metaio @ Mobile World Congress 2010

Next week one of the most important events in the mobile world is taking place in Barcelona. And I am very delighted to say, that our CTO Peter Meier has been invited to speak at the #MWC2010. He will give a presentation/demonstration within the session: ”Mobile Innovation – A Vision of 2020”, which will take place on the afternoon of Wednesday the 17th of February 2010 at 4pm. “This session will take a visionary look into the services and applications that mobile communication will provide in 10 years time and the impact they will have on the way we live and communicate in 2020. The latter half of this session will look at Augmented Reality. (…)”.

The Mobile World Congress is comfortably the largest and most important mobile industry event in the world with the 2009 event bringing together over 47,000 telecom executives, including over 23,000 C-level attendees and 2,400 press and media representatives. After the hugely successful congress in Barcelona this year, the 2010 event will once again be held in the outstanding Fira de Barcelona Conference and Exhibition Centre. If you are around, we would love to get in touch. If not, I will try to keep you updated on what´s going on.

Handy Augmented Reality

I´ve got nothing to add. Thanks for sending this over, 73 Minstrel.

Augmented Reality in USA Today

The Universal Orlando Ressort has teamed up with USA Today and metaio in order to bring the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” to life, before you can actually go and see one of the world´s most anticipated theme parks. Friday’s publication of USA Today contained a magic map (or it could be printed from the website one day later) and after going to http://www.harrypotter3d.com, the users could hold up the map to their webcam and see a 3D model of the theme park right in front of their eyes. By rotating the map, they were able to intuitively take a closer look at the 20-acre themed environment from all sides and angles. When holding the map closer to the webcam, users explore Hogsmeade, see Hogwarts castle and Express. Blowing into the computer’s microphone will even make the banners wave.

Here´s a video about the teaser campaign and here you can directly access the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in 3D.

Augmented Reality 2.0

The one augmented reality, which uses a gps signal to overlay 2D graphics onto the real world trough the video camera of a mobile, generated a lot of buzz. With a reason. It made visible, where augmented reality is heading and what even more cool interface a mobile can be, combined with this technology. On the other side, due to the hype, many aspects of our fascinating field were ignored or not even recognized. Because the other augmented reality with image recognition still has limitations. But  this other augmented reality seems to be even more promising. To say it different: that there is only one real augmented reality. Nothing new to the folks at Venturebeat. And the good thing is, they share their knowledge A quote? “Finally, Metaio’s plans for 2010 include creating the world’s first “AR city”. This is an attempt to move AR into the mainstream by blanketing a specific geographic location in the US with a high-density of AR data. Such an environment could be a giant test lab for the fledging AR industry. Watch this space.

Here´s the full article:

Spatial Computing?

Almost everybody is talking about the below embedded concept (video ) by phedex. I agree with most of the other voices, that spatial computing (or augmented reality) and advanced (gesture-, movement-, face-) tracking methods for interaction enhance the product visualization process, the design exchange and the evaluation or the online commerce. But please let me point out, that is far away from deployment. Some blogs or magazines tend to call this a solution already.

Let me quote phedex, who produced the video with blender and green screen technology and all that – which he by the way makes completely transparent in his workflow documentation: “The way I see it, the biggest problem isn’t that we lack the ingenuity or the engineering resources to make this happen.  The biggest problem is that from a mainstream perspective, AR isn’t fun yet, it’s still just an engineering experiment.” Well, some AR solutions make sense and can produce some fun. At least, again, with a little effort…

Poly Gone Wild

When creating 3D content to be displayed in real time, designers have to find the happy medium between the overall quality and the afterall performance. Of course you want reflections, details, actions and all kinds of visual effects. But you always have to keep in mind, that the application has to run fluently. This is the most important thing. The renderer can be as dvanced as possible, but especially when the campaign or game is watched online, it will get jumpy with Billions of polygones. And with everything in augmented reality heading mobile, the question of content optimization will arise even more. So we´ve asked one of our 3D designers to benchmark it a little, how content con be organised with “high quality and low poly”. The result can be found at the link below. If you have examples or proposals, feel free to contact us!

Where Mobile Augmented Reality is Headed: Real 3D*

Here´s a really nice read with the above title from the “Mobile Innovation Exchange”. The author David Pringle* interviewed me some days ago and assuming from his questions I thought, this could lead to a quite interesting article. Obviously he did more research in this field, than watching the latest youtube video… A quote: “Metaio’s ultimate goal is for junaio to provide “augmented vision”, enabling users to view 3D images very precisely registered at a specific location in the real-world, so you could, for example, walk right round a dinosaur and view it from every angle.” In order to reach this goal, an integrated augmented reality software platform where development in all the possible areas – industrial, design, web, mobile, research, … – is prolific for every field to which AR is implemented, helps a lot!

Brands and Augmented Reality

Here´s a nice chart from marketing consulting company KZERO from the UK, with a timeline and brands who have made their first steps into augmented reality driven marketing. As always it is very hard to be comprehensive in one list – I think we saw more campaigns and brands in 2009, but at least I miss the efforts made by SCION / Toyota early in 2007. Although there was no hype around AR yet (I remember my first sales presentations in agencies with the sublime mantra “I know all this sounds very complex, but at the end it is quite simple, because we take care of the technology and it definetely will improve the customer experience, power sales, engages customers with brands and is very interactive”) the SCION roadshow should be mentioned as one of the forerunners in this domain. Anyway, the article and table is cool and I liked one quote very much: “This last category (food and drink) always struggled with virtual world marketing – not surprisingly because they are two things avatars do not need, in a basic sense. As we move into 2010, expect the buzz around AR (and the search volumes) to grow rapidly, with brands not far behind.” Maybe because in mixed realitites you still get thirsty.

Video from a rehearsal at the SCION roadshow. It used infrared tracking, HD Videostream with high-quality real time rendered content and very strong developers. Credits: E-S3, metaio.

Augmented Entertainment

Here´s an interview where Simon Fuller from brand-e.biz, online magazine for branded entertainment, asked me some questions about the power of (mobile) augmented reality. Amongst other companies and use-cases, like Ogmento or Ghostwire, the LEGO kiosk “digital box” was mentioned. Well, here is the full article.

Concept movie: the future of smart packaging.

Joy Is Augmented Reality

I want to start the week with a nice execution of an augmented reality enhanced exhibition in the BMW Museum in Munich, which was done with Unifeye Design by our partner Mehr:Wert. The especially designed scope reveals additional information at certain points of interest on a map. The visitors discover 2D and 3D content in a completely new way.

More information about the GUI based, easy-to-use augmented reality software for exhibitions, presentations and installations “Unifeye Design” can be found here.