Georgia Tech's Spring 2011 Crop of Games - Nerds, Puppies and Asteroids

It was only five months ago when we reported about the first set of mobile augmented reality games coming out of Qualcomm Augmented Reality Game Studio. The studio, a partnership between Qualcomm and Georgia Tech's Augmented Environments Lab, gives students the tools to create AR games and gives us a peek their crazy ideas. Now, a new crop of games is out of the studio's doors, and here are my favorites:

Dodger Dodger is a simple game where you are tasked with escaping falling asteroids. This game smartly harnesses the mobile platform to add another dimension to the game. Not only does the player needs to move left and right, he also needs to move the phone back and forth in order to avoid the asteroids:



Nerdherder is obviously the bastard step child of last semaster's Nerdferno. Instead of dodging asteroids, you need to avoid eye contact with girls in this one:



The goal of Puppy Plus is to teach your child basic math skills using a cute puppy living on a deserted island, surrounded by pirate ships. It makes perfect sense, trust me:



You can read more about these games and others coming out this spring on Qualcomm AR game studio site; Don't miss the narwal safe sex guide.

Weekly Sunny Linkfest

Before we begin with our weekly pile of links, here's a message from Christine Perey on behalf of "the program committee of the Third International AR Standards meeting":
The committee has decided to extend the deadline for position papers to June 6th (5 PM UK). Please find more information and guidelines for the position papers: http://www.perey.com/ARStandards/third-meeting-position-papers/

Now, back to our regular programming:

This week's video goes to you Dr. Who fans - I'll never understand your ways. Sean McCracken apparently does, and thus created this Android app, available on the Android market to display an augmented version of the TARDIS. Everlasting glory to the first fan who will create a video of Daleks shouting "augment! augment!"


Have a nice week, and good luck Noora

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

It's a link apocalypse!

  • Many of the AR community went to the second annual Augmented Reality Event. Sadly, I wasn't able to be there, but luckily, Augmented Citizen share some thoughts and presentations from the event, Locative Media have some "pirated videos" of the keynotes and Layar uploaded videos of a couple of their presentations to Youtube. If you have a video or a blog post about the event - send me an email or give me a tweet.
  • Sander Veenhof is a genius (there, I said it!) and Layar should be paying him money for choosing their platform if they don't already do so. This time he came up with a way to use augmented reality to create a world wide synchronized dancing routine. It's an augmented macarena!
  • With Disney's mobile phone projector you can play games on walls and interact with real life objects.
  • Tablets and democratization: Metaio & Layar pinpoint next steps for augmented reality (via @bruces).
  • Sony SmartAR delivers high-speed markerless augmented reality and according to Engadget, it also blows minds.
  • Scott Blake creates art using QR codes.

This week's video is of a simple augmented reality game, called Tapcloud with an interesting premise. By chasing virtual cloud (and looking a little bit foolish), the game forces you to get some exercise, and even counts the number of calories you burned once it's game over. The game is available for free on the app store, so you have nothing to lose (except, again, calories).




Have a tremendous week!

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

ARE2011 is only two days away, and I'm going to miss it (this time its my fault, and I can't blame Delta Airways). I'm a lame excuse for an AR blogger, I know. If you go there, please shoot some videos and share!

Here are a few AR news stories to make the wait seem shorter (btw - have a link to share? contact me on Twitter @augmented):


Our weekly video comes today from the Future Lions 2011 contest, where young advertising professionals are called to "Advertise a product from a global brand in a way that couldn’t have been done five years ago, to an audience of your choosing". Tom Houser and Victoria Trow came up a way to use augmented reality as an alternative source of income for record companies. I am a bit of a skeptic, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless:



Have a great week!

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

Took a break last week (missed me? you should follow me on Twitter), back today with many AR links:
This week's video is just cute rendition of a possible augmented future, featuring Super Mario Bros villains in real life (via Neatorama):






Have a splendid week!