augmented.org

For those of you, who didn’t see too many AR concept videos or drawings and like to get a fresh artist impression, take a look at the video from the eyetap research crew. Their demonstration shows how augmented reality could work once all of us have small powerful devices in our pockets combined with glasses that can overlay graphics to our view. I am eagerly waiting for the hardware to pick up to all the concept ideas that already float around! So please, AMD, Intel, whoever: please build your tiniest piece of hardware ever made and Zeiss or whoever: please hurry with those glasses! :-)

Click on the image to get to the youtube video!

A neat game concept comes from Julian Oliver. An AR-Cube will be seen as a room with stairs and doors, placing a player figure inside. Once you leave one door you will enter another room, which you can see by flipping the actual cube to a different side. This kafkaesque maze has a beautiful optic and an intuitive interaction - by tilting the cube you will push the play forwards in the very same direction you slanted it. To become a success it might need some more speed or more details, but I really fancy that weird room idea as seen in the 1997 movie from Vincenzo Natali. Only you don’t get killed if doing wrong. ;-)

Hey there, augmented reality flooding the market. Although, we are still lacking an easier interaction plus video output systems, more and more companies jump on the bandwagon and try to sell old concepts of possibly boring card games or tamagotchi styled puppets to the crowds. All geeky Otakus will love it, I will wait for further improvements. But, enough shit chat, here we go with the two latest examples.

One is (yawn) another magic book style for lonely, school uniform panty-buying IT freaks, that always wanted to get a kick out of a miniature girl appearing in front of their keyboard. Get her undressed, tickle her, … well yeah. What a concept!

Second, a better looking concept from Sony, bringing trading card games to mixed reality. This is more fun, just like good old battle chess for the media 3D generation, that’s too imagery-swamped to use their own imagination. See eye of judgment at youtube. It’s already a bit older, but still didn’t hit the stores. Or did I miss it?

Samsung announced their latest model in the L series, called L310W. Of course, I’m not here to write ads for them, but they integrated a small feature (you would probably never use or switch off because it’s annoying all the time): beauty shot! It will automatically detect faces and put virtual powder on their pimpled skins. Again, this is evidence for spreading augmented reality in my eyes… Modify the real world and beautify it without people even noticing. Maybe it’s time for a new tractate about how getting-used-to cognition of modified reality affects society and the way we think and act. Sweet and scary!

Students from my alma mater put together a promising prototype to show how augmented reality works in conjunction with the Android API (you know, that google cellphone thing). Their location-based tool might let you augment your handheld-video-view with city annotations, road marks, waypoints and lets you find your favorite apple store or to pinpoint your pals in the city’s districts. Well, once its done and manufacturers put all accelerometers, GPS sensors, etc. in their gadgets. Way too early to grab it and early enough to already cry about the long waiting period we have to withstand. But again we see well documented what’s coming up next with AR and what is still missing. Galileooooooo!!

The CARCADE guys did a pretty cool demo of an augmented reality game. The concept: while driving your car down the road you will see a spacecraft in the streets (when the tech is ready eventually projected to your car window) and steer it. The coolest part: the skyline of the city will collide with it (i.e. computer vision and segmentation of blue-sky-area vs. anything-else-on-the-ground-area). Just take a look at the concept video! Looking forward to get hold of the proper hardware for it! Also: the graphics look a bit crappy, but that’s adequate considering way-back-arcade-game-nostalgia! Don’t get scared if you forget to turn off the game and have it projected onto your windshield! Crash and burn!

At the Saint Elisabeth church in Paris the team “VIDA” from the Computer Sciences Laboratory for Mechanics and Engineering Sciences did a pretty neat demonstration of augmented reality - real-time visualising sounds from that huge organ. People! AR is flooding over society more and more!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IGakj4kofk The video could need some editing, though. If you don’t have time jump to the 3rd 3rd. :-)