What’s this, another fun tech demo from Sony? Just a few days ago we got a glimpse of the PS3VR library, which allows seamless zooming from far away to very, very close indeed. The company also showed off voice recognition tech and it’s now applying the same idea to the PlayStation Eye, fulfilling earlier promises of advanced facial recognition for the PS3. It’s called the Vision Library and, once a face has been analyzed, the machine can tell it apart from others, determine orientation, identify gender, tell what expression that face is… expressing, and then superimpose some big-eyed anime head right on top of it real-time. We fear this might take some of the fun out of cosplay night, but could make life rather more interesting for freaks with bovine fetishes. See for yourself after the break.
While some may say that price isn’t the main factor that’s been holding HMDs back from mass acceptance, France’s Optinvent (a spin-off of Thomson S.A.) is apparently of that opinion, and it’s now promising to deliver a full-fledged HMD for less than $200 by the end of next year. In addition to their trend-setting good looks (to be further refined in the final version), the company’s so-called Clear Vu goggles make use of a reflection system that displays images in the wearer’s field of vision rather than completely obstructing it, which the company says opens to the door a whole host of augmented reality possibilities — like heads-up GPS directions, for instance. Unfortunately, the company isn’t offering much in the way of actual specs just yet, although it does say the goggles will display an image size equivalent to a 71-inch TV placed 2.5 meters away.
Exclusive to iPhone 3GS owners, the feature is accessible through an Easter egg, which is activated by shaking the handset three times. A message will appear reading, “The Monocle has been activated,” and then a Monocle button will appear in the upper-right corner. Tapping that button will launch your iPhone camera, and digital overlays of business listings, accompanied by star ratings, appear on screen. The app presumably draws its geo-aware powers from the iPhone 3GS’ digital compass and GPS. Mashable demonstrates the feature in the video above.
We use the word “sneak” because Apple doesn’t provide an open API to access live video from the iPhone’s camera, making it impossible for developers to provide AR apps without hacking the software development kit. We’ve put in a query to Yelp requesting clarification on how its developer coded the AR feature.
If Yelp submitted a hacked version of its iPhone app and Apple approved it, it’s unlikely this victory will last very long. In May, Wired.com reported on the first developer to use an Easter egg to trick Apple. Apple had rejected his app Lyrics because it contained swear words, so he filtered them and added an Easter egg enabling users to remove the filter. That app is no longer in the App Store. The developer said Lyrics was “pulled temporarily” due to licensing issues, but the app still has not returned.
However, even if Apple pulls the Yelp app for sneaking in AR, it would likely become available in the near future. Brad Foxhoven, co-founder of augmented-reality company Ogmento, said Apple has told him the next version of the iPhone OS (3.1) “would make [AR developers] happy,” implying the live-video API will become open, and legitimate AR apps will become available very soon.
As you shove your way through the crowd in a baseball stadium, the lenses of your digital glasses display the names, hometowns and favorite hobbies of the strangers surrounding you. Then you claim a seat and fix your attention on the batter, and his player statistics pop up in a transparent box in the corner of your field of vision.
It’s not possible today, but the emergence of more powerful, media-centric cellphones is accelerating humanity toward this vision of “augmented reality,” where data from the network overlays your view of the real world. Already, developers are creating augmented reality applications and games for a variety of smartphones, so your phone’s screen shows the real world overlaid with additional information such as the location of subway entrances, the price of houses, or Twitter messages that have been posted nearby. And publishers, moviemakers and toymakers have embraced a version of the technology to enhance their products and advertising campaigns.
“Augmented reality is the ultimate interface to a computer because our lives are becoming more mobile,” said Tobias Höllerer, an associate professor of computer science at UC Santa Barbara, who is leading the university’s augmented reality program. “We’re getting more and more away from a desktop, but the information the computer possesses is applicable in the physical world.”
Tom Caudell, a researcher at aircraft manufacturer Boeing, coined the term “augmented reality” in 1990. He applied the term to a head-mounted digital display that guided workers through assembling electrical wires in aircrafts. The early definition of augmented reality, then, was an intersection between virtual and physical reality, where digital visuals are blended in to the real world to enhance our perceptions.
Augmented Reality Today Total Immersion is one of the most successful augmented reality providers today, having created interactive baseball cards, a 3-D tour of the Star Trek Enterprise, and now, a new line of Mattel actions figures based on the upcoming sci-fi-flick, Avatar.
Here’s a quick look at how their augmented reality technology works. Take the baseball cards. Users have to first log on to a URL (www.toppstown.com) and enter a 3-D section where they enter an interactive code found on their baseball card to activate the software. Then, they can hold the card under a webcam and Total Immersion’s software goes to work. continue reading…
Futurists and computer scientists continue to raise their standards for a perfectly augmented world. Höllerer’s dream for augmented reality is for it to reach a state in which it does not rely on a pre-downloaded model to generate information. That is, he wants to be able to point a phone at a city it’s completely unfamiliar with, download the surroundings and output information on the fly. He and his peers at UCSB call this idea “Anywhere Augmentation.”
