Posts Tagged Denno Coil
Robert Rice Speaks At MOMA
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on January 31st, 2010
Robert Rice, the CEO of Neogence Enterprises and blogger of augmented reality on Curious Raven, spoke in June at Mobile Monday. His speech targets the intermediate developer of augmented reality. If you’re new to the technology, most of this speech will go over your head.
The video is long, but if you’re serious about augmented reality and the future of mobile, the speech hits major points about the industry. And at 40 minutes, I’d give it a good five minute buffer if you’re going to watch the whole thing.
“Mobile is dead,” said Robert to begin his speech. He goes on to explain it should be brought back to life in a different format. Reincarnated, if you will. The point-to-point communication that we use right now will need transform into an immersive, predictive, meta-enviroment and can’t just be another way to access the internet.
Robert briefly explains the history of communications and tells us that if we do augmented reality correctly, it’ll join the pantheon. If we can remove the excess hardware of keyboards and screens in our mobile devices and convert to sunglasses, then the computer can become a buckle or a watch, conspicuous computing. We need to get away from the 2D mindset of flat screens and create 3D spaces where we can throw a YouTube video to another person through our AR enviroment, or send an SMS as a paper-airplane.
Augmented reality needs more than graphics over video, Robert goes on to explain. Should move past being even interactive and more dynamic and meta. It should answer the who, what, where, when, why and how. Computers have been vague points of demographic data because multiple people can use them, but mobile is an individual thing which allows us to break away from aggregate statistics and start answering questions for individuals.
Robert goes on to talk about venture capital, which he believes doesn’t get AR yet, and smart cities, and give suggestions to developers to keep the tagging of the world in mind, so we don’t have to go back and retag later.
Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the speech, though I was hoping Robert would get into specifics about Neogence Enterprises and their recent Mirascape announcement. And having spoken to him at length at ISMAR09 about the details of augmented reality, I thought he might elaborate on his anecdotes about furries and micro transactions. But maybe those weren’t appropriate for MOMA, anyway.
(edit note: this video was taken back in June and posted on GA.com but its still very relevent. Enjoy.)
Popularity: 15% [?]
Augmented Reality Year in Review – 2009
Posted by Tom Carpenter in AR Games, Industrial AR, augmented reality on December 27th, 2009
The year 2009 has been an important milestone in the development of augmented reality as an important future technology. While markers and marketing campaigns captured the early interest of the year, the bigger story was the porting of augmented reality to the various smartphones in the second half.
But those two generalities aren’t the only thing that happened in 2009 in regards to augmented reality. I’m going to take a look back at the year, month-by-month, to remember how the year unfolded, so we better understand the direction of the future.
January
Back at the dawn of 2009, all the augmented reality news you needed to know was in one place – Games Alfresco. Hope was high and all the pieces seemed to be clicking into place.
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio releases its Lego AR boxes
* By a long shot, Metaio’s release of the augmented reality Lego box was the biggest news of the month. When you can get Angela Merkel and the Govenator to pose with your product, you’re doing well.
Coolest App/Video – iPhone App Helps Solve Rubix Cube
* This app portents of things to come in the future as products like Google Goggles amp up the possibilities of reality-search. Using specific algorithms (agents) for specific tasks, there will be an app for everything you want to do in the future.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Robert Rice
* Though Robert hasn’t delivered on his promise of a Neogence product by mid-year (though the Apple video API has stymied their progress), the rest of the interview is full of great quotes and nuggets about augmented reality.
* Notable quotes from Robert that show how much he understands the industry:
But yes, I’d say that the next 18 months are going to be very interesting with a lot of money being thrown around, new ventures, and plenty of content/applications. I expect most of this will be centered on single user AR experienced through a mobile device with a screen (iPhone, android, etc.). I expect that there will be a significant boost after Vuzix releases some of their wearable *transparent* displays, putting Microvision back into the “has potential but is too quiet” position.
Remember, one of the biggest risks that AR has, is being branded as “novelty”, which means “cool for five minutes but ultimately a waste of time.” I think we have a ways to go before something is truly useful, but as 2009 progresses we should start seeing some effort here. I’d guess 2010 before something really useful comes out…at least something practical.
