It was only a matter of time.  Virtual goods make up a $1.4 Billion (that’s with a ‘B’ folks) business and the demand is growing.  We have Chinese gold farmers and Farmville exclusive goods, so augmented goods can’t be far behind.

Right now augmented goods are tied to purchased toys as an “add-on.”  Metaio has teamed up with Bandai Co. to create AR extensions to their real world collectible cards.

I believe the next step will be adding augmented only items that exist in certain locations as a reward.  Combine foursquare and Pokemon and you have a potent combination.  Hit all fifteen Starbucks in your area and you unlock a “Coffee Critter” that shows up on your smartphone when you’re in the store (and you get a discount on the Double Latte Supreme.)  Are you listening TagWhat, Layar, Junaio and the rest?

And keep in mind augmented goods as status symbols don’t count unless other people can see them.  Other patrons should be able to see your critter following you or floating above your head just like a non-combat pet in World of Warcraft.  Trust me, people will go to unbelievable lengths to earn a baby dragon or talking penguin.  Value is all about scarcity and that works even in the virtual or augmented world.

Okay, probably most of you have read the title and said, so what.  World of Warcraft is a game, and definitely not reality.  Though don’t tell that to the 11.5 million players worldwide.

These “boss-kill” videos are common for the high-end guilds in WoW.  They use the videos as a recruiting tool for good players.  If you think WoW is just a marriage killing RPG then you’re wrong.  At the bleeding edge of the game, guilds compete to be the first at completing new content – i.e. boss-mobs.  These combats are intricate battles of coordination between twenty-five gamers using a host of dedicated UI mods and voice-chat programs to defeat the game.  The top guilds are rewarded with sponsorships and top guildleaders translate their leadership into real jobs (a prominant Everquest guild leader got a job with Blizzard because of his exploits.)  World of Warcraft is, in otherwords, a competitive sport.

So that’s the context of the video.  The important augmented reality aspect comes around the minute and a half mark in the form of six colored discs on the virtual ground.  The purpose of the colored discs is to show certain players exactly where to stand in the game.  This is akin to wide receivers running correct routes so the quarterback can throw them the ball.

Most likely, a program like this will eventually be banned from use because it will trivialize battles and give guilds that use it an advantage over others.  Just like any sport, a level playing field is important to keep top competitors interested.

World of Warcraft’s basis in virtual reality makes inclusion of “augmented” reality easy to pull off.  The computer already has a complete knowledge of the world (because it has to draw it) and the screen provides the augmented graphics on the virtual world.

What other sports or competition could benefit from using augmented reality in this form?  Could marching band competitions use the local spatial awareness of AR to tighten their formations?  Or dance groups?  Projection based AR could provide a rapid trainer for coordinating large groups.

But it’s going to be a long time before augmented reality gets banned as an unfair advantage in a sport or competition.

Most people have never seen a fan movie, nor had they ever considered that armies of rabid fans would spend their time and hard earned money to make a film as homage.

But they do. 

Some use games like World of Warcraft to stage their movies and others use animation and the really serious use amateur actors and shot it like a real film.  This ambitious group make a 40 minute Lord of the Rings fan movie called The Hunt for Gollum.  Over a hundred volunteers were used in the film.  Below is a trailer though you can see the full version here. 

THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM – FULL Trailer 1 from Independent Online Cinema on Vimeo.

While the film makers and enthusiasts involved have tons of energy, creativity and passion for their craft, they don’t have access to high end special effects for their films.  This is where augmented reality comes in. 

A simple suite of fantasy and science fiction objects (since these seem to be the most common genres), and the ability to add other objects from user created files, along with proper shadows and occlusion could be a powerful tool in the fan movie creators hands.  These tools would enhance their ability for storytelling without breaking the bank. 

So this week’s challenge is for an AR developer to put a simple package together for fan movies to use.  The package could be used from the short spoofs on YouTube to the extravagant spectacles as the Hunt for Gollum movie.  Remember, millions of people upload clips to YouTube on a regular basis, so that’s a large potential market for AR devlopment products.

Rouli and Ori have been churning great content faster than I can read it all.  The first is an expansive look at the various industries that might be revolutionized by AR.  The second is an interview with Ori Inbar from the UgoTrade.com site. 

The interview is pretty long, and hits a lot of great points about the past, present and future of AR.  Ori has an impressive wealth of ideas about the augmented reality movement.  I’d like to add to some of the points he made about developing the key pieces of AR using the open source communities.  Read this section of the interview:

Tish: So I’m going to put you in the role. You’ve got your dream job. You’re going to architect this community. So what are the key pieces and where would you like to see the open source communities take hold first?

Ori: Open source will not be exclusive. It’s going to live side by side with proprietary technology.

The key pieces? You have the user at the center. And the user interacts with a lens. The lens includes both the hardware and the software. And then the lens senses and interacts with the world, which includes people, things and places. And these people-things-places emit information – about who they are, where they are, what they’re doing, etc  – which is then stored in the cloud.

