augmented.org

A cool demonstrator from beyond reality was shown at the Game Developer Conference. It’s the classic slot car game you’d setup in your children’s room. But this one avoids missing track pieces or monotony. Cool graphics and features, triggered by putting down additional cards, bring extra fun. So far so good. But then again: how to actually use the great game? How to interact? If you put up a camera on your desk and then look to your screen… it’s like playing a VR video game… well, it is on your desk, but no big advantage (only real advantage: to put down extra cards easily). Disadvantage as always: you have to look towards your PC screen instead of looking towards the table. Companies like vuzix, please hurry up with your AR-add-ons!

Otherwise, it’s the best AR game effort I’ve seen in a long while. (For the graphics and the soundtrack!) Take a look!

This year’s International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality will be held in Orlando, Florida! Check out their fresh website to get the latest information on augmented reality. If you are a researcher or want to be become one, check out the call for participation section and submit your papers and results! Ori from gamesalfresco will be there and keep you uptodate, I’m sure. But until then: sumbit your work and take your time to book your flights to the sunny state, that not only hosts senor citizens but also the latest cutting edge-technology!

This is finally a really new use case. Fraunhofer researchers from FIT have developed an augmented reality application for scuba divers! Here you will see a fancy beautiful fauna and flora, where actually only lie old oil cans and old ship wrecks on the ground of the sea. A game is always only the first application, let’s see where it goes!

After several automotive AR demos to download (Mini, Toyota IQ, …) there is a new buddy queueing for attention. Topps Sports Cards offers augmentation for baseball trading cards! There have been different attempts (also AR already) to pimp up old dusty card games, this one is another example for “wow-effect without a cause”. It could get interesting when you could play baseball with the appearing figures on your desktop… Place them in positions and trigger a game… but the way it works right now it’s just simple plain boring independent animations of player’s figures… Let’s hope for more, though! Done by our French AR fellows from T-Immersion.