Now, having said that, I should say that I expect entertainment and games to take the lead (as usual), although there are a few companies really trying to leverage AR and video/graphics compositing for marketing (brochures) and location based methods (kiosks, large screen projections, etc.)
Other notable things that happened in January – The Augmented Times is born and Rouli Nir begins a great year of chronicling the happenings of AR.
An auspicious quote from Rouli:
This blog is about Augmented Reality (AR). It is my firm belief that AR will be the next web revolution (the so called Web 3.0, and forget about that semantic web nonsense). In the next few years, stronger devices and better algorithms will enable us to merge the real world with cyberspace. Using your mobile phone (at first) or head up display (later on) every real object will be augmented and achieve a web presence. Tourism, shopping, advertisement, entertainment and education are only a few areas that will never be the same.
This blog mission is to document this revolution as it happens. We welcome you, and welcome our augmented future.
February
This month is relatively quiet due to it being handicapped by fewer days than the other months.
Biggest News of the Month – Augmented Reality in Flash Now Commercially Available.
* Making the nuts-and-bolts tools of AR available for commercial use is always a good thing, especially when its paired with flash.
Coolest App / Video – “Sixth Sense” MIT Device.
* Patty Maes unleashed this phenomenon on the web early last year and it still gets links and mentions today. While projection based AR is probably not medium that we’ll all eventually use, the video showed tangible use-cases that help the non-initiated understand the embryonic technology.
Best Article / Interview – This comic from the Abstruse Goose sums up a lot about the future of ubiquitous computing (via Augmented Blog.)
Other notable things that happened in February- I started the Future Digital Life blog, which upon reading my early posts, makes me cringe a little. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Also, Rouli starts the Weekly Linkfest, the best place to find the round up of AR news each week.
March
In like a lion, out like a lamb. Augmented reality starts to get rolling in March with lots of goodies and promises.
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio and Vuzix Team Up to Create AR Goggles.
* While the year has been mostly disappointing regarding HMDs, this was the one tangible piece of progress in the bunch. The video Ori captured at the GDC portends to greater things. While no companies have released products for the Vuzix+ARCam, we’ve recently seen an impressive project from Craig Kapp with his Whisper Deck.
Coolest App / Video – Blair MacIntryre’s GA Tech team – Zombie Attack and Pit Strategy.
* The videos showed what polished AR games can look like.
Best Article / Interview – I’m going for a two-fer on this one because its hard to choose between Ori’s talk at WARM09 and Robert’s Decade of Ubiquity post.
* If you haven’t watched Ori’s talk, I highly recommend it. Even though I’d seen the video, I made a point of hearing him live at ISMAR09 because I think its such a well thought-out call for human-based technology. Robert’s vision is a bit more expansive and covers the whole of augmented reality. I’ll leave you with another Robert quote:
We will break away from the desk, we will throw away our monitors, and our children will laugh at how large our IPhones are. They will struggle with how we ever managed to get work done with “windows” “webpages” and keyboards. They will be unable to fathom the concept of vinyl disks, typewriters, and landlines. But it all starts, and accelerates, during this next decade. Imagine everything that happened in the last decade, and multiply it. You haven’t seen anything yet. The next decade will make the last one pale in comparison.
Other notable things that happened in March – Topps released augmented baseball cards and ISMAR09 begins calling for papers.
April
Biggest News of the Month- Rouli and Ori team up on Games Alfresco to create the AR hub for all AR related news.
* The move allowed Ori to focus more on his company and gave Rouli the helm on the daily AR newscasting. Looking back at the great job that GA has done, I’d say it was a good move.
Coolest App / Video – Marco Tempest’s AR card trick video.
* The video hit the web in April and showed us how AR can change our perception of reality.
Best Article / Interview – Tim O’Reilly talks Web 2.0
* Augmented Times identified the best quote from the video:
RFID is an evolutionary dead-end … semantic web or RFID is things “wearing name-tags”, and web 2.0 is learning to recognize things … We’re getting to that kind of augmented reality, where our computers will have senses that are as good as ours or better … they are going to recognize faces, they are going to recognize objects, they gonna have immediate recall. If you ask me “what’s the UI in five years”, it’s a pair of glasses … I’m gonna have some kind of little heads up display because I’m gonna look at something, I’m gonna walk around at a meeting and it will go “that’s Joe, you met him three years ago”.
