Where No Augmented Reality Has Gone Before!

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!