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

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 Augmented Reality Linkfest

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

To my many readers coming from Japan - my heart goes to you, and I hope your families are safe. It's difficult to discuss "augmented reality" in the face of "tragic reality", but I'll do my best with this week's linkfest.

• Technology Review: Turning augmented reality into an open standard - on Georgia Tech's Argon.
• 2011 is the year of the tablets. yawn. 2012, though, may be the year of facial recognition.
  
• Zugara wins DEMOGod award for AR webcam social shopper
• Feng Shui made easy with mobile an augmented reality app.
• Sims creator Will Wright dipping into augmented reality?
• Drums lesson using projected AR.

This week's video is a call for help to create the first crowed sourced AR music video. Led by students of Tokyo's Temple University, fans of the British band Songdog are invited to contribute their own clips featuring an AR marker. According to their site (where you can find more details) "Augmented Reality is used to symbolize all that one can remember, but that is lost forever - you can see it, but you can't touch it". A beautiful idea that I hope will come true in spite of the unexpected challenges facing it.


Have a good week!

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

You've been waiting for this the whole week - here's the weekly linkfest:

• Augmented Planet has a round up of all the coming AR events this year.
• Interesting piece on New Scientist - Augmented reality iPhone helps police track suspects.
• Chris Grayson published a very good presentation on face tracking and face recognition. Pity there's no video recording of him presenting it.
• Don't tell the secret services, but artists used Layar to virtually infiltrate the White House and the Pentagon.
  
• Blair MacIntyre discusses Georgia Tech's Argon, "the Augmented Reality Web Browser".
• Augmented reality used as a gravitational wave interferometer tool. I don't have a clue what that means, but it looks like a virtual pendulum.

Only a few weeks ago, we reported on Virtual Master Reel, an augmented reality game whose aim was catching virtual fish with an augmented fishing reel. Seems that augmented reality fishing games are trending right now, because Nintendo got one for its Nintendo 3ds platform. Video doesn't do it justice, because the whole 3d display thingy is lost, but it still looks good. You can read more about the planned AR games for 3ds on Wired.



have a fantastic week!

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

Weekly Augmented Reality Linkfest

As always, here the augmented reality news stories and tidbits, I didn't have the time (or will) to cover this week:

• ISMAR11 call for papers is online, abstracts due May 11th
• The Guardian asks what is mobile AR for, and whether we should look for an augmented reality killer application.
• Georgia Tech's Argon, "the first augmented reality web browser" is now on the Appstore.
  
• Qualcomm announced their AR challenge (and $125,000 ) winner.
• Metaio and Ericsson are optimizing tracking capabilities in the Mobile World Congress.
  
• Route 66: A new twist on augmented reality navigation aid - you just need to follow the virtual car ahead of you.
• AC130 is an AR shooting game that uses dollar bills as markers. What was once an innovative idea, is quickly becoming a standard.

This week's video is a neat meshup between the insanely successful indie computer game Minecraft and augmented reality, by one Scott Kronick (or at least I think that is his name). Kronick, an artist by trade, came to the realization that it would be great "to hack away at and modify your city or school made of cubes". The result is "RealCraft":



Have a nice week!

New Yearly Linkfest

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.

• Last week I reported on the winter crop of augmented reality games coming from Qualcomm AR Game Studio. The videos of three more games were recently uploaded, so be sure to check them up.
• Layar and int13's ARDefender selected as apps of the year on SamsungApps.
  
• DOMO, Tonchidot's newest project, aspires to enable transparent society, where you could see everyone's thoughts and interests.
• Open question on Quora - What will be the most important developments in augmented reality in 2011? I tried giving my best answer, though you may disagree with me. (via @TishShute)
  
• On the same topic, Metaio give their own 2011 predictions. You can also find some AR predictions for the next decade on Joe Ludwig's blog.

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!

Nerdferno and 2 Other Augmented Reality Games from Georgia Tech

Nerdferno and 2 Other Augmented Reality Games from Georgia Tech

In late June, the establishment of Qualcomm Augmented Reality Game Studio was announced, a partnership between Qualcomm and Georgia Tech's Augmented Environments Lab, with the goal of "pioneering new advancements in mobile gaming and interactive media". Six months later, the first crop of mobile based games is coming out of the studio, and this blogger is far from disappointed.

Shotgun Showdown is a two players western styled shooting game which utilizes two $20 bills as an arena/required marker. I wonder whether the winner takes both bills.



If you thought that tracking dollar bills was original, than get ready for Volcano Fever, a game that uses condom wrappers as a marker. It's more than just a weird artistic choice by the game designer. The goal of Volcano Fever is to teach proper condom use.



I understand the volcano metaphor, but what's the octopus supposed to symbolize? ... Anyway, next is, as promised, Nerdferno, a game that puts you in a God like position, determining the fate of cubicle dwellers. If you looked for original AR content, you've found it:



You can read more about these games and others, such as Spintopia and Bug Juice, on the studio's website, and about previous AR games from Georgia Tech here.

Weekly Linkfest - The Lady Gaga Edition

Weekly Linkfest - The Lady Gaga Edition

This linkfest has nothing to do with Lady Gaga, and everything to do with augmented reality news bites from the last week. I'm just checking if the mere inclusion of miss Gaga in the title will generate more hits.