Other notable things that happened in April – Georgia Tech fear of heights video (another peak into the future of augmented reality as a perception changer), Rouli’s call for marketers to stop using AR to sell cars, Lester at the Augmented Planet gets his blog started, Nokia point and find is out and a couple of articles about brain-computer interfaces: Honda controls robot and the brain-twitter breakthrough.
May
Biggest News of the Month – Metaio releases Unifeye design demo.
Coolest App / Video – Useful AR from the US Postal Service.
* Using FLARToolkit, the US postal service shows us that not all AR applications have to be novelity ones.
Best Article / Interview – Tish interviews Ori Inbar about mobile augmented reality.
Ori: Just like with every emerging technology in history, people never bought the technology, they bought the content, the apps, the benefits that came on top of the technology. Whether it was VHS winning over Beta Max, or BluRay winning over HD. It’s always because of more/better content. Look at the video game console war: Xbox, and Nintendo did better than Sony just because they had more and better games. Even Windows was a success thanks to its applications. People bought it for the applications not the OS. The content is the first to drive demand.
Other notable things that happened in May – My post about the Path to Augmented Vision, Programmer Joe talks AR at LOGIN, and 11 Industries to be Reinvented with Augmented Reality.
June
Biggest News of the Month – Layar is online.
* The biggest news of the month by far. Layar was the first big product release that got a buzz bump.
Coolest App / Video – Zugara Social Shopper.
* The video showcased the use of motion capture to help eliminate the burdensome need for keyboards and mouses when you’re using augmented reality. Zugara later put the technique into practice for their Cannonballz and Fashionista products.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Blair MacIntyre
* No surprise here. Tish Shute continues to get great interviews with everyone important in the AR field.
The problem with the mobile phone as a AR device is that problem of awareness. If I have a head mount on and I walk down the street and there is bunch of probably-not-useful-but-potentially-useful information floating by me, that’s a good thing, because I may see something that is useful or makes me think of something else. But if I have to hold up my phone to see if something might be interesting nearby, I will never hold up my phone because at the time there is a high probability that there won’t be anything particularly important there. You might imagine you can get around this by using alerts or something like that, but then you overload whatever alert channel you use.
Other notable things that happened in June- Ori asks us all about our favorite AR games of all time, Noah breaks onto the scene with his Touchless Glove Interface, and Goggle presents their paper on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (which later becomes Goggles).
July
Biggest News of the Month – The AR Consortium Announced.
* While its still unknown if the consortium has accomplished anything through cooperation, the intention of cooperation is a start. Here’s to hoping we’ll see more fruit from this vine in 2010.
Coolest App / Video – AcrossAir Tube Finder.
* At the time it was released we weren’t sure if it was a real product, but eventually we learned the truth and for a time, AcrossAir became the top selling AR app on the iPhone appstore.
Best Article / Interview – UgoTrade Interview with Ori Inbar “Reality Reinvented”
Ori:You are so right. It’s multiple elements in the industry that have to come together. You have the technology companies like Imagination and Metaio, then you have content companies like what we’re trying to do; the hardware vendors and the large content providers. Those brands that we’re trying to go after and educate them about the potential of AR. All these pieces need to come together for this market to ignite.
Other notable things that happened in July – James Alliban’s business card goes viral and AR Avatar toys are released at Comic Con.
August
Biggest News of the Month – Yelp Introduces AR Monocle via Easter Egg
Coolest App / Video – Bruce Sterling’s Layar Keynote – At the Dawn of the AR Industry
* Bruce released an AR-infused novel Catyadids in 2009, so it was only natural that Layar asked him to speak about the fledgling industry. The speech is memorable with too many great lines to pick from for quoting here.
Best Article / Interview – Thomas Wrobel’s Proposal for an Open AR Network
* Easily Tish’s best interview because it turned into more than a reflection of past events or hopes for the future. Tish and Thomas have since rallied AR professionals and amateurs to join the AR Wave collaborative effort. They seek to use Wave as the platform for an open AR network and have recently been testing code.
