Mobile computing devices are wonderful for bringing the world of information to our fingertips anywhere we go.  Hurtling down the highway in one ton vehicles while trying to access our maps or find directions is not the safest way to drive. 

This video shows an augmented reality street view using a Windows 7 notebook, Royaltek GPS, webcam, and an arduino board with 2-axis compass module.

The final intent of this garage-made system is unknown, but it certainly opens up possibilities for augmented reality car systems.  Projection units could easily put these views onto the windshield and voice-command for GPS to keep it hands free is nothing new. 

Speaking of GPS, did you know that you can get a TomTom GPS system with Snoop Dogg’s voice on it?  Here’s the video to prove it.

How hard would it be for an AR GPS maker to have dual cams mounted on the dashboard with a projector blasting the screen information on your windshield?  The car dimensions are fixed and the GPS is known, add in some object recognition for the occasional readjustment of geospatial location, and an AR car system could draw yellow lines on the road to follow and highlight points of interest along the way.  

The technology exists and only needs someone to put the pieces together.  I wouldn’t be suprised to learn a nimble startup had already started creating one.  And even if such a project was started today, one could be on the market by late this year or next.

The new Layar 3.0release brings more functionality to the reality browser.  To help people envision what the service can do, Layar touts five new use-cases:

Five Layar 3.0 Use-Cases

1) Architecture Showcase – Visualize the final building at a construction site.

2) Storytelling: Beatles Tour – A visual tour of forty-three locations in London involving the Beatles.  Each stop must be followed in order.

3) History Comes Alive – See the past reconstructed before your eyes with facts and 3D models.

4) Art, Messages & Fun Objects – Weird objects placed in unexpected places.

5) B2B & Personalization – Useful for businesses and social layers, enabling interaction with Twitter (take that Twitter 360!) and Foursquare services.

While these five use-cases expand the Layar reality browser (and more info on them can be seen here), I think they’re missing a huge use-case that’s now possible with 3.0.  After reading through the Layar Developer Wiki, I found these functions that should help make Layar games possible.

Two Layar 3.0 Functions

* User added 3D objects – 3D objects up to 5000 polygons can be created with any 3D program (assuming it can create a Wavefront)

* Auto-Triggered Actions – POIs can trigger a URI (audio, video, webpage, etc) which can allow for additional programming aspects to happen.  By utilizing functions within a webpage, most programming tools can be utilized within the Layar framework. 

 These two simple functions can add a lot of versatility to the program to make games.  And while the 3D graphics are still pretty limited and animations aren’t yet possible, think back to the dawn of gaming when text based games like ZORK were all the rage, or simple 2D lines and text created time-sinks like Wizardry.  Even simple sprites doomed many a night I should have been studying with Lemmings!  The key to these games is that they should be locative, otherwise, what’s the point?

 10 Games That Could Be Made with Layar 3.0

1) Capture the Flag – Instead of capturing flags on your opponent, hide flags in the city and capture your friends flags by visiting their locations. 

2) Choose Your Own Adventure – Who didn’t read these cheesy books in grade school?  Be a fun way to host a weekly bar-hop.

3) Simple RPG- a city based RPG that used locations as the “action areas.”  Any math or combat resolving could be done through a URI webpage call and then reveal the 3D model (win=dead creature/lose=gravestone).  Go into Joe’s Pub and kill a goblin for 5xp and then drink a pint to celebrate your victory. 

4) Hidden Treasure- Clues and visual markers only seen through Layar can lead you to finding “special points” in the city. 

5) Avatar Battles- Customize an avatar that does battle with others for control of locations.  Think Foursquare crossed with Pokemon.

6) Economy Game – Buy and Sell real properties with virtual money.  Must visit the location to purchase, can develop it with special actions (putting special 3D models in the area) and mark it with your sign.

7) Mystery Games- In a randomized Clue-style game, participants are given clues in different locations they visit and can ask questions using the URI webpage (pull down list) to figure out the daily murder. 

8 ) The Hidden Story – A mosaic story could be told through the location in the city.  For those that visit all of them, they can piece together the whole narrative that involves history, places and interesting people while the occasional 3D object might illustrate the narrative. 

9) Planet War- Mine resources at locations, purchase tanks and other warfare equipment that can be places in areas you want to control.  The website resolve winners and you see your battle regalia in the location.  Take over your favorite eating establishment with a load of Panzers.

10) Lemmings!- I don’t really know how to do Lemmings! with Layar 3.0, but I’m sure someone much more creative than I can do it.  It is the greatest game of all time, right?

