Archive for July, 2009
Augment This! (Issue #7)
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Augment This! on July 31st, 2009
Augment This! (Issue #7) by Thomas K Carpenter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Augmented Vision Demo in Dead Space
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on July 30th, 2009
While we’re years away from achieving augmented vision, the game Dead Space gives us a nice preview of some of the features that would be available. In the game, the HUI (Human User Interface) is explained as a holograph, but the concept would work the same as using augmented vision.
The game was released in 2008 for the PC, XBox 360 and PS3; and won the Game Spot Best of 2008 award.
With the first real lightweight AV glasses still months away, we won’t get to see commercial products demonstrating this type of HUI this year. But hopefully in 2010, we might start seeing some traction in the area of augmented vision.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Can We At Least Have A Reason To Use AR?
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on July 29th, 2009
Clearly who ever made this augmented reality campaign didn’t read this post.
Not only are they repeating what’s been done a hundred times already, but the technology tie-in has absolutely no point. Star Trek Enterprise in your room, sure, I get that. Star Trek is science fiction and AR is a bit holographic so it makes sense. The GE campaign was neat because it was new. A few others have been so-so, but Always the feminine hygiene product company?
Really?!?!
I’m not even sure what the whole point of a white rabbit coming out of a white hat with a magic wand is. And if I start to figure it out, I’m going to bludgeon myself with a sock full of pennies until I forget.
Who ever recorded this video gets it right by titling it: Pointless Always (With Wings?) Augmented Reality Demo.
Let this be a lessen to all those marketing people out there. Just because you have a hammer in your toolbox doesn’t mean you need to use it, unless you have a nail, of course.
The only good that can come of this, is that it serves as a warning for other marketers not to use AR in the marketing campaigns, just because they can. Unfortunately, I know we’re in for a couple of years worth of pointless AR marketing campaigns. Buckle up, its going to be a bumpy ride.
Popularity: 8% [?]
UgoTrade Interview #2 with Ori Inbar
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on July 28th, 2009
UgoTrade brings us another excellent interview with Ori Inbar and explains it will be the first of many with leaders in the augmented reality movement. Stop by and read the whole thing in its full-length goodness. Here’s a few highlights:
Ori: Exactly. In parallel to my blog becoming popular, it seems there’s a lot of activity picking up in the AR space. People are reaching out to us and are asking asking for help. So we started actually making that a part of our business. We help connect them with the right technologies if they need it or connect them with the right brands or companies and strategize with them on how to go to market and help publish their applications or games. So that’s becoming an exciting part of what we do.
An important part of augmented reality becoming a useful and integrated product with society is cooperation on standards and specifications. Its good to see industry leaders busy nurturing this new technology rather than battling over the details. A rising tide lifts all boats and augmented reality has seen a lot of growth so far this year as seen by the Google Trends graph below:
I think as Apple releases the iPhone OS 3.1 in September, which will allow a host of AR apps currently in development to hit the market, and with a few other products like the PS3 EyePet releasing around Christmas; we’ll see augmented reality start to crack the mainstream consciousness.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Mindgames with NeuroSky
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, augmented reality on July 28th, 2009
Recently the company NeuroSky released its product to the market called MindSet which includes the game NeuroBoy. The system translates your electrical brain impulses into a control system for your computer. While I haven’t used it to determine how hard it is, its an interesting concept.
See these videos for examples of the game NeuroBoy and the Visualizer.
While the price tag is a little steep at $199 for a new technology that I’m not sure how well it works and given that you’re tethered to your PC (would be great on a smartphone), its hard to justify it, but it sure looks fun if it works.
Popularity: 7% [?]
BMI Monkey Business
Posted by Tom Carpenter in digital singularity on July 27th, 2009
If you’ve been reading this blog awhile, you’ll know I have a fascination with brain-machine interfaces. Both Toyota and Honda have developed thought controlled devices and there are a number of products on the market that can control your computer. I believe “thought” controlled computers will be the future (maybe 2020?) because it will free our hands from doing augmented vision sign language.
The New York Times reports recent advances in the BMI. Previously, all BMI devices translated brain activity normally used for other manual functions (like lifting or moving an arm) into the signal for the new activity. The researchers in this study have shown that monkeys could learn completely new activities without piggy-backing the motion on top of another, previously used brain activity.
In other words, just like we learn to ride a bike or play guitar, our brains could be taught to perform completely new tasks related to controlling a computer. This would allow people to control the computer while doing other tasks (otherwise the two activities might get confused.)
This type of advance would allow for more advanced functions than just mouse movement. Could we learn to “type” with our minds? Instead of picking a letter from a list (mouse clicking), we could just will the letter into existance. The research indicates this would be possible.
Of couse, the more immediate benefit of these types of BMIs is help for those with disabilities, but it’s possible we could use the same technology to enhance everyone’s connection to the augmented world.
Popularity: 8% [?]
Around the ARNet
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, augmented reality on July 26th, 2009
Top news around the augmented reality sites seems to be about the iPhone 3.1 release in September and how it will allow for AR apps. Will be interesting to see how this changes some business plans.
Before that all the talk was about the augmented reality business card from James Alliban. Jonas from Toxin was disappointed that his product hadn’t gotten as much notice. Personally, I think it had more to do with the 3D graphics presented on James’ and less with the application of AR. But now Jonas has gotten notice from Geek Brief TV and come out with his own Augmented Business Card website, proving that if you want something, you have to ask for it.
Next we see a couple of examples of an AR Game called Daft Mania developed for a contest called “Are You Better Than Microsoft.” The game is similar to Guitar Hero, but with less expensive instruments.
And last, another example of the AR Game from the new James Cameron Avatar film.
Popularity: 7% [?]
PS3 EyePet Release Date
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, augmented reality on July 23rd, 2009
Will the Playstation3 EyePet be the “must-have” game of Christmas like the Wii was a few years ago? It might be in Europe, the release date of October 2nd has been announced.
While the US and Japan dates haven’t been announced yet, its assumed they will also be released in Q4 2009 to take advantage of the holidays. And while I don’t have a PS3, I’ll be sure to bug my friends that do have one to purchase the game so I can try it out.
Reposting the video for those that have forgotten:
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[Via Not Just Reality]
Popularity: 11% [?]
ARtisan 1.0 Launch
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on July 22nd, 2009
OneZeroThrice has released ARtisan, an augmented reality library for developers. The goal of ARtisan is stated as:
ARtisan is a front end and management system for FLARToolkit and Papervision3D. The goal of ARtisan is to facilitate developers in creating rich, browser based augmented reality environments, without having to know the inner workings of marker detection.
Currently they have five examples up on their site including the source code and a way to interact with the example on their site.
The goal of the site is commendable because it will allow latecomers to the AR scene a chance to catch up quickly with their examples and coding for FLARToolkit and Papervision3D.
Popularity: 6% [?]
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