But we have a long way to go — perhaps several years — before achieving Anywhere Augmentation, Höllerer said. Augmented reality is stifled by limitations in software and hardware, he explained. Cellphones require superb battery life, computational power, cameras and tracking sensors. For software, augmented reality requires a much more sophisticated artificial intelligence and 3-D modeling applications. And above all, this technology must become affordable to consumers. The best possible technology that is available today would nearly cost $100,000 for a solid augmented-reality device, Höllerer said.
Given the cost of creating decent augmented-reality technology, early attempts have focused on two areas. One, augmented reality for your computer is prominently appearing in attention-grabbing, big-budget advertisements. And a few consumer applications of the technology are just beginning to surface in smartphones.
A recent example of augmented reality appeared in the marketing campaign for the sci-fi blockbuster District 9. On the movie’s official website was a “training simulator” game, which asked computer users to print a postcard containing the District 9 logo and hold it in front of a webcam. The postcard contains a marker; when the game detects that marker in the webcam video, it overlays a 3-D hologram of a District 9 character on the computer screen. From there, players can click buttons to fire a gun, jump up and down or throw a human against a wall in the game. (See video above.)
Mattel is using the same type of 3-D imaging augmented reality in “i-Tag” action figures for James Cameron’s new movie Avatar. The toy includes a card containing a marker, which is projected as a 3-D action figure on a computer. This way, children can battle each other’s virtual characters on a computer screen.
But augmented reality isn’t truly useful in a static desktop environment, Höllerer said, because people’s day-to-day realities involve more than sitting around all day (outside of work, at least). And that’s why smartphones, which include GPS hardware and cameras, are crucial to driving the evolution of augmented reality.
Brian Selzer, co-founder of Ogmento, a company that creates augmented reality products for games and marketing, recognizes the need for augmented reality to go mobile. He said his company is working on several projects coming in the near future to help market mainstream movies with augmented reality smartphone apps. For example, movie posters will trigger interactive experiences on an iPhone, such as a trailer or even a virtual treasure hunt to promote the film.
“The smartphone is bringing AR into the masses right now,” Selzer said. “In 2010 every blockbuster movie is going to have a mobile AR campaign tied to it.”
On the consumer end of the spectrum, developers have recently released augmented reality apps for the Google Android-powered HTC G1 handset. Layar, a company based in Amsterdam, released an augmented reality browser for Android smartphones in June. The Layar browser (video above) looks at an environment through the phone’s camera, and the app displays houses for sale, popular restaurants and shops, and tourist attractions. The software relies on downloading “layers” of data provided by developers coding for the platform. Thus, while the information appears to display in real time, it’s not truly real-time: The app can’t analyze data it hasn’t downloaded ahead of time.
“This is the first time media, internet and digital information is being combined with reality,” said Martin Lens-FitzGerald, co-founder of Layar. “You know more, you find more, or you see something you haven’t seen before. Some people are even saying that it might be even bigger than the web.”
Cellphone giant Nokia is currently testing an AR app called Point & Find, which involves pointing your camera phone at real-world objects and planting virtual information tags on them (above). Users of the app can view each other’s tags on the phone screen, essentially crowdsourcing an augmented reality.
“This year we’re feeling a real urgency to work on augmented reality because the hardware is finally catching up to our needs,” said Rebecca Allen, director of Nokia’s research center in Hollywood.
Georgia Tech is also busy tinkering with augmented reality. The video demo above demonstrates an augmented-reality zombie shooter called ARhrrrr. The smartphone in use is a prototype containing an Nvidia Tegra, a powerful chip specializing in high-end graphics for mobile devices. How do you play? Point the phone camera at a map containing markers, and a 3D hologram of a town overrun by zombies appears on the phone’s screen. Using the phone, you can shoot the zombies from the perspective of a helicopter pilot. And you can even place (real) Skittles on the physical map and shoot them to set off (virtual) bombs.
As for the iPhone, officially there are no augmented reality apps in the App Store yet — because Apple doesn’t provide an open API to access live video from the phone’s camera. This barrier prompted augmented reality enthusiasts and professionals to write an Open Letter to Apple pleading for access to this API to make augmented reality apps possible in the App Store.
Brad Foxhoven, Selzer’s partner at Ogmento, said Apple has told him the next version of the iPhone OS (3.1) “would make [AR developers] happy,” implying the live-video API will become open, and AR apps will become available very soon.
