This fall, Qualcomm is going to host a $200,000 Augmented Reality Developer Challenge.  The details for the challenge haven’t been released yet, but the total amount of prize money should have would-be developers planning their products as we speak.  The challenge will start when they release the Qualcomm AR SDK.  More details can be found here.

ANTICIPATED TIMELINE

• Fall 2010 – AR SDK available for download. Challenge commences.
• Early November, 2010 – Submission site opens. Developers may submit apps.
• January 7, 2011 – Submission site closes.
• Mobile World Congress 2011 – Winners announced and showcased at Qualcomm events.

Have you ever heard of this guy? A brief interview from Geoweb Forum with Ori Inbar.  In it he talks about ARE2010, ARNY, the state of the industry and a gives a brief demonstration of Put A Spell.

Today my wife and kids were ignoring me so I hijacked my wife’s new iPhone.  I’d been curious to try the game on Layar called Conquar.  The idea sounded simple–take control of your city using troops.  Unfortunately, the game IS that simple.

The way the game works is this: when you create an account, you’re randomly put into a team and given around fourteen armies to conquer your enemies.  My favorite colors are blue or red, so therefore, I got stuck with yellow.  Boooo!  Then I used my fourteen armies to conquer the municipalities around St. Louis.  There are only five control points in St. Louis and I now own four of them.  Hazelwood, I’m coming for you next!

The game promises me more troops each day, so I can continue my smackdown of the Greater St. Louis area.  However, once I’ve beat the tar out of Hazelwood tomorrow, what else will I have to do?  I’m an old grognard who’s played countless strategy games, so you’re going to have to do better than one button war.  I expect to have armies to train, resources to manage, supply lines to protect, a wedding to plan, Gilder to frame!  Oh wait, got carried away there.

I recognize that AR gaming still has a long way to go, but if it wants to take off, it’s going to have to offer more than two minutes of fun.  Add some options, give me blood dammit!  The makers have posted that “Conquar Updates will soon follow!”  Here’s to hoping we see some soon.  Until then, if you’re in the St. Louis area and you log into Conquar, don’t forget pay homage to Emperor Carpenter.

I guess I feel compelled to post this app because of the World Cup.  It’s a cute idea worth a few minutes of play time, but after that, I’m not sure what the appeal would be.  Personally, I’m ready for the next phase of smartphone AR which requires more awareness of objects and the world.  Floating augmented objects just isn’t tickling my fancy anymore.

The radar screen on top makes me think of Aliens.

“Look, I’m telling ya, there’s somethin’ movin’ and it ain’t us! Tracker’s off scale, man. They’re all around us, man. Jesus!”

“Hicks: Remember, short controlled bursts.
Hudson: 9 meters, 7, 6.
Ripley: That can’t be, that’s inside the room.
Hudson: It’s reading right man, look.
Hicks: Then, “you’re” not reading it right.
Hudson: 5 meters, man. 4, what the hell?”

Never look in the egg… all I’m saying… never look in the egg.

Make the world your golf course.

That’s the tagline of the new iPhone app Gigaputt from Gigantic Mechanic.  Instead of clubs, you swing your iPhone in a Wii-like manner (though the accuracy is no where near the same) and hit your ball.  Unlike most AR iPhone games, this one actually requires you to interact with your surroundings rather than just spin in place and hit random buttons.  I’m sure there’s some way to include drinks and bar hopping into the game for the adult readers of GA.

The game is also being featured in the Come Out and Play Festival 2010 in New York on June 14th.

A group of students at Technische Universitat Munchen, under the direction of Gudrun Klinker, created this augmented reality racing game.  The setup is similar to the AR Drone game in that it uses a real vehicle, however, using the illusions of AR, they turned their LEGO Mindstorm robots into cars.

The students had two (analog) radio cameras and mounted each on one Lego Mindstorm Robot. With this constellation the player was presented the view on the world from a robot’s perspective. The students also placed markers on top of the robots which were being used to calculate the pose of each camera in relation to a common coordinate system (using one ceiling mounted camera). With this pose, the view of the virtual camera was matched to the real camera’s view. The students augmented the real camera images with virtual graphics such as the race course and some special items (speedup, rockets, etc). The goal was to drive as fast as possible four laps or to hunt down the other player before he can finish the race.
The calibration of the tracking system and the tracking itself was done using Ubitrack and its MarkerTracker Component developed at our chair.

