Mixed Reality Feelings on a Thursday

Mixed news for today, collecting the latest AR news!

Contest

As mentioned earlier by us, the Qualcomm developer’s AR challenge from last year found a winner and now Qualcomm presents the first ranked Paparazzi in their own video: An interactive game where the player becomes a virtual paparazzo and sneaks pictures of a vain celebrity before he gets agitated and attacks your camera. Congratulations to the two developers from Lithuania, Paulius Liekis and Arminas Didžiokas! I especially enjoy the part, where the stalked celebrity jumps to the phone and dangles off of it, as can be seen better in this other youtube video.

AR@Nintendo 3DS

As we’ve been expecting the Nintendo 3DS will feature some AR games, making use of the installed camera. Now wired has found some more details on the five games, that could be shipping with the new cool toy with autosterescopic 3D. Hopefully, Nintendo will be using the two video signals for AR and generate a stereoscopic output. Can’t wait to see it live on March, 25th. :-)

Mobile World Congress & Demos

While the MWC has come to an end, we are still waiting and collecting fresh uploaded videos from the tube. E.g. metaio showed their Android powered feature tracker in a new prototype, while we have high hopes for the InvenSense MPU-6000 chip to give us stable 6 DOF tracking (good, no-jittery 3 axis would also be fine).

Meanwhile, Ford UK shows us another kiosk system to configure your car and enjoy it in AR. The new twist: you hold up your hand to carry the miniature car around (instead of a marker or brochure). “Interactive augmented reality screens created to promote the new Ford Grand C-MAX. Using pioneering gesture recognition to illustrate the car’s technologies by putting innovation in your hands.”

AR for planning and reconstruction

Switching to a serious topic. To give live information and some support for reconstruction after the fatal earthquakes in Christchurch, the famous AR-originating HIT Lab from New Zealand has started a new project:

The Earthquake AR project was started in response to this emergency and explores how mobile Augmented Reality can be used to visualize reconstructed buildings and show other earthquake related information on site. It is based on the HIT Lab NZ Android AR platform which allows users to see virtual buildings overlaid on the real world with an Android mobile phone.

– Have a save weekend!