Weekly Revolutionary Linkfest

A bit of a busy week, here are just some of the augmented reality stories that happened in the past seven days:
Sometimes, you don't need enticing narrative to create a touching AR application. "Jack in the box" by the Spanish company Sensaa is an evidence to that. Just open a box, and an augmented surprise will pop out of it. Simple, but wonderful:



Have a great week!

Why Sports Enthusiasts are the Future of AR

There are a few topics that I've been planning to write about for months (if not years). One of them is the role sports enthusiasts (joggers, swimmers, bicycles fanatics) may have in the adoption of augmented reality head up displays. The recent onslaught of hi-tech ski goggles was the push I needed to finally do something about it.



Instead of writing a long post (which many won't read), I'm trying something new here. I've created a short presentation with only a few words that describes my views. I would be very happy to hear your comments on this format. If you like it, I'll create more presentations on other subjects.



What do you think? Am I completely off my mark here?

Weekly Linkfest

It's Sunday, and here are some links from around the augmented sphere:
Ever played Duplo (the big blocks version of Lego) as a toddler? Worried that your kids will only want to play with things that have touch screens on them? Worry not, legoplatformer.com will turn your old bricks into a mobile augmented reality platform capable of running computer games. On a serious note, that's one example of the power of Qualcomm's AR SDK:

Happy Weekly Linkfest Day!

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the links of this week:

Augmented reality t-shirts are cool. Star Wars is cool (as determined by a poll of 500 AR fands). Thus, augmented reality t-shirts, featuring Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker fighting each other must be the epitome of coolness. I don't have a clue who made those or where can you get them, but you may enjoy the video:



have a great week!

Pac-Man Augmented Evolution

1980, the Japanese Namco corporation develops Pac-Man, making arcade history




2004, researchers from National University of Singapore's Mixed Reality Lab, led by Adrian Cheok, create Human Pacman, a first person version of the classic game, that lets you play the classic game with an augmented reality twist. This twist also means that you have to carry a laptop on your back and wear a HMD on your head.







2011, now you can play a first person version of Pac-Man by just loading Layar on your iPhone, developed by GamePS

Weekly Consumer Linkfest Show

We have got plenty of augmented reality links this week, so enjoy the show:
Here's yet another amazing AR project utilizing the power of Kinect's sensor. Tobias Blum and Prof. Nassir Navab of TU Munich used a Kinect to overlay CT data on a person in real time, transforming a big screen into a magic mirror. It's also a good party trick for Halloween. More info here.



Have an excellent week!

Is Augmented Reality Under Hyped?

Just playing around with Google Ngram viewer. If you didn't get to try it yet, it's a tool that shows the number of times a phrase appears in a big corpus of books that Google scanned.
So, "augmented reality" popularity is rising:



but, it still has a lot to go (at least when compared to virtual reality)

Unfortunately, Google's database stops at the critical point, two years ago, right before the big buzz around AR started. Still, one can appreciate how quickly VR moved from the scientific lecture to popular lecture, while AR is taking its time.

New Yearly Linkfest

As you may have guessed this passing week was very slow in augmented reality news (or any news for that matter). Nevertheless, I scoured the web and bring you this weekly linkfest.
What a better way to start the new year than playing a round of augmented golf? That's exactly what the students at Rochester Institute of Technology thought when they came up with this game that doesn't require an entire fairway.



have a happy new yeAR!