The birthday card in the video is unremarkable by augmented reality standards.  However, I think it does open up an interesting business opportunity for someone who can weasel their way into bed with a big name greeting card producer like Hallmark.  I’ll explain more:

The example in this video uses a standard marker for displaying the card.  As a business, this would fail for a couple of reasons.  The first is no one wants to print out a marker (or at least I don’t.)  The second is that if you give the “marker” to someone who doesn’t have a webcam, then your card is useless. 

The marker could be integrated into a standard greeting card (or commonly called a markerless) , so it could be freely given without worry of them not being able to recieve it.  If the person had a webcam, then they could view the extra content.  If not, then they still received a nice greeting card.  It might even have the side effect of driving someone to purchase a webcam if they didn’t have one to see the AR content.  A smartphone viewer might also make the AR greeting card more accessable (purchasing a card supported by your smartphone, so you could show them the extra content when you gave it.)  Either way, its a business oppertunity in the making. 

So it’s another augmented reality business card.  This time from the company Genuine Interactive.  The use of a 3D video landscape within the augment is cute, but there’s one major flaw with this application.  It requires the use of a PC. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for the AR business card.  I even requested one.  But I need to be able to see it with my smartphone so I can show it to someone on a business trip.  Requiring me to be near a PC to view the AR business card doesn’t mesh well with the social nature of business greetings. 

There are four or five different companies working on AR business cards right now.  They should band together and make iPhone and Android apps for seeing these cards and release the apps for free.  Let the content of their creation be the selling point.  Otherwise this concept will die to the friction of using it. 

Now that the OS 3.1 is upon us we’re seeing a few more augmented reality apps and some of them are in the category of the “Nearest X” variety.  I’m not saying these apps are necessarily a bad thing, but my fear is that they’ll crash the market as a gimmick and not try to solve any problems.  This will make it more difficult to differentiate the good from the bad.  I’m not the only one out there with concerns about slapping AR onto these apps and calling them improved over the previous versions.  Read these posts from Rouli and Joe to see I’m not alone. 

Also, as we can see using the RIM scale for augmented reality, these apps aren’t stretching the technology much as they fall into the (2,3) location.  Meaning they use minimal flat graphics (Perceived Reality) and just GPS/direction (Reality Recognition) for finding their location in the world. 

I’ll break them down one-by-one, highlighting the good parts and the unfortunate bad parts and see if we can learn something.

1) Toyko Underground for train stations and restaurants

This iPhone app comes from Ipodtouchlab.  It’s a standard “Nearest X” type application with two views: a forward view requiring holding the iPhone up in picture taking mode and a more elbow friendly footpath view with a nice fat arrow and distance to target.  Having spent my fair share of time getting lost in the underground malls and train stations in Japan this app seems like a useful endevour.  One advantage the AR version of this type of application has is that Japan train stations, especially the ones in Toyko are extremely crowded.  So having a see-through screen while you walk can keep you from bumping into anyone.  The downside to this app is it only works in the center of Tokyo. 

2) Nearest McDonald’s

The Nearest McDonald’s app from IGPSD can find the nearest McDonald’s, Starbucks or Pizza Hut.  The video doesn’t give us much to go on but the major problems I see with it are the limited targets, the poor looking interface and no elbow saving view option.  I also think using McDonald’s, Starbucks and Pizza Hut as the targets is tacky.  I realize the video says demo, but this is our first impression of the product. 

As Rouli says,

It’s amazing how a couple of months make all the difference between innovator and late-comer.

3) Cheap Gas!

David J. Hinson brings us his Cheap Gas! AR app demo.  My major worry about this app is how it will be used with driving.  I guess the viewport helps make the driver safer compared to a regular app?  If we could project the iPhone screen onto the windshield I might feel a little better about any of the “Car Apps” out there. 

4) Acrossair Nearest Tube App

The Acrossair app was the first one to catch the public’s interest with over 300,000 views on YouTube.  I like that this app has both the foot view and the straight ahead view.  I think this modality should be the standard.  They even stack the far-away tubes in the upper region of the viewscreen giving you a natural way to use the interface and have released tube/subway finders for other major cities. 

5) Nearest Satellite Finder

This app from dailymobile is a bit different than the others, but I think its one that really uses the visualization of augmented reality well.  When you set up a satellite dish its extremely useful to know where the satellites are and if any trees are in the way.  A top down map view doesn’t do anything for finding the right satellite to point the dish at.  This app has limited functionality, but for what it does, it does well. 