Other notable things that happened in August – AR Strippers!
September
Biggest News of the Month – Vuzix 920Wrap Will Not be See-Through
* The biggest disappointment of the year was the news from Vuzix. Good see-through AR glasses are supposed to release us from the tyranny of the “magic lens”. Hoping 2010 brings better news, but I’m really waiting until 2011.
Coolest App / Video – Augmenting Aerial Maps with Dynamic Information
Best Article / Interview – Gene Becker’s Design Strategies for Magic Lens.
Other notable things that happened in September – No more Gamaray - Death of a Browser, Int13 and Total Immersion getting into bed, and the augmented reality reading list.
October
Biggest News of the Month – News from ISMAR09, News from ISMAR09 #2 and UgoTrade ISMAR09 Coverage.
* I was lucky enough to attend and speak at ISMAR09. The energy of the participants was exceptional and I came away from it more jazzed about AR than I was going in. Hopefully the ISMAR committee will be releasing the videos from the event soon.
Coolest App / Video - 2D sketches become 3D reality.
Best Article / Interview – ISMAR09 HMD Review
* I think I summed up the current state of HMDs for AR pretty well. I’m hoping 2010 brings a suprise for AR HMDs.
Other notable things that happened in October – AR Wave discussion on UgoTrade, Wikitude for the iPhone first look and Giant Hand Torments City
November
Biggest News of the Month – Junaio hits the app store.
Coolest App / Video – Interactive Entertainment Using AR
* The videos about the Disney experiences were similar to what Mark Mine showed us at ISMAR. They really show us how technology can transcend our perceptions of reality.
Best Article / Interview – Augmented Planet’s Head-to-head browser test (and part 2)
* Lester broke down the various browsers in this excellent hands-on challenge. Read both parts to find out the winner.
Other notable things that happened in November – Business Week’s Article about: Getting Beyond the Hype and Robert Rice’s reply.
December
Biggest News of the Month – Goggle Googles is released.
* The giant has awoken. Goggles has many implications for Googles ideas on the AR market. This won’t be the last time we’ll hear from them about this technology.
Coolest App / Video – Layer 3.0.
* While Layar has since pulled the app from the app store and had to issue and apology, the version 3.0 still holds lots of promise.
Best Article / Interview – Augmented Reality in 2010: Predictions (10 part series)
* A wide swath of the AR blogosphere had the opportunity to participate in the predictions series from Games Alfresco run by Rouli Nir. More interesting, snarky, and possibly-true predictions that you can shake an augmented stick at.
Other notable things that happened in December – AR Wave FAQ on UgoTrade, Enkin acquired by Google, ARDevCamp, Wikitude Teams Up with Lonely Planet, 10 Worse Uses of AR in 2009, and Nexus One News and Implications of AR.
What It All Means
Whew. After reviewing hundreds of articles and videos, I’m sure I’ve missed a number of important happenings from the year 2009. If I have, please make sure to comment and I’ll add it if I have overlooked it.
What does it all mean? That is entirely up to you. The year has brought many advances to augmented reality and the ceiling is sky-high for 2010. There will be surprises, excuses, apologies, releases, re-releases and more. Money will be pumped in, not all where it should go, and progress will be made. We’ll laugh at the videos, smile at our favorite products and complain when it does work as expected. Either way, it will be a year more interesting than the last and I’ll be here to watch it all unfold.
Popularity: 87% [?]
The Augmented Reality Pop Quiz
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on November 2nd, 2009
Think you know everything there is to know about augmented reality? Well, prove it and take the augmented reality pop quiz.
If you’re proud of your score, post the results on twitter with the hashtag #arpopquiz or in the comment section if you don’t use Twitter. Thanks to Rouli who helped me with some of the questions. The answers are further down the page, so you’ll have to scroll down to see them. No peaking! And if you quibble with the answer, just give yourself the points because this quiz is on the honor system.
One point per correct answer.
The AR Pop Quiz
1) Who coined the term augmented reality?
2) Name three “reality browsers”?
3) Name four companies in the AR consortium.
