total immersion | Games Alfresco

Why Int13 Got in Bed with Total Immersion

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Ori Inbar

Yesterday, Total Immersion (TI) and Int13 – both French augmented reality companies – announced a strategic partnership, in which Int13 would help TI cover a major gap in its product line: Mobile Augmented Reality.

A French kiss or a Russian bear hug?

Instead of guessing, we went out to speak with Stéphane Cocquereaumont, president and lead developer at In13, the mobile games boutique studio behind an AR game legend: Kweekies (“when is it coming out?”).

Ori: Congratulations Stéphane! This must be a big shift for Int13.

Stéphane: Thanks. We started discussions with TI back in April, so we knew where this was going for some time now.

Ori: What was TI’s motivation to approach Int13?

Stéphane: TI approached us because their clients kept asking for “360” solutions. While TI is strong with large installations, live shows, and PC based experiences – their mobile AR line needed a boost.

Ori: …and what about Int13? You had it going as an independent studio with Kweekies, first on Nokia and then on the iPhone.

Stéphane: We have been flooded with requests from marketing agencies about mobile AR campaigns. At first we tried to adress those requests, but we soon realized managing their expectations in terms of delays, pricing and capabilities of the tech posed a huge overhead, and was distracting us from our goals.

Ori: So, you decided to “outsource” the headache and focus on your product?

Stéphane: Exactly. TI will work with the marketing agencies and other players asking for quick mobile AR applications. We will offer them our tech embedded in a nice and clean SDK with a Lua API, easy to use but with limited flexibility.

Ori: You make TI happy, yet keep the full power to yourself. Make sense. What can you reveal about the business terms?

Stéphane: For TI this partnership means they have a working mobile AR SDK, with worldwide exclusive rights for two years. They pay an annual license fee, plus royalties on all the projects they deliver with our tech.

This should be a win-win partnership.

Ori (note to self): […more of a French kiss than a Russian bear hug.]

Stéphane: We’ve also made a deal with another french company, the project will be shown during CES in January 2010; very exciting project but I can’t say anything about it for now.

Ori: Thanks for teasing us. Can’t wait to see it.

Stéphane: We’re also discussing with device makers, we’ve been to Korea last month, and we’ll release our first AR game very soon (September or October) in Korea. The game will first be available on the SKT network, on Samsung devices.

Ori: Wow. You’re unstoppable.

Stéphane: Wait, there’s more – we’ll soon publish a preview video of ARDefender; it’s a simple game to help players discovers the capabilities of AR.

Ori: Fantastic. And when will we be able to finally play the legendary Kweekies?

Stéphane: Kweekies is delayed…too many other projects on the plate for our small team. We still intend to release it by Christmas – though we can’t promise…
Ori: Awww…that’s a downer…any good news to close with a positive note?

Stéphane: Yes, I got something for you – we’ll soon reveal a new demo of ARWiz 2, the next iteration of our AR tech, faster and much more robust.

Ori: That’s a great comeback. Thanks for sharing the story behind the scenes, Stéphane.

And all the best for Int13 and TI in your new (in bed) relationship.

Filed under: AR Engines | Tagged: int13, Kweekies, Mobile Augmented Reality, Stephane Cocquereaumont, total immersion | 6 Comments »

Total Immersion Brings Augmented Reality to TomorowCity Todaytomorrow

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Ori Inbar

Total Immersion (TI) may not be at the center of the Augmented Reality (AR) browsers frenzy these days – but when it comes to delivering AR on a large scale – it’s still the 800 pound gorilla.

Nicolas Bapst, responsible for Product Marketing for Amusement Parks at TI – recently shared with me their latest achievements: a totally new kind of interactive 3D live show and an AR goggles experience The Networked City developed for TomorrowCity in South Korea .

The 3D live show is based on TI’s 3D Live Show technology (naming coincidence?):

…a very innovative and interactive screen movie production…This show introduces the U-city in a spectacular method and the audience can participate directly in the story performance.

