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.

Welcome to the Layar Cake

Layar is set to revolutionize the way that you use your smart phone. The Amsterdam based company created an API to allow developers to create their own “layars”. A layar is basically a layer that can be applied over the image you see through your phone’s camera. That layer will include notes that indicate important things in your field of vision. Click on a note and learn about what you need to know: restaurants, hospitals, transportation, whatever you want. Each layer provides its own insights into your world.

By focusing on facilitating other developers in their layar scheme, Layar has helped create a really diverse catalog of filters that you can now view online. The catalog just went live on Aug 17th and is still a bit slow, but there are some amazing layars to chose from. You can use your phone to see information on real estate, social networking, temp agencies, banks, health care providers, or even the nearest automatic defibrillator. Each layar is geographically specific, so a developer has to be based (or interested) in creating a layar for your area. That may seem like a drawback, but I think it will lead to localized and customized layars that are based on realiable personal experiences. Check out a layar developer, Brightkite, in the following video:

For now, layars are only available on a few phones. The T-mobile G1, HTC Magic, and other Android phones can install the application. The company also plans on bringing the technology to the iPhone 3G S soon. Almost any phone that has a GPS, camera, and compass could support the application, so we may see Layars becoming much more common very soon.

Games, and Marketing, and Magic, Oh my!

Augmented Reality conquers table top gaming.

The gaming industry is huge and continuing to grow. We’ve already seen how one video game is hoping to utilize AR to fight zombies. Frantz Lasorne from L’Ecole de Design in France has another approach: turn your toys into table top gladiators. Similar to popular franchises like Warhammer or Heroscape, Lasorne’s AR game allows you to enjoy a scale battle on almost any flat surface. Simply put on some head mounted displays and you’ll start to see your action figures holding weapons and ready to move in turn-based combat. Check out the video:

AR may allow you to find new life in old toys, but what about selling those new toys in the first place? Lego is rolling out new boxes into retail outlets in the Netherlands. These devices will allow customers to place the box near a camera and see what the fully built toy will look like. AR lends itself to eye-catching marketing schemes, such as the one we saw for the movie Coraline:

But a real innovative space for AR may be in traditional entertainment. While green screens and CGI may seem stuck in movies and weather reports, the versatility of AR may allow it to access TV, and stage performances. I was impressed with Marco Tempest’s approach to an AR magic show. It’s a good twist on a classic form of entertainment and it shows how AR could be a real boon to performers who are willing to experiment with the medium:

Of course, the biggest draw back to AR is that you need to have personal access to a screen in order to experience it. We all don’t travel with a HMD, a computer, or even a smart phone. That’s starting to change though. As viewing technologies become more ubiquitous, the opportunities for AR will grow in kind. Utilities like Layar could replace or augment websites like Yelp or Craig’s/Angie’s List, and the marketing/entertainment portion of AR will have greater potential. Overall, I think we’re moving to a world where everything we look at will have associated digital information. See a car you like in a magazine? Photo the page and you’ll be on your way:

As I said, there’s way too many AR companies and videos for me to mention them all. So you do it! Leave a comment with a link to some of your favorite examples of AR. If you’ve used any of these devices in person give us a micro-review. While you’re at it, maybe someone could explain this one to me? Enjoy:

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.

A new way of making movies

Maybe the intrigue of learning how those brain-melting special effects were created can get you out to the theatre even if the promise of 3-D alien scapes cannot.  Cameron’s new filming technique works something like a video game. In traditional CGI scenes, motion capture is used on actors, and the images are blended into synthetic environments in post-production. In AVATAR, Cameron uses a virtual camera to explore how characters look in the environment as they are being filmed. In other words, the director can see and manipulate the final product while he is still shooting the movie. This allowed Cameron to find the most realistic camera angles, the most intense movements, and the right flow between recorded and artificial.

I get the feeling that Cameron isn’t just aiming for the next billion dollar grossing movie, he’s also out to set a standard for how digitalized movies will be recorded. Reportedly he invited Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas to explore the technology while he shot the film. (Tactful, no?) 30 years ago, Lucas and the original Star Wars trilogy changed the way that special effects were used in Hollywood. 10 years ago, the second Star Wars trilogy ushered in digital filming and screening. Now, Cameron and AVATAR look to introduce the next industry trend.

During the filming of AVATAR, James Cameron was able to view the blend of his recorded and synthetic images in real-time.