4) What three components does AR need to function?
5) Within how many meters is GPS accurate on an iPhone?
6) Who created the ARToolKit?
7) Who’s augmented reality magic trick created tons of buzz?
8 ) What was the first iPhone AR app to be available on the app store with OS3.1?
9) What types of companies have used AR in marketing the most?
10) What is the yearly AR conference?
11) How many years has it been happening under its current name?
12) Where will it be next year?
13) Name a fictional book that used AR?
14) What article of clothing should you wear when making an AR video?
15) Who developed the first AR interface?
16) What well known anime show features AR?
17) Who owns the patent on AR?
18) Which company did the AR consortium write an open letter to?
19) Name three HMD companies?
20) What’s the name of the AR game from Georgia Tech?
The AR Pop Quiz Answers
1) Tom Caudell
2) Wikitude, Layar, Juniao
3) Int13, Metaio, Mobilizy, Neogence Enterprises, Ogmento, SPRX Mobile, Tonchidot, Total Immersion, YDreams, and Zugura.
4) Sensor, overlay and tracker
5) 3m
6) Hirokazu Kato
7) Marco Tempest
8 ) Yelp / Monocle
9) Car companies
10) ISMAR
11) Eight
12) South Korea
13) Rainbows’ End, Halting State, (see this post for more)
14) Pink Hoodie
15) Sutherland
16) Denno Coil
17) No one (trick question!)
18) Apple
19) Vuzix, Microvision, Lumus
20) Arhrrrr
Popularity: 21% [?]
The Augmented Reality Reading List
Posted by Tom Carpenter in Stories, augmented reality on September 21st, 2009
Earlier this month, Ori Inbar posted on Games Alfresco about why people get excited about augmented reality. Ori mentions Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End as inspiration and it got me thinking about other novels that use augmented reality.
I’m making this list, not only because these novels and stories are great reads, but also because I find it fascinating how fiction, especially science-fiction, can inspire real inventions. Who would have thought the social-media-karma concept of Whuffie from Cory Doctorow’s novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom would be made real (will it work is a whole ‘nother story)? Or how Google’s super-nerds Larry Page and Sergey Brin have taken notes from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash for their Google Earth project? The afore mentioned Rainbows End has frequently been called upon in the realms of augmented reality.
Without further ado (because when do you actual have ado?), I present, in no particular order, the augmented reality reading list (updated 9/21 and 9/22):
Novels
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom – Cory Doctorow
The novel is set in the 22nd century when death has been cured. While the jacket cover may baffle you by combining such concepts as Disney World, ad-hocracies, Whuffie and the Bitchun utopia, the story was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2004 for Best Novel, so that should tell you something for the quality of the writing. This is the only one on the list that I’ve read (besides Virtual Light), but its been one of my favorites for the last decade. The augmented reality concept within the novel is the HUD. It’s not quite the “shared reality” that true AR brings, but it definitely combines social-networking, the Internet and a HUD for the everyday man, woman or child.
Rainbows End – Vernor Vinge
This novel is frequently cited among knowledgeable augmented reality enthusiasts as an inspiration for their work (along with Denno Coil). While many of the other stories in this list have only tantalizing connections to AR, Vernor has specifically written this novel with the technology as the backbone for society. It won the Hugo Award and Locus Awards in 2007.
The Caryatids – Bruce Sterling
Our prophet of augmented reality, Bruce Sterling, is no stranger to this illusionary science. Long ago he helped pioneer the original cyberpunk revolution and has had elements of AR in his short stories and novels (i.e. Holy Fire) for some time. In his most recent novel, The Caryatids, he unleashes the technology in the form of Spex which are a form of head-mounted displays. Cory Doctorow gives a glowing review of the book on BoingBoing.
Spook Country – William Gibson
Gibson’s novel brings us geolocative art that can only be seen with VR helmets. It’s not entirely AR, but its close enough to draw similar conclusions. In a quote I like, which sums up the transition from cyberpunk to post-cyberpunk to augpunk (or whatever it should be called) Gibson says:
If the book has a point to make where we are now with cyberspace, is that cyberspace has colonized our everyday life and continues to colonize everyday life.
