, GraffitiGeo, a fresh new startup that wants to create a Digg like service for real places is working on an AR version of their application, also for the iPhone:

(more details about GraffitiGeo here).

So, now we are at five AR browsers. Anyone wants to bet how many browsers there will be by this time next year? (my guess – only three serious contenders, and one of them will be owned by Google).

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Pseudo AR Games FTW!

Posted on August 11, 2009 by rouli

A short post to keep you warm while I’m working on a longer series of posts I hope you all find interesting. Anyway, just two days ago I wrote about Acrossair new shooting game, Virus Killer 360:

And I also mentioned iPhone ARKit, an interesting open source project to facilitate augmented reality development for the iPhone. What happens when you merge the two together? this –

It was created by a Japaneses developer going by the nickname mswar, by forking the iPhone ARKit source code and adding OpenGL and GPS geo-positioning. I don’t call it augmented reality, because it has nothing to do with our reality, but I do think it has a potential to supply some moments of fun.
More details here (in Japanese).

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Augmented Reality Won’t Make your App Cooler

Posted on August 1, 2009 by rouli

Augmented Traffic Views is a pretty cool app that links your Android phone to Toronto’s traffic cameras to help you make better decisions for your daily commute. Alas, I don’t understand what the augmented reality part contributes to the application.
As a matter of fact, it seems to only hurt usability. Would you rather physically turn around yourself every time you want to see the video input coming from some traffic camera, or would you prefer a scrollable list of cameras and their locations? I would go with the second option. Moreover, you can’t really use it in AR mode while driving, unless I’m mistaken and you can do u-turns in the middle of the road in Canada.

Once again, it’s a useful application, and they have done a right choice giving it text to speech capabilities, but having an augmented reality interface seems to me contrived. True, AR has a natural appeal when it comes to house listing, as can be seen by the end of the video, but then again, house listing is not really about traffic views. I hope the guys behind this app (who are you?) will reconsider their use-cases before releasing it to the Android’s app store.

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

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on July 26, 2009 by rouli

Another lazy summer week has passed by (unless you live below the equator), bringing us some more augmented reality news:

This week’s video comes to us from Italian Giancarlo Facoetti, who used ARToolKit to create a simple game, that actually looks like some harmless fun:

Have a nice week!

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

« Previous Page — Next Page »