Of course, blending recorded and synthetic environments in real-time isn’t a completely new concept. Augmented Reality from Total Immersion has done similar work for baseball cards, business presentations, and advertisements. In fact, AVATAR and Total Immersion are teaming up for an interactive movie marketing campaign, similar to the online AR demonstrations for the latest Star Trek movie. AVATAR  is certainly the first full-length feature film to use this technology during main production, post-production, and advertising.

Hollywood has been making the slow transition to green screens, CGI, and digital animation. Audiences only accept this transition when they can believe the reality of what they see on screen. Though there have been some stumbles (Van Helsing, anyone?) the trend is continuing towards completely digitalized entertainment that is as life-like as classically recorded film. AVATAR is likely to be another great step into the next stage of movie-evolution. Not only will it have an incredible alien world for audiences to experience, it will forever change how directors use digital animation.  By giving directors another tool to help create more realistic digital scenes, James Cameron has edged us closer to science fiction that seems completely real. Whether or not AVATAR is ultimately a success though, Cameron’s changes to the industry will likely be titanic.

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.

The game itself looks fun, if a little shallow. From the safety of your nVidia, you can explore your AR city world, hunting zombies and shooting them by tapping the screen. Save some humans, watch out for zombies throwing stuff at you — pretty standard FPS fare. A real innovation comes with the use of skittles (yes, the real-life candy) as markers on the map for bombs. This is something I might have imagined as a child. It’s a cool twist to the game, and I hope other AR game developers pick up on this synergistic mix of product-placement and AR game-play possibility.

It’s been less than a year since AR really started becoming a noted phenomenon. Now we have a video game. As the progression continues, AR is posed to become a wide-spread industry standard for entertainment and advertising. It’s hard to know, however, if AR will make that leap, or fade into yet another fad. Personally, I hope that augmented reality becomes more realistic, more accessible, and a valuable tool for all kinds of art and communications developers. In the end, it would be great for AR to become something more than just another way for video games to rot our braaaaaaaaiiinnnsss.

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!

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.

Augmented Reality from Total Immersion works on a simple concept: blend captured video and artificial 3D objects in real-time.

Some companies are predisposed to benefit from the AR technology.

Collectible trading card games and sports memorabilia have jumped at the chance for interactive collectibles. Topps (the baseball card giant) launched AR products in March, shown in this demonstration video:

The Reality of the Situation

In the short term, AR will primarily be seen in two venues: interactive marketing and extended-content media. Interactive marketing has already proven useful: Focus Feature’s stop motion movie Coraline used an advertising campaign (in selected cities) where people on the street could see themselves with button eyes. General Electric’s new web campaign,  plug into the smart grid, allows users to explore their new energy solutions using AR. Extended-content media will encompass all the books, DVD cases, and other merchandise that will boost sales by including interactive AR portions. Already, Total Immersion is working with childrens’ books publishers to create products that can either be read as normal books or read along side the computer for interactive stories.

Total Immersion has developed marker-less tracking for its camera capture software. This means that any object (not just specially tagged objects) can be viewed and augmented. In the future, your mobile phone could take a picture of any object and provide information or overlapping video as you desire. Already, advertising applications are being implemented so that you can take a snapshot of a product you see and have its purchasing information appear instantly on your mobile device.

Total Immersion and AR will soon bring you the next level of Pokemon and collectible card games.

In the long term, AR is a solid step to closing the gap between watching and experiencing content. Already Total Immersion has teamed up with Futuroscope (a French amusement park) and created an interactive attraction that projects artificial zoos right before your eyes. The next step will be to take the technology out of the entertainment industry and into the information age. Imagine wearing special glasses that show the height, weight, and costs of objects you see. Or, you could sit in a car and have hazards highlighted on your windshield and maps appear on the road ahead of you. As cameras become smaller and clearer, your biological eyes could be enhanced with AR images and informatics. Military applications for AR are plentiful: assisted aiming, tactical information on targets, comparing faces to known-combatant lists, etc.

All this potential from a company that is still building after 10 years. Starting in 1999, founders Bruno Uzzan and Valentin Lefevre developed AR from an idea into a successful international company. And they continue to grow, with a new office in Los Angeles. For those who doubt that Total Immersion and AR will extend beyond a mere novelty, let me point out that some of the first applications for AR were in model design and simulation for BMW and GM. While Total Immersion may have come to your attention for its cool videos and customer interactivity “wow” factor, its future is likely to be much more impressive. AR is going to make our world a little less real and a lot more virtual.