The novel was nominated for a Locus Award in 2008. You can read more about the novel in this SF Net Review.
Halting State - Charles Stross
The novel’s plot centers around a bank robbery in an MMORG and is written in the second person. The AR in the novel is based on the usage of Specs, the same goggles in his novel Accelerando, that are a form of HUD. The novel was nominated for both a Hugo and a Locus in 2008 and has a sequel entitled “419″ due out in 2010.
The Commonwealth Saga and Void Trilogy – Peter F. Hamilton
This arc of books starts in the near-future, then jumps forward 300 years before making its final jump to a period of 1200 years later for the void trilogy. Not all the books are finished (the last is due out in 2011.) The AR contained stretches a bit further than the others on this list with an interstellar network of computers called the Unisphere. While the others on the list are post-cyberpunk novels, this one is an epic space opera with elements of augmented reality.
The Golden Age Trilogy - John C. Wright
This trilogy is set 500,000 years into the future when everyone is immortal and wealthy. The elite Manorials rely on AI to do all the trivial day-to-day work for them while they interact with each other using the Mentality (their version of the Internet.) They commonly travel by telepresence (or augmented reality.)
Lady of Mazes - Karl Schroeder
The novel is set in the far future similar to the above Golden Age. Post-humans have gained god-like powers and utilize AR to change their surroundings. SFSite gives a review of the novel here.
Virtual Light – William Gibson
The plot centers around a young bike messanger who steals a pair of innocent-looking glasses from a man at a party. She doesn’t realize what they do, nor does she realize what dangerous information they have on them. The “virtual-light” glasses are obviously AR glasses (upon my 5th reading twenty years later), but its interesting how the data is very localized. The use of AR is limited (most of it doesn’t come until the end), but captures the essence of the technology. The novel was a finalist for the Hugo and Locus Awards.
Uglies Trilogy - Scott Westerfield
While this trilogy technically falls into the YA section, it’s not just for teenagers and I highly recommend it for everyone. Like Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, the main character is in her teens and the far-future technology is second nature including hacking her interface ring and hoverboard. Augmented reality isn’t a main component of the storyline, but the privacy issues surrounding the Internet of Things is visible throughout. Even if you don’t care a lick about AR, I’d pick up these books. The story had me so completely in its grips I read all three books over a period of five days.
Short Stories/Novellas
Dogfight - William Gibson and Michael Swanwick
Deep Eddy – Bruce Sterling
Taklamakan – Bruce Sterling
Bicycle Repairman – Bruce Sterling
(These three Sterling stories are collected in A Good Old-Fashioned Future with a few others)
The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away – Cory Doctorow
Accelerando - Charles Stross
Sagan’s Law - Thomas K Carpenter (yes, that’s me! shameless self promotion.)
Special thanks to Bruce Sterling who was kind enough to take a break from opining about pink hoodies and the strange names of augmented reality to help me populate my meager list, especially the short stories. If you don’t read his blog on Wired, then you should. He posts more about augmented reality than is probably healthy for a human being.
Also, thanks to D. Cahill (Hamilton), Mike (Stross – I can’t believe I missed that one), Mike Scott (Schroeder), Blair MacIntyre (Gibson), and Johannes (Wright) for the other suggestions.
And if I’ve missed any books or short stories that involve augmented reality, I’ll be happy to update the list. So please comment here or send me an email.
Popularity: 100% [?]
Proposal: Augmented Reality Scale
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on August 30th, 2009
As we collectively disembark on a long journey to a future, hence unknown. We’ll want to mark our progress as it goes zipping by our technological car windows.
With augmented reality intruding into the general consciousness, we’re going to need ways to explain and document our progress and point to where we’re going. Currently, there are many ways to describe augmented reality: outdoor, paperless, papervision, marker based, reality browser, spatial computing, iPhone based, etc. These terms do describe a particular function of augmented reality, but they don’t give a generalized idea of where that description lies in the realm of AR in relation to everything else.
To help define the woof and warp of AR, I propose a simple scale called the Reality-Interface Matrix Scale or RIM Scale.