 6) WorkSnug – Best Location to Work

I covered this app last week and while I initially couldn’t find much that augmented reality added to the app that a regular 2D version couldn’t do, Richard Leyland from WorkSnug helped me understand why they chose to use AR in their app:

Appreciate your comments. We decided to use Augmented Reality for our app for a couple of reasons. The first is that it presents a nice way to cut through the complexity of the city lay-out (”oh yeah, it’s that way”). So in that sense it does offer more than just a Nearest X type app. The second reason is that it was fun!

I take your point about AR apps though – We shouldn’t get carried away about the delivery method. We hope the value of our app is in the content, which we pounded the streets to capture ourselves.

Good point, Richard.  Shiny toys don’t matter much if the content behind them isn’t worth much.  A point all the Nearest X apps should pay attention to. 

To make a good “Nearest X” app, the important parts are to have good content behind the shiny graphics, give us intuitive interfaces that mimic our normal gestures and don’t cause tendinitis of the elbow.  The bad part is that most of these apps aren’t really taking advantage of the possibilities of augmented reality.  It is still early, but I think the app designers could stretch their imaginations and programming skills a little more and make some innovative products. 

To help, I’m offering some free suggestions on how to improve “Nearest X” apps:

1) Follow the Yellow Brick Arrow

Give us street level markers that show the directions beyond a flat box.  

2) Customization

If we’re looking for restaurants or other locations that involve personal tastes, I’d like to have the app notify me of places I’d want to go before I have to scroll through menus.  Have it default to what I like best or maybe even suggest something nearby within my taste standards. 

3) X-Ray Vision

Sometimes the arrow pointing us in the right direction is blocked by a wall.  While full rendering of what’s beyond the wall isn’t possible right now, give us a taste of the path using a 3D mini-map or project the path onto the view screen (similar to #1.)

4) Add a Dash of Mystery

Why do we need to search for something we know we want?  Can’t we ask the iPhone to show us nearby landmarks, or to notify us (using voice!) of interesting nearby locations.  When we hold up the phone it should tell us about it (including wiki access.) 

If I’m walking around New York, I might want to hit my iPhone and have it show me the nearest locations of movies film sets, or locations of famous pictures, or landmarks (beyond the obvious ones.)  Give me what I didn’t expect, not what I want.  I can get that anyday. 

5) Reduce My App Clutter

I know you’re all competing, but I’d like to see a few “Nearest X” app makers get together and make the different apps work together so I don’t need to download a different one to find coffee than for a laundry mat.  The hard part is the content, so let’s not have to have fifteen different apps just to find all the places you need to go. 

The “Nearest X” app category is probably going to get cluttered soon as its an easy and quick way to incorporate a new technology that’s catching people’s attention.  Designers should consider that the only way their going to succeed is to innovate beyond what’s already been done.  Otherwise, they’ll just be another “Nearest X” app.

With the iPhone OS 3.1 launch set to debut next month, I wanted to explore the features that are going to help make some AR apps succeed over others.  We’re going to be seeing a spike of releases since many have been working towards this moment waiting for the iPhone to become AR enabled, so its a good time to get those apps in tip-top shape. 

And while I’m personally smartphone agnostic, these are features that should be present on any app, no matter what the platform.  But the OS3.1 release will connect the hype of AR with the hype of the iPhone, so that’s why we need to talk about app features now.  Call it Hype2.0 if you’d like.

And now for the features:

1 – Solutions Not Gimmicks

The best products and services are solutions to a problem.  Going to your webcam to open up a 3D version of the product has lost its luster as a tired gimmick.  Find a reason that augmented reality can be useful for your customers.  And if you’re a car maker looking to use AR, listen to Rouli. 

Don’t be like Always, the feminine hygiene company, please…

2 – Social Connections

The reason these social connectors like Twitter and Facebook work is because they allow us to be nosy neighbors seeing what next person is doing.  The term “Keeping up with the Jonses” applies here.  Give your app a way to connect other people in creative and interesting ways.  Even if its seeing the high score along with a picture of you dodging a cannonball.

 3 – App Search

Google dominates the search wars because they’re the best at it.  Many functions of AR require pulling information from the data sphere and if it gets hijacked by spammers then the app will quickly lose its purpose.  No one wants to pull up a restaurant layer to find a nice place to eat in a new town and get a porn layer instead while your three smiling children peer over your shoulder. 

