Business Insider on the three issues augmented reality has to resolve in order to become the next big thing. No surprises there, but isn't AR already the next big thing, and it should rather try to become the current big thing?
Par-Tee - care for some augmented reality golf game?
It seems that I have never posted here about Greg Tran's work on augmented architecture. Which is a pity. I had the following video opened as a tab in my browser for a long time, just waiting to be published, and somehow I forgot about it. Luckily, Yanko Design posted another video of Tran's work, which served as a necessary reminder:
It's been a busy summer for me, sorry for not posting the weekly linkfest in, well, a weekly manner. If you want more frequent updates from me, you should follow me on twitter
Change your perspective with MirrorMap - an augmented reality application that lets you tap to near by CCTV cameras. I think they had a similar thing in Rainbows End.
This week's video comes to us via Etsuji Kameyama's blog. I often complained about not having the AR equivalent of Angry Birds (ARAB). Well, we are not there yet, but Junaio now features a channel with the boids, enabling users to take picture with them. Even though it's a wholly new media, still nobody likes the boomerang bird.
Here is a crazy thought - is the industry mature enough for an AR benchmark? Specifically I thought such a benchmark should cover the following two topics:
Comparing the performance of AR frameworks (such as Qualcomm's AR SDK, Samsung SARI, etc.) using a given set of tests.
Comparing the performance of devices using a given set of AR tests.
Which leads to the following questions, I'll be glad hearing your thoughts about them (in the comments, on twitter, or via email, whatever!):
Will such a benchmark be beneficial to any one? Interesting?
What tests should the benchmark include? The main problem here is that test should be easily recreated and yet meaningful. We can test "tracking success" by tracking an on screen marker that is transformed by code (to account for change in lights, motion blur, noise and other effects, which can be hard to accurately recreate using a real physical marker).
Would any one of you volunteer to run those tests? I don't have access to lots of AR capable devices, so unless you would like to sponsor me (i.e. buy me an iPad2), I count on the volunteers to run the actual tests and report back.
How about benchmarking AR applications? Does it make sense?
For his graduation project for the HKU (Utrecht School of the Arts), Cor Baauw created a really compelling vision of the augmented future where virtual pets are common and one can change reality with few restrictions.
Obviously, we are not likely to see this vision come to life in the next ten years (and possibly not in our lifetime), but it's a nice reminder of how cool augmented reality can be once we overcome the limitations of the current hardware and algorithms.
More information can be found on Baauw's site, Local Androids.
A downpour of augmented reality links for you today:
Brother's AiRScouter see-through head mounted display is coming out this fall? One thing's for sure, they Brother stresses the AR use cases of that device.
The future of firefighting may be augmented according to Tanagram. As Toby points out, a firefighter wants 100% reliability which doesn't go well with computer vision dependence on heuristic algorithms.
Not too happy with the shape of your nose? Researchers at the University of London are working on an AR mirror that will let you tweak it (and other features) in real time.
In the last week Bruce Sterling has postedseveraldemovideos of AR projects done by Art Center College of Design (Pasadena) students. The class, which is sponsored by Layar (very wise move!) and guided by Sterling, resulted with some interesting ideas, from AR religion to Bitcoin treasure hunt, but I liked most Dobu Dobu, an "augmented reality app to create love, companionship and friendship through adoption of virtual pets".
Well, I guess the title says it all. Leaf++ is the brain child of Italian artist Salvatore Iaconesi that couples together visual search and social networks to augment (you guessed it) leaves. A user can leave (no pun intended) a message on a leaf, to be seen later by other users scanning the same leaf type.
Watching the above video, it seems that some people get high on leaves.
We, at Augmented Times, believe that augmented reality (AR) is the next big paradigm shift. Connecting the world wide web with the physical world and the many objects, places and humans it contains, AR is both a disruptive technology and an exciting vision of the future.
This blog's goal is to document AR taking over our lives, but it needs your help. Have an augmented reality related news or story? Published an interesting paper about AR? Have something to say about this site or the AR community in genereal? Tell us about it, at rouli.net ~at~ gmail.com
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