Meanwhile, some augmented reality developers have already hacked away at the iPhone’s software development kit to code proof-of-concept augmented reality apps. The video above demonstrates an app called Twittaround, an augmented reality Twitter viewer on the iPhone. The app shows live tweets of mobile Twitter users around your location.
“We’re doing as much as we can with the current technology,” Selzer said regarding the overall augmented-reality developer community. “This industry is just getting started, and as processing speeds speed up, and as more creative individuals get involved, our belief is this is going to become a platform that becomes massively adopted and immersed in the next few years.”
Following a Netherlands-exclusive release back in June, SPRXmobile has now taken its so-called Layar “Reality Browser” for Android to the global stage and advanced it to version 2.0 in the process. Perhaps the first commercial augmented reality app to launch on a large scale, Layar’s got a good amount of momentum behind it — the company claims that 100 developers are already hard at work developing reality layers that users can toggle, and an additional 500 developers are being added into the mix with the latest release. Version 2.0 adds favorite layers (because we’re sure you’ll be stalking friends and foes all too often using the Tweetmondo layer), map and list views, and enhanced search capabilities, but the real secret to Layar’s power might ultimately lie in the third-party ecosystem if they can get enough content providers on board.
We grabbed Layar off the Market and took it for a quick spin; we’re having trouble getting it to aim correctly, though Google Sky Map is having the same issues, so we’re fairly certain that we’re dealing with a phone or location problem rather than a Layar one. The key thing with an app like this is going to be speed and fluidity, and even on our Magic’s relatively lightweight 528MHz core, it’s plenty usable. The Google-powered Layar local search — arguably the most important reality layer bundled with the software — is a little annoying to use, primarily because the search box has no history or suggestion capability which means you’ve got to type out a full search every time you want to use it. Ultimately, though, the app’s very young (as is this whole category of technology, for that matter) and we’re stoked to see where this goes over the coming months.
In its never-ending quest to sell you more things, Best Buy has added augmented reality to its Sunday ads. The printed missives can now be used, in conjunction with a webcam and a purpose-built website, to create 3D representations of the latest product being pimped. Yes, it’s probably easier to walk to a store and handle the goods in person, but that’s hardly the point of AR now, is it? We’re not sure where to rank this effort in the pantheon of quirkypromotional ideas, but we’ll give credit to the big box retailer for stepping outside itself and trying something new to separate you from your hard-earned cash.
We just got a brief glimpse at the new PlayStation Eye-based augmented reality EyePet game from Sony, which is on track for a holiday release on the PS3. It’s no Project Natal, but what the game lacks in gesture-based interaction (though we were able to pet and play with the little guy pretty intuitively) it makes up for in extensive adorability. You can naturally play, feed, groom and customize your pet — even teach the thing to draw shapes and bring them to life in a sense — but it’s surprisingly fun to just watch the little dude scamper around in seemingly real space. The title will be available both as a standalone game and as a bundle with the PlayStation Eye. Check out a video of the game in an early beta state after the break, and you can find Joystiq‘s E3 impressions of the game here.
Since barcodes are the sign of the devil (must be true, we read it on the interwebs) it’s no surprise that everyone wants to replace ’em. QR codes have been quite popular, allowing people and companies to tag their stuff with colorful decals filled with bits and bytes, and of course RFID tags are still going strong, but a team of researchers at MIT has come up with something better: Bokode. It’s effectively a tiny little retroreflective holograph that is just 3mm wide but, when a camera focused to infinity sweeps across it, the Bokodes become clear and appear much larger, captured in the video below. In this way they can contain “thousands of bits” of data and, interestingly, show positional information too, meaning the camera knows where in 3D space it is in relation to the tag. This, of course, has hundreds of potential applications ranging from grocery shopping to augmented reality, and should lead to new and exciting ways for scholars to interpret/misinterpret Revelations.
Looking to enjoy all those fancy augmented reality apps on your iPhone, like for finding nearby stores or subway stops? Apparently what’s standing in your way from enjoying a life more akin to “gargoyles” from Snow Crash is Apple’s next update to its touchscreen devices, OS 3.1, and according to Nearest Tube developer Acrossair, that’ll be arriving sometime in September. Something we heard whispered at the time of the beta 2 release. We wouldn’t be surprised to see that release window fluctuate, but if that’s our estimate, there’s still plenty of time for someone to prep an AR zombie shooter.
Does your feeble mind recall those wicked awesome 3D Topps cards from earlier this year? How could you forget, right? It seems as if that very same technology has been shifted over to the wine and cheese crowd, and thanks to one James Alliban, now those all-too-boring business cards can also be equipped with augmented reality. Put simply, these cards have been imprinted with a 3D grid of colored planes on one side, and when placed in front of a PC webcam, a pixelated pop-up arrives to really make that first impression one that sticks. Hop on past the break to see exactly what we mean.
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