With the new offering from Total Immersion, spectators share the stage with virtual live performers, playing a guessing game around what’s real and what’s not.

See the hilarious video on TI’s site

The 3D live show is not all TI had up its sleeve for the U-city. A second project, involving augmented reality (AR) goggles is: the Networked City

To the naked eye, the exhibit looks like a bare bones model of a city. But when visitors put on the special AR goggles a whole new world unfolds – as graphics overlaid on the city model.

How does this new world looks like?

Can’t say…no video of the exhibit was released so far.

Until then, you’ll have to travel to South Korea to see for yourself…

Filed under: Press Release | Tagged: 3D live show, Amusement park, South Korea, TomorrowCity, total immersion | 5 Comments »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on September 13, 2009 by rouli

Actually, it was a relatively quiet week in the ARSphere. Here are some links to news bits that I haven’t had the time to cover over here:

In the mobile AR front:

Kooaba is an iPhone application that much like Snaptell (or Nokia’s “Point and Find”) lets you take a picture of a product and get information about it. Now they venture into the realm of AR browsers, but since they fail to show their image-based browser working on a real iPhone, I’ll remain skeptic for now.
Cyborg is an AR application that helps you find the cheapest gas station around. Yes, they could do that with a simple map, but that’s like having a web 2.0 site without rounded corners.
And if you live in Hong Kong, forget about gas prices, just use this application to find the nearest train.

And in other news:

Sony lets you put a virtual animal mask on your head (if you have a Playstation, of course). That’s quite similar to this application from Ubisoft that do the same with MSN messenger.
First augmented book in Britain is about dragons, and powered by Total Immersion tech.
Augmented reality wiki – what a fab idea! (especially considering the dire state of the “augmented reality” article at Wikipedia).
AdoptMe.com offers you to adopt augmented pets. Haven’t tested it, but seems quite shabby (it’s like the site’s design was taken from 1996).

This week video comes from Techcrunch’s favorite Tonchidot, makers of the Sekai Camera. Apparently their application was finally submitted to the iPhone’s appstore, and we may soon compare it to other AR browsers. The next video is indeed in Japanese, but starting from 0:45 you can easily understand what’s going on, even if you are not a native Japanese speaker. It certainly has some Japanese flair to it:

Have a nice week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Kooaba, linkfest, Sekai Camera, Tonchidot, total immersion | 1 Comment »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on August 2, 2009 by rouli

Here are just some of the things that happened this week in the realm of Augmented Reality, which I didn’t have the time to write a whole post about. It’s going to be a long post, you may want to prepare a snack before you go ahead.

Ori gave another interview to Tish Shute, this time talking a bit about Ogmento.
A nice hands on review of ARound, the “AR browser” for Nokia we previously covered.
The guys from Gamaray, the only AR browser I’m aware of that tries to incorporate 3d models in the real world, have released a new video.
After London and Newyork, AcrossAir is augmenting San Francisco’s public transit.
Total Immersion brings us the first augmented reality game for Facebook, and yes, it was created to sell cars (one more app to my growing list). (via @TishShute)
If you were looking for a video of DoCoMo’s AR application we mentioned last week, here you go. (via Asiajin)
Gizmodo: Are Augmented Reality Sites Now Mandatory For All Sci-Fi Films?
Some AR campaigns from this week:

Adidas thinks that augmented reality can sell shoes (videos here and here). I think they should try to use AR in a more original than that. (via DMFO).
Same goes to Intel, using AR to celebrate their chip technology.
And Nickelodeon’s augmented 3d version of SpongeBob SquarePants gives me the creeps (look at his menacing smile!). Here’s the app itself.
On the other hand, this 7-Eleven application from Taiwan is cute. It helps that I don’t understand a word in there.

This week’s video comes from Metaio, which launched an ambitious initiative named “metaio World“. There haven’t given much information about it, but here’s a short quote –

You can view, create, upload, modify, navigate, share, rate or play games with real 3D content anywhere in the real world. Add your 3D and post interactive elements, your favourite photos, twitter messages or anything you can imagine.

