A true augmented reality experience?
Jeroen van Geel
on
March 29th, 2009 
Lately I keep posting articles about augmented reality. And although I really like it, I have to admit that it still feels a bit quirky. Printing out a strange symbol and holding it in front of the camera is not the submersion people are looking for. Fortunately I came across a video that showed me that a true experience can be reached.
The video shows a photobook like any other. It doesn’t contain strange symbols with extreme contrast, but is realistic. When holding it in front of a camera magic seems to happen. I really like the simplicity of the graphics used. It’s not 3D, but kept simple… making it a nice experience. A great detail about this video is the camera. Notice how it is combined with a desk lamp, making it natural for people to aim at the part you are reading. This way you don’t have to hold up the book in front of the camera anymore. Really nie.
Hopefully this example will become a standard on which we can experiment further.
March 29th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I think there are some more examples of well used Augmented Reality (without having to print strange symbols on a sheet of paper). For example what Lego did with their boxes. Fontanel did a post on the subject last week which contained some nice examples including the Lego Box.
http://www.fontanel.nl/artikelen/6-interessante-augmented-reality-toepassingen
March 31st, 2009 at 1:34 pm
[...] topic.Powered by WP Greet BoxJoroen at Johnny Holland magazine, shows us some nice videos of a nice AR photobook experience. I agree its a lot more seemless then markers, but I think the real AR immersion will have to [...]
March 31st, 2009 at 10:20 pm
If you like that, check out what this guy is doing
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/03/augmented_reality_modelling_tool.html
April 1st, 2009 at 1:07 am
Thanks for the comment. I was curious what you meant by “projecting”? Are you refering to the video from TED with (name escapes me now)where the projector on his hat places information on objects? I would think sometimes you’d want to view information that was private which would make that difficult. If glasses could be made light enough, and comfortable, then I think it wouldn’t be too bad. But I’m sure the power of the marketplace will decide. :)
April 4th, 2009 at 1:06 am
Right now I’m reading Spook Country, a book that uses augmented (and annotated) reality as a plot forwarding device.
At one point a character muses about the same worry I have: that one day our lives will be full of augmentation spam.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Augmented reality goes mainstream – Just thought you guys might like to see that in Australia the News Limited papers are playing around with augmented reality (Sunday telegraph).
For the story
http://tinyurl.com/olrs2q
and
A video example and explanation of the technology
http://tinyurl.com/pv7j4a
May 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
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