The Augmented City, i.e. World

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Hi fellow AR-fans!

Augmented City

Today I want to kick off with the latest video that just went online from our friends at metaio: “The Augmented City”.

Their vision aims at a fully CG/AR enriched city with perfect alignment of virtual elements to the real world. Well, of course, we all hope for that technology, but metaio is doing a pretty good job in getting the technology base on the road. They intentionally focus on their strong part of software (tracking and framework) and team up with strong content and hardware partners. So, we get closer to the demo scenario, that sets up a complete experience in a 1:1 scaled AR City like its dreamt up in so many movies or animations (like Denno Coil).

For now, we get a miniature version, showing the current technology already in action: 3D feature tracking and an improved mobile renderer. Can’t wait to see it live at their insideAR conference in 6 weeks, where they focus on telling us how the vision now gets on the road(map)!

What’s the fastest smartphone I can get until 26th? :-)

In other news…

  • 13thlab has build up a neat ipad2 demo game, making also use of 3D tracking algorithms (i.e. here: SLAM) to get a better visual overlay than GPS & Galileo ever could.
  • Gamesalfresco already covered it, but to mention it here is worthwhile, too: Layar gets a vision based extension, called layar vision:

    Layar Vision is an extension of the Layar platform, taking augmented reality to the next level. Layar Vision allows the creation of layers and applications that recognize real world objects and display digital experiences on top of them.

    Layar Vision uses detection, tracking and computer vision techniques to augment objects in the physical world. It can tell which objects in the real world are augmented because the visual fingerprints of the objects are preloaded into the application based on the user’s layer selection.

    Android Beta version is coming in a couple of weeks. iPhone and Android final versions should be there by the end of Q3 2011.

  • Mark Skwarek has started a new project, called “The Augmented Reality Korean Unification Project“, tagged Uniting Korea with Augmented Reality to support the peace process in Korea, showing the border areas how they should be and were. No weapons, no demilitarized zone, no checkpoints, but trees and former landscape. To quote Mark: “This project tries to help the peace process by letting the Korean people see a unified Korea. This vision hopes to strengthen the people of Korea’s resolve for a peaceful unification.”

    The project is being developed by Mark Skwarek and uses erasAR technology. Mark will be travelling through Korea during August, so we will get some live footage soon. Today he shows us a teaser and demonstrator of the project.

  • Besides, in another city, that has been luckily reunited quite a while ago, we have the elections coming up, bringing us augmented election posters in the streets of Berlin: http://youtu.be/lNvEGr0LuOk
  • Wondering, how museums could save the money for traveling huge pieces of art around the world? Wondering how the museum would then look like if someone turned off the grid? Take a look at the Tallin Gate[way] projects! :-)
  • … and to finish for today, we get another dressing room AR+Kinect+physics demo called “Fitnect” after last week’s post…
  • … and a pretty scary pregnancy support with AR fetus… Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it is kind of… creepy. :-)

    • Nevertheless: enjoy the week!

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