An ambitious project deserves an ambitious video, but can they deliver?

Have a nice week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: AcrossAir, ARound, linkfest, Metaio, total immersion | 4 Comments »

Mattel Launches Augmented Toys at Comic Con

Posted on July 23, 2009 by rouli

Barbie maker Mattel, and augmented reality provider Total Immersion, have joined forces to bring the public the first retail toys that are AR enhanced (or so says their press release). Unveiled today at Comic-Con 2009, each product in Mattel’s line of action figures and vehicles based on James Cameron coming film Avatar will come with a –

3-D web tag, called an i-TAG, which consumers can “scan” using a home computer’s webcam. Scanning the i-TAG will reveal special content onscreen unique to the corresponding product. Exact content varies for each item, but could include biographical information, additional images and animated models of the figures. When the i-TAG for deluxe figures, vehicles or creatures are placed under a webcam, animated 3-D models will “come alive” through engaging, evading or defending moves. Place two i-TAGs from the “Battle Pack” together and the 3-D images will interact with each other.

3d web tag? Sounds impressive, but thanks to this next video clip, we can all see it’s nothing more than a marker card:

Still, it looks cool and I’m quite sure it’s gonna be a hit this Christmas season (unless the film itself bombs). Pity they used such a convoluted term for it.

press release, via I4U news.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Games, indoors AR, total immersion, web camera | 2 Comments »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on July 12, 2009 by rouli

And yet another week ends, full with exciting AR news. Some news items were put aside in order to make place to more urgent reports. Luckily, the weekly linkfest is here to mend things up.

Short piece in the NY Times, “Kicking Reality Up a Notch“. (AR Balloon?).
Noora Guldemond of Metaio gave an interview to TacticalTransparency at blogtalkradio. Since she mentions Games Alfresco but fails to mention Augmented Times, from now on I will only cover Total Immersion (till the end of this post).
Speaking of Total Immersion
- French McDonald’s Happy Meal AR experience.
- The Phonehouse (French mobile phones retailer) AR experience.
Canon launches augmented reality dinosaur experience in Japan: “Visitors will be allowed to don a pair of virtual reality glasses that will display nearly life-sized three-dimensional images of various dinosaurs right there on the museum floor”
Coraline’s 3d garden is an augmented reality application celebrating the DVD release of Coraline. Here’s some UGO guys playing with it. It was created by some German company that may or may not be related to the first bullet.
Lockheed Martin wins DARPA’s AR specs contract.
An augmented poster for the new Gamer action film.

This week’s video is of a little application you might have heard about, called tweet TwittAround.
It enables you to see tweets overlaid on top of the video input coming from your iPhone 3GS. Tweets are rendered according to the location they are coming from. Interestingly, this project comes from the same guy, Michael Zoellner, that is behind some other cool AR applications.

Have a nice week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Canon, linkfest, Metaio, total immersion | 1 Comment »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on June 28, 2009 by rouli

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

Mobilizy released a new Wikitude version. I will use this opportunity to update my earlier post on IBM Wimbledon Seer application. Apparently, it was a joint work with Mobilizy and Ogilvy.
ReadWriteWeb: “Augmented Reality: Here’s Our Wishlist of Apps, What’s On Yours?“, scans through future and current uses of AR, and is one more sign that AR is becoming mainstream.
Total Immersion creates an augmented reality application for Nike, though I can’t find it over here.
And Total Immersion is also behind this AR web/kiosks application for France’s SNCF train system (via Developement memo for ourselves).
What AR devs want from smartphones? A survey at the Future Digital Life.
Two of my favorite things, augmented reality and artificial life are combined to create SimSnails, an educational demo about natural selection.
Google’s has it’s own version of Photosynth (and I guess they are not developing it for the sake of pure research).(and I guess they are not developing it for the sake of pure research).
AR around the world: German ad for Samsung mobile phones is using AR, and that’s about all I can tell you since I don’t speak German; Augmented Vision is a design project from the Netherlands that resembles Snaptell; A Japanese augmented Olympic game (via DMFO); And when it comes to this Indonesian application, I can’t tell you anything at all.

