Get to know the four elements in AR

A really beautiful demo was done in the Netherlands by DPI New Media for the Netherlands’ largest Energy company. It’s there to let the public come into contact with its green energy initiatives in a playful way. Players take control of the Sun, Wind, Rain and Biomass to provide the little city with electricity (DPI).

It has a shiny cartoony clay look and uses Quest3D and its AR module to get graphical effects like real-time shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion and per-pixel lighting for spotlight effects for the sun:

A great looking project, only improvements I could imagine: first, use a setup that has a better mixed reality feeling to it. I’d rather like to see a physical model landscape that gets augmented with weather effects or other changes… but with a real model below. It just is more fun than a blank table with only markers. Secondly, I’m really hoping for HMD demos soon. The interaction is just more direct and you don’t need to have the look-into-the-mirror-and-act-somewhere-else setting. But for a fair again, it’s obvious to use an easy indestructible-and-hygiene-rules-applying design. :-)

In other news…

… metaio introduces junaio glue, where you will be able to use vision based tracking on your mobile phone to glue 3D objects to any surface. Unfortunately the first concept video does not show the rendering on a device yet. But I’m sure it is only a matter of weeks until we see a running version on youtube.

… and once again 3D outdoor projections go around to impress us in the streets of Amsterdam and on two big buildings (Suntec City Towers) in Singapore.