And then you have the content providers, the people and companies, composers who weave AR experiences through the pieces we mentioned before. These composers need a platform that glues these pieces together. Pieces of the platform will be on the lens, and in the world, and in the cloud. If you manage to remove the frictions, and connect these pieces into an experience that people like – then you have a platform. What the platform does it reduces the overhead and accelerates innovation.

Tish: Another problem virtual worlds faced in their development was their isolation from the world wide web.  Will augmented reality avoid this plight?

Ori:  Yes, I believe the key, like you said before, is not to reinvent the wheel. The cloud is already there.  Take Wikitude for example, all Mobilizyhad to do is build  a relatively simple client app, connected to wikipedia, and all of a sudden it offered a wealth of information in your field of view.

I think we can learn a lot from web 2.0. For example, in order to have a ubiquitous experience like Robert Rice and others are striving for, you’ll need to 3d map the world. Google earth like apps are going to help but it is not going to be sufficient. So let’s leverage people. Google became successful in part by making people work with them.  Each time you create a link from your blog to my blog their search engines learn from it.  So let’s find ways to make people create information that can be used for AR.

Creating the “cloud” content that AR developers use is an important piece of the puzzle.  The more information that exists in the cloud, the more developers can innovate. 

A small scale example of this idea is can be seen with mods for the MMO game World of Warcraft.  As I explained previously, the highly customizable interfaces players use in the game have access to much of the WoW cloud of data.  This has allowed WoW mod developers to create useful programs to help players find in game locations easier, manage their equipment and supplies, communicate between groups of 25 people during complex encounters and hundreds of other small tasks.

For real-life, we can’t rely on a paid subscription model that Blizzard uses for WoW to fund the cloud generation.  Instead we have to find innovative ways to generate the cloud, leveraging the tools we already have.  Here are some ideas on how to automate the cloud generation.

1) In Automation of the Digitilization of the World, I explained how Photosynth could be used to quickly populate the world of its digital architeture.

2) Raw data needs to be more accessable for innovators to do new and interesting things with it.  Hyunyoung Choi, a Google employee, shows us how he uses Google Trends to help make economic forecasts more accurate in this economist.com article. 

3) Ori already mentioned the social databases like Facebook and MySpace.  These would be useful displays of personal information, though I would like to restrict who can see what information. 

4) Businesses should allow access to the raw data from their websites so people can compare pricings between different stores or other useful endevours. 

5) Always-on cameras could add information to the data stream through simple counting exercises.  Counting cars on a highway or road and using the GPS to track location could help solve traffic issues through better information. 

6) User created content.  Make is easy for anyone to information to the Digital Sea.  I think a series of information layers for any geolocation would be useful.  Layer one might be basic directions.  Layer two business information for consumers.  Layer three structural information for city engineers.  Layer four a social layer for who passed through the area.  Layer five could be a free-for-all space for anyone to experiment. 

Create the cloud and they will come.  The more raw data is available, the more innovations will create interesting content to drive the augmented reality movement.

A user interface, or UI, allows the user to control a system.  In the case of augmented reality, the tool we wish to control is the computer. 

Much has been said about the four T’s of control – touch, type, talk and think; but I want to explore the information presented in the UI.  The information we receive is important for how we control our computers.  When one drives a car, the car UI gives the driver a speed on a speedometer to help them control the car. 

What information do we want to have on a persistant basis to help us with our daily tasks?

Of course, we can search for anything we want, but too much information can be overwhelming.  So how do we want to structure the information so we don’t become overwhelmed while giving us the right information?

I’m going to lean on my experience with the wildly popular game World of Warcraft to illustrate my point.  One of the changes WoW made, in comparison to its predecessor Everquest, was to allow the users to customize the way they interacted with the game.  The programming tools were given enough latitude that resulted in creative solutions to gamers problems.  When one plays an online game, massive amounts of information are available, but it can be confusing to understand using the default UI. 

These custom programs, or mods (as in “mod”ification of the UI) changed the way the game was played.  By streamlining information into more visually appealing representations, gamers could increase their abilities and enjoyment of the game. 

This idea could be translated into an augmented reality persistent Human User Interface (HUI).  Information can be efficiently streamlined so the user gets the maximum value out of it. 

I took a simple screenshot of my character to show how it works in World of Warcraft.

 Item #1 shows the chat area I set up.  It allows me communication with the various groups I am associated with in the game.  For a HUI, this could be a Twitter feed, Facebook feed, or anything else. 

Item #2 shows my characters abilities, but these could be apps from an iPhone that are used regularly.

Item #3 shows my character’s quest list, but that could be converted into a to-do list.

Item #4 is a minimap showing current location and surrounding terrain.

Item #5 shows some general information.  From the serious to the silly to the sublime, this could be anything: how much money you have currently, expenditures for the day, how far you have travelled, calorie counts, number of breaths that day, etc. 

My WoW UI is a representative example, but there are millions of ways to set up the information to be pleasing to the user.  With the bounds of reality much greater than an online fantasy game, a HUI could have trillions of options all designed to help the user manage their lives.