Mixed Pickles and AR Potpourri

Hey there, seems like after a great AR summer and lots of news in late late summer, yielding and climaxing in the great ISMAR in Florida, we finally hit the summer slump for AR in 2009. Mostly new ads are popping up and some minor issues, but no revolution these days (well, it can’t happen all the time! ;-)). So I just wanted to update you on a few things I followed and like to share to pass the time between Thanksgiving’s and Santa Claus’:

• Digital Binocular
  The team at MindSpaceSolutions completed a great version of the augmented binocular idea. You might have seen this before, maybe with Fraunhofer Institute in Germany or with VICOMTech in the Basque Country, but this installation seems to beat them all (as far as I can judge from movies, haven’t seen it live) by two things. First, they overlay not only cheap 3D geometry or text but rather movie-real looking productions of augmented objects/persons. Due to the hardware tracking (you move the binocular physically and it gives you perfect angle rotation information) I’m pretty sure the overlay is accurate and fast (a delay would destroy everything even with the biggest and greatest Emmerich-like visuals). Feedback is appreciated if you’ve seen it live. :-) And, second for a great big deal, they produced all production in stereo and as it’s a binocular and not a monocular you expect depth vision! See below.

• SAP HMD Setup
  SAP TV showed actually a while ago a video where you can see their idea of an aided consignment/repair/work hall task with AR. You can see their current state of the art HMDs. Here, they only offer location relevant information on the screen and no “true” AR-overlay. Of course, you don’t need it in this scenario. Just wanted to show you for the current status of a mobile approach (backpack, HMD).

• SINLA – another AR browser

  

  SINLA joins the circle of AR browsers. It still does not look that professional as wikitude, layar or junaio, but it’s worth mentioning, since it’s a research project at German University of Oldenburg, started during a master thesis. The project, sponsored by European Union, wants to evaluate usage of additional information (otherwise not seen by the user) in mobile device environments. Expect paper releases to follow. :-)

• Projected AR concept
  See another demo made with Adobe After Effects showing the concept of an augmented desktop, where you can easily use the same surface you work on with pen and paper for digital content. Nice watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq8Aa4AJ0J0
• AR gaming fun – Spads and Fokkers – AR-Race
  As my fellow AR bloggers posted before, there is a nice AR game floating around on youtube, showing a dogfight air game, where the user “may exploit in order to control the planes, using a brain-computer interface.” Well, I doubt that, but I just though, hm, maybe people don’t click much around on blog sites, so I wanted to point to my early student day’s project, where I also implemented a AR game: you could fly a spaceship through a level of gates and obstacles and fight against enemy drones. The great thing about the concept was that you could freely reposition and change the level items, yielding in always-new-levels, depending how you put the markers or where you are. I think it’s worth an inspiration, since it is much more than just a VR game on a marker! :-) But you had to fly with a joystick, sorry. ;-) Find more out about it in my projects description and see below:

Also, you might want to take a look at the AR sound mixer for your DJ needs, the latest issue of Esquire showing off with AR or follow the German student’s protests against cuts in education funding with the latest layar layer. :-)

Well, now it doesn’t seem too much of a summer slump anymore. Enjoy! :-)