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:

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: linkfest, Mobilizy, total immersion, Wikitude | Leave a comment »

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”

Filed under: AR Games | Tagged: A Different Game, ARhrrrr!, ARis, Candy Wars, Do the Dip, DSi, Eye of Judgment, EyeToy, Fanta, Frantz Lasorne, GA Tech, Geisha Entertainment, Ghostwire, Gizmondo Art of Defense, graz university, int13, Invisimals, iphone, Julian Oliver, Kweekies, Level Head, MacDonald's, nokia, Nvidia Tegra, Oasis, PSP, Rubberduckzilla, SCAD-Atlanta, Scope, Sony, the invisible train, Topps, total immersion, Virtual tennis | 39 Comments »

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:

Tour the Enterprise’s deck and fire its phasers
See a trailer for Night at the Museum 2, via augmented reality
Add an Ice Age 3 character to your messenger’s video chats

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)

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Marketing and Advertisement, total immersion, visible, web camera | 4 Comments »

Weekly Linkfest

Posted on June 7, 2009 by rouli

Before going on with our scheduled linkfest, I would like to pose a question to my readers. Am I updating too much, or not enough? How many augmented reality related posts would you like to read per week? Your opinion is important to me, so please comment away on this topic.

Now, without further ado, here’s this week’s linkfest.

Forbes Marketers are using 3-D graphics to engage jaded consumers.
From Total Immersion comes this web application that enables you to summon a virtual Disney dragon. I think the more interesting angle here is that Total Immersion has registered a domain named dfusionathomeapps.com.
Sony’s Play Station 3 motion controller lets you play with virtual swords (if you happen to have a few cameras installed around your living room).
If you are invited, you can try Roque’s new rings collection by wearing an AR marker on your finger. The technology comes from Holition, which specialize in using augmented reality for promoting jewelry. (via Not Just Reality)
In the Netherlands, the organs donor card comes augmented.
In the Netherlands, you can also play with ancient pottery via augmented reality.
About three months ago, Doritos Canada had used augmented reality to promote their products, but Doritos Brazil does it better.
You can add the Fiat Linea to the growing list of AR car campaigns. (via Le5emeP.fr)

This week’s quote comes from the Augmented Reality Blog:

if you put a marker on something inadequate (for example an oily food box) and fail to produce both a nice game logic and fancy design, augmented reality becomes totally obsolete. Driven by nothing. And because I am driven by augmented reality I don´t want immersive “campaigns” to be as attractive as a modem.

This augmented reality video comes from Berio Molina Quiroga thesis project for the Computer Graphic Design Masters at Rochester Institute of Technology. It’s called Augmented Sound, but I fancy the drawing process much better than the auditory results. You can find more information over here.

Augmenting sound. Space 1 Bath. Video 2 from berio on Vimeo.

Have a nice week!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Games, Holition, Magic Mirror, Projector based AR, Sony, total immersion | 3 Comments »

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And all the best for Int13 and TI in your new (in bed) relationship.

Vote for your all time favorite augmented reality games!

1. The Invisible Train

2. Catapult

3. Eye of Judgment

4. AR Tennis

5. WizQubes

6. Level Head

7. ARis

8. Kweekies

9. Ghostwire

10. Tower of Defense

11. Topps

12. Scope

13. Do the Dip

14. ARhrrrr!

15. Candy Wars

16. Art of Defense

17. RubberDuckzilla

18. InVizimals

The winners will receive the lucrative –

“Games Alfresco Hall of Fame Award”

Don’t miss the world’s largest event for Augmented Reality!

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3. NEW! Applications

3.5 Demos

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