4 – Alacrity Wins

I could say apps need to be quick, but they need to be more than that.  The Webster’s definition of alacrity is “promptness in response” or “cheerful readiness.”  Apps should anticipate what the user wants and get it quickly.  If it takes 10 seconds for the camera to identify where its at so you can decide which way to walk, no one is going to use it.  If the processor is too slow, move your heavy lifting to servers off the smartphone.  Life moves quickly, your app should move at the same pace.  

5 – Unique Style

If you want your business to grow, your style should be tasteful and easily recognizable.  When people see your products they should instantly know who created it.  Already the Layar symbol has stuck into my head as a good product identifier. 

6 – Not Another Vista!

If I let my kids cook dinner for themselves they make cereal.  My wife will take six hours to make an exquisite dinner that uses every dish in the house, including a few of our neighbors.  The kids eat cereal because its easy to do.  My kids are your users.  They’re not going to make Chateaubriand no matter how good it tastes.  So make your apps simple to use. 

7 - Save the Trees, Please

Please don’t make me print out another marker to see your version of augmented reality.  We might be able to say that AR is a green product, but for all the papervision markers we’ve had to print out.   

8 – Now With Less Spam

 For the AR apps that allow user added content, we need to make sure we’re not besieged with spammers like the regular Internet.  While this might be an impossible request, at least consider the spammers in your product design. 

9 – Tell Me A Story

Augmented reality was built by programmers, but it needs artists to grow.  Don’t forget to tell me a story and engage my emotions.  AR is a wonderful new medium with potential to tell stories in ways never told before.  The story can exist all around us or even in our living room. 

10 – FUN!!!

Now matter what the purpose of your app, even if its a serious one like saving the rain forest.  Don’t forget to make it fun (and maybe include a little magic).

Spoiler note.  The iPhone app I’m about to discuss has no augmented reality functionality.

So why am I discussing it?  Because if it did, it’d go from adequate to awesome.  Every year nerds from around the country descend on Gen Con to revel in unabashed geeking-out.  Why do I know about Gen Con?  When I was a youngster, I started a D&D club at my Catholic grade school, which lasted as long as it took for the nuns to realize we were one dice roll away from Satan worship.   The club was quickly disbanded, which was probably for the best, or the probability of getting a date in high school would have had a very high THACO. 

Back to the app in question.  It gives convention-goers a tool for everything they might need (except deodorant) like: event listings, conference maps, city maps, live chat, access to Facebook and Twitter, news update and a host of other options.  This app, even without AR does a lot of nice things, but add the spatial awareness of AR and it would become a must have for any iPhone user at the convention and become an event on its own. 

This kind of application doesn’t just apply to nerds on their yearly pilgrimage to the Mecca, but can work for any convention (*cough* ISMAR and Immersion Tech Summit).  Many times when people at a convention walk by each other, the only thing that might draw them together is a cool t-shirt or the happenstance of staring at the same booth.  Using AR would help highlight similarities between, what was once, random interactions of people.  Now, two people walking by each other might realize they both have the same interests, be that playing their favorite strategy card game for Gen Con or experimenting with papervision and art for ISMAR or Immersion Tech Summit.   

Essentially, conventions for hobbies or business are all about bringing together people with like interests to celebrate and educate.  Using AR to visualize the similarities as well as geotagging the booths for easier location would enhance the experience. 

Next year, I’m planning on visiting a number of conventions like ISMAR10, Immersive Tech Summit, Gen Con, E3, Comic Con, to name a few.  I hope there will be an AR app at each location waiting for me.

Augmented reality is gaining buzz, tickling imaginations and will eventually enter the mainstream zeitgeist.  Eventually, many companies will wonder if they should take advantage of this new technology. 

Some should jump in with both feet and some should stay on the sidelines. 

I would like to present 10 franchises from the previous decades that could use augmented reality to reinvigorate their brand with an AR game:

1 – TRON

Tron has a new movie coming out in 2010 so its sure to get a huge boost from that, but I’d like to see an AR console game following the movie.  Let us control mini-lightbikes in our living room, or play the Tron-pong game against other opponents with the “disc” being an AR marker and controller all-in-one. 

2 – Smurfs

Smurfs?  Yeah, really, smurfs.  If you’re not familiar with this 80′s cartoon, then you won’t get it.  But smurfs in your living room battling Gargamel and Azrael amongst the toadstools in a RTS game would be an absolute blast.  Plus, when you win a smurf vs. smurf RTS match, you get to tell your opponent, “I smurfed you real good.”

3 – The Ultima Series

The Ultima series is one of the more storied RPGs in video game history.  Lord British aka Richard Garrette created a franchise that kept people up at night exploring his vast worlds.  One advantage that console AR could have is bringing the action into your living room.  I’d love to see a landscape drawn onto my living room floor that lived and breathed with the stories of Ultima.  Controlling my avatar and fighting miniature battles would give me and millions of other nostalgic gamers joy. 