• Christopher Mitchell hacked together a Vuzix VR920 HUD and eeePC to create a basic facial recognition AR device for his master thesis.
• Augmented Planet posted their monthly report on AR application for the iPhone.
• I'm terribly late on this, but apparently on ARE 2010, Georgia Tech previewed their open source and open standards Kamra Mobile AR Browser. Have to thank Chris Grayson for bringing it to my attention.
• Twenty five of Lonely Planet’s travel guides get a dose of augmented reality, powered by Wikitude.
• Samsung's Bada mobile OS seems to be the hip place for AR games development. This time it's our pals at int13 with their release of ARDefender game.
• Metaio is holding a one day long conference called insideAR. I usually don't promote such events, but they got me when they bundled it with Oktoberfest. Augmented reality and Beer, a match made in heaven?
  

This week's video is a promotion video for Sekai Camera. Tonchidot, the company behind this veteran AR browser recently got a $5M from Japan's telecom giant KDDI (though some claim that KDDI actually bought Tonchidot). And if that's not enough, Tonchidot announced the creation of social AR game. The future looks bright for those guys:


Have a great (and cool) week!

Blair MacIntyre on UgoTrade

Blair MacIntyre on UgoTrade

Tish Shute continues with her enlightening series of interviews on UgoTrade. After previously interviewing Ori Inbar and Robert Rice, Blair MacIntyre was a natural choice.
MacIntyre discusses his work at Georgia Tech (which I briefly wrote about here), and shares his perspective on future directions for mobile augmented reality.

A lot of folks think it will be tourist applications where there’s models of times square and models of central park and models of Notre Dame and the big square around that area in paris and along the river and so on, or the models of Italian and Greek history sites - the virtual Rome. As those things start happening and people start building onto the edges, and when Microsoft Photosynth and similar technologies become more pervasive you can start building the models of the world in a semi-automated way from photographs and more structured, intentional drive-by’s and so on. So I think it’ll just sort of happen. And as long there’s a way to have the equivalent of Mosaic for AR, the original open source web browser, that allows you to aggregate all these things. It’s not going to be a Wikitude. It’s not going to be this thing that lets you get a certain kind of data from a specific source, rather it’s the browser that allows you to link through into these data sources.

Read it all over here (and check some of the interesting links featured in the interview).
Curiously enough, a video of one of the games mentioned in the article, "Art of Defense", was uploaded to Youtube today. It's an interesting research in how people interact when playing a collaborative AR game (see Bragfish for a similar research with a competitive game):

AR Game Designs from Georgia Tech

AR Game Designs from Georgia Tech

The Augmented Environments lab at Georgia Tech (AELatGT) has recently uploaded to Youtube videos showing off many games developed as projects in the "HAR: AR Game Design Studio" class last year. Blair MacIntyre's students came up with some interesting ideas (some would say unconventional), but in my view, there's one clear winner -
Candy Wars is a physics oriented game, played with your fridge magnets, where the goal is to feed a frog until it explodes. Things couldn't be better:



Many more video goodies can be found on AELatGT's Youtube page. Just a little tip - don't be tempted by the name, GuitAR hero, is nothing more than a rickroll in AR disguise.

Augmented Fear of Heights

Augmented Fear of Heights

Those crazy kids at Georgia Tech. In the last couple of days, we have seen augmented reality used to make you laugh, amazed and uncomfortable, so naturally someone, somehow had to make you scared. That's where Georgia Tech comes into the picture -

... we are interested in how to create systems where the user loses the sense of mediation, and begins to respond to being immersed in a blended physical/virtual as if it was a single “world.”

Our approach to exploring AR and Presence has been to develop an AR presence questionnaire in parallel with a physiological presence experiment analogous to the UNC VR “pit” experiment, which leverages a strong physiological reaction (fear of heights) to measure presence.

The experiment asked the participants to preform certain tasks around that pit, while their heart rate, galvanic skin response and skin temperature were measured. By doing so, the researchers hoped to develope a quantitative measurement of how immersive was the AR experience. Sadly, they don't report on their results yet, but you can tell from the video that some participants were shaken by the event.
Next time, they'll confront volunteers with an approaching virtual train and have paramedics on stand-by.

More details here.

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Here are some other AR news from around the web:

• Enter the mind of Ronald Chevalier, an experience that promotes this film.
• Georgia Tech's has a new infomercial for their mixed reality design class.
• Study finds that when it comes to in-car navigation, augmented reality is better than 3D egocentric view aids (such as plain old GPS devices). Who could have guessed?
• Geocaching using augmented reality is such a neat idea, I'm surprised no one before Jacob at Trimagination thought about it.
• Looking for an AR primer? Rusty Henderson has one covering the basics (with many videos), and Tom Carpenter has some more details.

The quote of the week comes from Robert Rice's twitter feed:

My team has figured out how to build most of Rainbows End. Just matter of time and funding now... /evil scientist cackle/

I guess that if they really achieved that feat, funding will not be a problem.

And finally, the weekly video comes from GeoVector (which I previouslly covered here). It's a concept video from 1995 and contains some interesting ideas. It just shows that even if you think that you have a novel idea, someone has thought about it before. Jump to 4:51 for a really cool augmented frogger:

Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

Some other augmented reality news from around the web:

• Microsoft uses a cheap AR trick to promote the new SQL server
• YDream's "Playing in an Augmented World" (which we mentioned here) wins honorable mention at the MIX09 showoff competition. Congrats Antão and team!
• Games Alfresco: ArToolKit Wins the Oscar of Virtual Reality
• Inspiring low-income youth using augmented reality part one and two, an initiative by these guys.
  

And we could not avoid embedding videos of two of the augmented reality games presented at the Game Development Conference (Ori was first to report about those two):

• Killing zombies on Nvidia's Tegra (by Georgia Tech):
  


• PIT Strategy, an augmented reality board game, by Beyond Reality