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Augmented Reality Is All Around You – Cool New Pics and Vids

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by Aaron Saenz on August 27th, 2009

The new Lego display lets you see how a toy will look when built.

The new Lego display lets you see how a toy will look when built.

Like mushrooms after a rainy day, Augmented Reality (AR) is appearing everywhere. AR technology, which allows recorded and synthetic images to be blended and viewed in real time, is established in smart phones, marketing strategies, games, and entertainment. There’s way too many for us to discuss them all, but I thought you might like to see some of my favorites. Check out a whole slew of videos after the break!

Maybe the most important trend in AR is that, while it gets a lot of press in the US, it’s not really based on this continent. Total Immersion, one of the leading AR firms, is French. Layar, a Dutch firm that works with AR on mobile phones is mentioned below. If you’re using AR technology you’re more likely to be speaking Dutch or Korean than English. Which just goes to show how global the AR trend really is. Luckily for Americans, these companies are multinational and seeking to bring the insight and success of local developers to the world.

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Avatar Movie Obsessed With Making Unreal Real

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by Aaron Saenz on August 3rd, 2009
Cameron's AVATAR promises hi-tech wizardry in front of and behind the camera.

Cameron's AVATAR movie promises hi-tech wizardry in front of and behind the camera.

Once you’ve directed the highest grossing movie ever you can afford taking your time with future projects. James Cameron has waited more than 14 years to get his latest creation, AVATAR, into theaters. The director of Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss, Cameron is no stranger to science fiction, and the recent Comic Con previews in San Diego revealed that Cameron has spared no expense in creating the next scifi epic that will redefine the movie-making process. AVATAR utilized a new technique to merge recorded and synthetic images, allowing Cameron to alter and edit a blend of the two in real-time. The results? The AVATAR movie is a mind-blowing 3-D experience of a futuristic war on a distant alien planet, full of lush environments and unparalleled special effects.

Cameron specifically set out to create a project that would test the limits of digital animation in 3-D and IMAX. As such, AVATAR is set in the far future when humanity is exploring distant planets using life-like artificial bodies called avatars. These avatars enter into a conflict on the exotic world of Pandora inhabited by human-like aliens called Na’vi. These aliens are ten-feet tall, blue, sexy, and a composite of actor’s movements and digitalized appearance. Whether or not the story will wow me, I’m impressed by the potential for amazing digital effects.

When it comes to the Na’vi aliens, Cameron and his team have put a lot of work into making AVATAR a success. Besides the virtual camera filming technique, a completely new language was invented and taught to actors. Movement coaches allowed alien characters to move naturally in non-human patterns. Composer James Horner has choirs of aliens singing during the soundtrack. When you watch AVATAR’s alien environment you are going to be immersed in the Na’vi’s world and culture. The blend of familiar and foreign in space is something that Cameron does well (as seen in Alien) and you can trust in his blockbuster effort to make this film impressive to even the most jaded of science fiction movie-goers.

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Augmented Reality is Full of Zombies

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by Aaron Saenz on June 19th, 2009

Terrified that invisibles zombies will attack you in your home? Sure, we all are. Now, thanks to the insightful people at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta (SCAD), you can use augmented reality (AR) technology to see otherwise invisible zombies on your handheld device. Their newest video game, ARhrrr, is a first person shooter (FPS) that allows you to turn a table-top map into a zombie-filled city scape using a nVidia phone. Look for the amazing tech demo video after the break.

ARhrrr...zombies are invading your nVidia phone!

ARhrrr...zombies are invading your nVidia phone!

For those of you new to AR technology, a camera records your environment while a computer mixes this image with pre-recorded 3D designs and then displays them in real-time on your screen. The result is an illusion that you are looking into a hybrid world. Another company, Total Immersion, created interactive baseball and pokemon cards, not to mention a tour of the new Star Trek movie’s starship Enterprise.

SCAD, however, has upped the ante by leaping head-first into the realm of video games. This is where the technology can really thrive. Third-party developers, a dedicated consumer base, and sympathetic technologies could push AR as the next big thing. Several devices, such as the PSP, nintendo DSi, and the iPhone are capable of supporting the technology and are already popular enough to carry the AR video game revolution. That being said, I’m not sure how dependent ARhrr is on the nVidia phone and its new Tegra processor.

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Where No Augmented Reality Has Gone Before!

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by Aaron Saenz on May 11th, 2009

Last week,  Singularity Hub gave you the low-down on Total Immersion’s Augmented Reality. Well, hold on to your phasers Star Trek fans, because AR has come to the starship Enterprise! That’s right, Paramount has teamed up with Total Immersion to produce an online AR tour of the newly revamped Star Trek movie that opened this last weekend to more than $75 million of gold-pressed latinum.

Want to join Star Fleet and take a tour of the Enterprise? Couldn’t be simpler: go to Experience the Enterprise, fire up your webcam and print out the special page the program prompts you for. Iphone users can forgo the printing and use a special webpage display instead. Activate the Active X software at the prompt and you’re good to go. As always, Total Immersion’s AR tech blends streaming video and pre-recorded images in real-time to produce an eye-popping effect. Check out the demo video:

Paramount and J.J. Abrams have been working over-time to convince the movie-going public that you don’t have to be a hard-core Star Trek fan to enjoy the movie. (I am a hard-core fan, and I did enjoy the movie, btw) The “Experience the Enterprise” website is a nice step in that direction. Even if you’ve never heard of Star Trek before, the free AR demo would be too cool to pass up. It’s one of the first, if not the first, free AR programs that you can access online and try out for yourself. Did I mention that it was easy to get to work and totally free? Stop petting your tribble, put your 3D chess game on hold, invite the Orion ambassador over and check it out!

Reality – Now With Augmentation

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by Aaron Saenz on May 6th, 2009

Somewhere between the harshness of reality and the fantasy of virtual reality lies the domain of Augmented Reality (AR). The French company Total Immersion’s AR technology uses camera capture and 3D imaging techniques to blend surrounding and simulated environments in real-time. You’ve probably seen the videos floating around You Tube — people hold simple pieces of paper up to their web cameras and suddenly cool cars or a baseball player appear on the screen, seemingly right on top of the paper. The mash of real and virtual gives the illusion that both are occurring in the same space. One look at these stunning effects and you have a hard time believing it’s real, which it isn’t, and you can’t help wanting to learn more. If you haven’t seen the videos already, check out what you’re missing below:

AR videos have been making the rounds on the Internet recently in part due to their nearly seamless blending of the captured and constructed images. Without this real-time blending, Augmented Reality would be completely redundant with the CGI movies that have been coming out of Hollywood for years. With the real-time blending, Total Immersion has opened the door for interaction between the audience and virtual environment. That interactive ability is what will transform AR from a novelty to a world-wide phenomenon.

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