Our own Antão Almada (Strategic Software Development Director) gave a very detailed talk at Universidad de Extremadura for a course on the international development of videogames using open source software.
The video presentation offers up an extensive compilation of Augmented Reality applications and how they are developed, amongst others.
Recently YDreams partnered with North American firm Canesta to produce its latest Augmented Reality 3D demo for CES 2010 in Las Vegas.
Portuguese TV program ‘Futuro Hoje’, hosted by Lourenço Medeiros, dedicated to covering the latest technology has to offer, visited the company to see for themselves what we were up to. More in the video below:
I had a great time at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2009 (ISMAR09). I met lots of amazing and smart people. It’s great to see the faces and talk to people I’ve been following on blogs, twitter and videos.
I’m an engineer so I like to know what makes AR “tick” but, nowadays I’ve been more interested in the interaction side of AR. The first couple of days I attended the “Science and Technology” sessions but, on the last two days, I decided to check the “Arts, Media and Humanities” sessions.
My first reaction to the “Arts, Media and Humanities” sessions was that they had little to do with AR but, I had a great time. One thing artists do very well is question the system.
I had the same feeling about the keynotes. They were great and presented by very interesting people but, were they related to Azuma’s AR definition? At the first glance, they weren’t:
Mark Mine (Walt Disney Imagineering) – Showed how a make believe world is done. (I had the chance to ride all the attractions of “Future World” at Disney Epcot and it is AWESOME.)
Natasha Tsakos (Up Wake) – Did a performance in synch with projected videos. (I did enjoy the show and had the pleasure to talk to her. She not only did the keynote but also participated in the conference and seamed honestly interested on its technological side.)
Pattie Maes (MIT Media Lab) – Presented the famous “sixth sense” project. (Some people argue that it’s not AR.)
Was the ISMAR09 organization wrong to bring these people or was it like an artist questioning the AR state of the art?
Azuma’s AR definition is correct and I agree with it from the point of view of a computer vision scientist but, is there AR beyond it?
“Sixth sense” involves a projector just like YDreams’ interactive floor projections. In the following video you can see “Virtual Garden”, one of the first applications we created.
I recently wrote about what technically Augmented Reality (AR) is all about and, this time, I’d like to express my opinion on the user experience and interactivity (or lack of it) of current AR applications.
Although AR has been around for a long time, its applications have been limited to controlled spaces and are usually costly. Only recently, thanks to the rapid evolution of computers and cellular phones, the general public has had the chance to try it out.
The release of FLARToolKit, an open-source port of ARToolKit to AS3, made this technology available to any Flash developer. It all started with GE’s “plug into the smart grid” and since then everybody is doing it. Unfortunately, most of these applications only show an object floating on top of a marker. This prompted Anatoly Zenkov to create the following sarcastic “Me too!” video:
This raises the big question, what does augmented reality add to the current interfaces and user experience? From the online AR applications I’ve seen, not much. Check out the presentation of John Mayer’s AR video clip at the Adobe MAX 2009. Really cool, for 5 minutes. Notice that the presenter, although enjoying it and smiling, has to change hands holding the marker. Arms become heavy after a little bit in that position. Moving the marker, moves the virtual camera, allowing to see the scene from different points of view. That can also be done with a mouse, like in Street View of Google Maps. The frame rate is awful. Flash brought us back 20 years on 3D programming…
Mobile AR applications suffer from these same problems. What does it add compared to the oriented map displayed by the Maps Ap with pins for points of interest?
On the map I can better visualize distances and best routes. It’s a bit like comparing analog and digital speedometers. When looking at the pointer of an analog speedometer, even at a glimpse, it’s possible to see, current value, relative position to minimum and maximum values, rate of acceleration, etc. The digital meters are cool but most cars have the analog meters…
I don’t want it to sound like AR is useless. It’s quite the opposite. It’s just that, although the concept exists for a long time, real world applications are still in their infancy.
Virtual reality went through this same process in the late 90’s. It failed to deliver most of the promises but it’s still used where it makes sense. Let’s see where AR will fit in…