4 – Lemmings

 Lemmings = crack.  Enough said.  Watching these little head bobbing mammals cavort through your living room to their potential deaths, while trying save them from themselves equals pure gaming gold.  Lemmings were the original tower defense game. 

5 – Minesweeper

Getting blown up on your living room floor can be entertaining right?   

6 – Scorched Earth

The game, while simple, was played heavily by my friends and I in college.  I remember it as an early, and great, shareware game that had wide appeal.  Using my living room as the play field, I’d love to sit on opposite couches and blow someone up (or play a computer). 

7 – Risk

Imaging playing the board game, but when you make moves on the board, it relays them as battle scenes on the TV.  Cameras can easily track both the dice and the chits that represent your armies.  Generals could stand behind you and offer suggestions or mock you for your infantile tactics.

8 – Jenga

Who needs real blocks when you could play Jenga with all sorts of crazy items: lolcats, buses, rubix cubes, giant dice, meat sticks or Hulk Hogan lunch boxes. 

9 – Pictionary

Pictionary is a game from the 1980′s involving making drawings and having your teammates guess what they represent.  The game could use a huge upgrade with augmented reality.  Having 3D objects to interact with and drawings that come alive could make the game a smash success.

10 – The Price Is Right!

Since 3D objects can be brought into your living room, why not bring in the wacky and wierd games of the Price is Right! like Plinko or the big number wheel.  Part of the fun of the game show is the tackiness, so why not be able to play at home.

And as a bonus, because I’m a huge fan of AOTS, I’m throwing in this video “The Girl at the Video Game Store” by Parry Gripp with Kevin Pereira and Oliva Munn.  Its here for two reasons: one, I’d like to see some AR games on AOTS, and two, I’d like to see some AR games on AOTS.

Die hard fans of any franchise are willing to shill out big bucks to experience the movie or book in new and interesting ways.  Most probably don’t realize that you can take a tour of the town where the Twillight series is based.  Many other movies based in real locations, like the old Anne Rice novels, also have their own tours to see imaginary events. 

Any of the current reality browsers (Layar, Point and Find, Wikitude, Metaio World, etc) could add walking tours of those locations with information about the books.  The reality browsers with 3D capabilities like Metaio World could add the spice of recreations from the movies (yes, its probably a bit beyond what is currently available, but it’ll happen eventually). 

There are thousands of other movies that have connections to the real world.  Movie buffs would love to know if their favorite book or movie had been set at a locale they were visiting. 

While we’ve seen a host of horrible movie tie-ins using augmented reality, I believe this one would offer an experience that would leverage the technology in ways to enhance the experience rather than waste some paper and printer ink.

Recently we’ve seen AR business cards from both James Alliban and Jonas Jager (via Rouli).  My purpose is not to debate which AR business card service is better–they’re both proof of concepts at this point–but to point out there is a real market need for simple AR services.  Consider that James has seen his website explode due to the interest in his video. 

This proves the point that simple AR service businesses are ready to take off.  In a post a month ago, Haz stated his desire for a product that:

What I would like:
1. Upload 3D image / avi movie into the program.
2. Upload marker into the program.
3. It spits out a flash file you can put on your website which loads the 3d image/avi upon recognizing the marker.
 

I think he gives a good breakdown on what’s needed to make an easy-to-use AR service work for the masses.  Business cards and billboards are only a few possible applications of a product like this.

I’d also like to go a little further and say the product should have the capability of being seen on a smartphone if a free app is downloaded.  This would make the product more portable and thus, more accessible.  An easy AR product could be in a service or program format, depending on if you wanted to carry the infrastructure. 

Personally, I have interest in these services as well, beyond the simple AR business card.  The key is a simple and easy way to create AR products could help unleash the capabilities onto the market beyond what is capable now.  To really use AR now, you have to have experience in programming AR and the time to develop your idea.  But if those services can be used by anyone, we’ll find lots of interesting new ways that AR can be applied that we’ve never thought of before.  

I realize this is a product that is probably being worked on as I write this post.  The folks of Metaio have hinted to me as much, though I’m not sure exactly the format of their product.  I would assume the other major players like Total Immersion or even the dreaded Apple might jump into this market, but until they do I’m going to assume its not coming. 

If you are working on something and would like to share your progress, or express your desire for these products, please comment.  I’d love to hear how the market is progressing in this area.