The RIM scale will be composed of two axis: Perceived Reality (PR) and Reality Recognition (RR). I chose two axis because AR exists through the mixing of reality and the virtual. First I’ll explain the two axis, then the interaction between them.
The Perceived Reality axis shows us how the graphics are indistinguishable from reality (on a scale from one to ten).
10 – Completely immersive; identical to reality in all aspects.
7 – Mostly immersive; most non-moving objects are difficult to discern; moving flexible objects are distinguishable.
4 – Mildly immersive; Graphics are used to overlay flat objects; textures mostly; poor occlusion.
2 – Mostly text based information; common boxes and other simple objects can be modified.
1 – Reality as it exists now (non-augmented).
The Reality Recognition axis explains how completely computers understand the world (on a scale of one to ten).
10 – Knows the location and manner of all objects, people and information in the world, completely; and changes as the world changes.
7 – Understands the location and manner of major objects; some minor objects and some people and information; object recognition is substantial; updates on frequent basis.
4 – Major objects, people and information are understood by location; any other characteristics are rare; minor object recognition. Updates occasionally.
2 – Most information updated manually or using simple markers; GPS used for locations; updates randomly.
1 – No understanding of the world.
A total score for an application of the augmented reality concept can be given by using the two numbers as a vector (#,#). Let’s use an example to illustrate the scale like the popular Augmented Reality Magic Trick from Marco Tempest. It has 228,495 views on YouTube so it should be a well known example.
On the PR (perceived reality) axis, I would give it a three because it uses graphics over flat objects and the immersion is limited (through a screen). On the RR (recognized reality) axis, it would be a two because the trick required a lot of “set up” and it uses basic markers to align reality. The RIM scale score would be a (3,2).
Since I’ve given Layar a lot of attention lately, I’ll use the Wikitude Drive as my next example.
The application scores a two on the PR axis because it only uses text and simple boxes for its graphics and a three on the RR axis because its using GPS data on a frequent basis along with other information from the data sphere. This puts it a RIM score (2,3) which is where most of our reality browsers will fall.
Next I’ll use the Japanese anime show Denno Coil as a third and more advanced version, since we don’t have anything else that actually exists this far up the scale.
In the world on the show, reality is pretty indistinguishable from the virtual, but it requires glasses. I’d give it an eight on the PR axis. But since the world isn’t completely “known” by the computers, I’d give it a slightly lower score of seven on the RR axis. With a score of (8,6), its easy to see that the world starts to get interesting at the upper part of the graph.
With the RIM Scale, any application can be shown in its relation others. We can also see if the application is stretching the current technology or just revisiting old ideas. A simple vector can be used to show progress between two applications.
In the graph below, I’ve added some examples and added another layer of information. The size of the circle shows the global impact of the application. For example, the Metaio prototyping software can “see” reality down to small dimensions, but its only used in applications for a few people. I also colored the circles into actual technologies (blue) and theoretical ones (green).
I hope the scale proves useful and helps distinguish one application from another. It can still use more clarification between the gradations on each axis, but I think it gives the basic idea. If you have suggestions on how to improve the scale or see problems with it, please leave your comments. Ideas are like programs, we can always update them to a newer and better version.
(Update – changed the multiplication to a vector score as suggested by David and Rouli, thanks guys!)
Popularity: 18% [?]
Augmented Reality for Dummies
Posted by Tom Carpenter in augmented reality on August 13th, 2009
If you’ve read the novel Rainbows End or seen the anime series Denno Coil or read the short story I had posted a while back about the Digital Sea. Then you understand what fully rendered augmented reality is. It’s all around us, all the time and it creates opportunities for manipulating reality that human beings have never experienced before except through movies.
The video below, while merely a concept video, does an exceptional job of explaining how a fully rendered world would work. This concept, however, is a long way from our current reality. We’re probably five years away from true augmented vision and then to begin to digitally construct the world, so we can bend reality, would take another decade at least.
But if you’re unfamiliar with the potential of augmented reality, the possibilities it intuits under the papervision we’re currently experiencing, then I recommend viewing the below video. The narrator (Albert) explains that he’ll be doing more in a series and I hope he does, because I think the video would be recommended viewing for anyone who has difficulty understanding how augmented reality might work in the future.
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