We think because of some aspects this game is very special:
- The game is a twoplayer game, so you share the same virtual (and real) world between the two players.
- There are no markers in the camera view of the player since the cameras for showing the graphics and doing the tracking are not the same.
- The (real) robots are being overlayed with car models in the camera images so you do not get the the impression of playing against Lego robots. (O.K. sometimes you can see the robot due to a lag in the tracking or since it is not overlayed completely)
- And best: It was playable and is not only a concept

Good job Christian Waechter, Eva Artinger and Markus Duschl.  I think you’ll have a career in augmented reality.

Augmented reality has come a long way in a years time.  Last year I got excited by research projects and gimmicky AR webcam advertising, but that quickly faded on the tenth plus iteration.  It wasn’t until July that we starting having real AR products in the form of apps.  Nearly a year later and still early in the development of the AR ecosystem, we’re seeing a more diverse use of the technology and that has me excited again.  So I want to take a moment to go over ten cool things going on right now in augmented reality.

1. Battle of the AR Browsers

Wikitude, Layar, Tonchidot, Junaio, TagWhat and others hope to be the standard for the AR browser market.  Layar has recently upped the ante with an AR content store and TagWhat takes it in a new direction by combining lessons learned with Foursquare and Twitter.  I suspect one of the big boys like Google, Twitter or Facebook will eventually either create their own or co-opt the ideas from these early browsers into their current products.  I’m not sure which horse to bet on in this race, but in the end we customers are the winners.

2. DIY Portable Augmented Reality Headset

Using an Eye-Trek video headset, the guy at Tailormadetoys made a pair of AR glasses.  I love the DIY culture and while they’re not see-through, I think all the right parts to make one are out there.  This post from Team Hack-a-Day proves that the DIY makers are getting close, so why can’t one of the big makers get it done?

3. The AR phone – Ouidoo

The specs on this Ouidoo QderoPateo smartphone are in the WTF!? zone.  While the phone won’t be out until the fall, the company claims it’ll have a 26-core CPU capable of 8-gigaflop floating point operations and include  512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, 28GB of built-in storage, microSD expansion, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, built-in 3D map, accelerometer, digital compass, 5-megapixel camera with flash, 220 hours of standby battery life, and a sharp 3.5-inch 800 x 480 screen.  Whew.

While I’m not completely believing the hype, and it could end up being vaporware, it certainly looks promising.  Though it’ll have to work hard to compete with the likes of the iPhone and Droid.

4. Eyeborg

Bionic eyes and augmented reality.  It’s like peanut better and chocolate!  Rob Spence is putting a camera into his eye to make movies with (and because its just plain cool.)  And he’s also interested in combining augmented reality with his eye camera.  They’ve come up with a promotionalAR eyeborg t-shirt in the meantime.

Eyeborg’s New AR shirt in action! from eyeborg on Vimeo.

5. ARE2010

Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, Marco Tempest, and the list goes on.  It pains me to say that I won’t be able to make the inaugural event.  I had a work conflict with that week, so I have to bow out of hosting the panel on AR glasses.  But for the rest of you, I hope you’ll be able to make it.  With AR on the rise and viable business options a-plenty, it’s a good time to network and see what everyone is doing with the nascent technology.  This is the “can’t miss” AR event of the year.

6. ARWave

Our favorite interviewer Tish Shute and longtime commenter Thomas Wrobel have been sheparding the AR Wave project and collaborating with people all over the globe.  While it’s still too early to tell, this could end up being one of the most important AR developments out there if they can truly create an open source way of using AR.  As they’ve been telling everyone, they’re trying to make a system that:

* Anyone can make content

* Anyone can make a browser

* Anyone can run a server

7. iPhone OS4.0

It almost pains me to get excited about an iPhone update that promises video access to make real AR work on that smartphone.  We got fooled last September with the OS3.1.  I’m hoping we don’t get fooled again (unless you’re the Who.)

8. Haptic AR floors

I’m not even entirely sure if haptic floors fit into the augmented reality spectrum, but it’s so crazy weird and true, that I had to include it.  I seriously doubt we’ll be seeing a commercial product anytime soon though (or ever.)

9. AR Drone

While the news on the AR drone is a stale few months old, I still think it warrants inclusion because it was a great product.  The hovercraft alone was worth the price of admission, but the AR added a creative twist to it.  I have no idea if it sold well, but it sure did capture the imaginations of a lot of geeks.

10. You choose!

Let us know what you think is the coolest thing going in augmented reality right now.  Whether it’s a product only hinted at or one currently residing on your smartphone, we’d like to hear it.  So let us know over at Games Alfresco in the comment section (pointing the conversation over there to keep the comments together)!