If Augmented Reality, Then Perform!
November 9, 2009
In the last months I have seen so many AR “campaigns” that I can not list them here – anyway there might be a list with the top 10 top 50 lists out there. Quite a few gave me “kinglike content”, “a unique (gaming) interaction / sharing function” or “at least a stable and robust AR product experience”. Thus I wouldn´t have a too long list because most of them are underperforming in some or all the essential and crucial criteria a good AR marketing measure is made off. And last but not least: the optical reference is created especially for the microsite. It´s an extra piece of paper! I think, that as long there is print out there – and this will not change too soon – we can enhance existing products, flyers, books, magazines or whatever with an augmented reality experience. On top. You should use it to connect print products with websites and have elements for conversion. Well, you need a good feature tracking for that, unless you don´t want barcodes as a full page design element. (Of course I do exclude putting the print reference ALSO as a PDF on the site, for the online-only people.)
But back to the technical part, that´s more our playground… Please, and I mean, PLEASE, consider Shockwave the next time you are selling web based augmented reality to your customer! You have a brilliant, native renderer. You can create appealing, high-resolution content people are willing to see, just like a quicktime, that is clicked, although people have seen a movie before (don´t come with that novelty-only approach, AR is a medium, nothing more, but nothing less). You have all the capabilities of the Director and can get in physics engines, your own game scripts or all the other existing Xtras. And most important: the application will perform well. There´s hardware rendering for smooth and high-speed and there´s a stable tracking. The engine won´t moan, it will purr. Compare FlashAR with Shockwave AR and you will know, what I mean.
For your evaluation I can provide you with the latter technology, as a movie directly here and as the tool, right here.
Vote For junaio At Mashable`s Open Web Awards
November 5, 2009
Come on, you faithfull fellas. Vote for Nominate junaio, spread the word! So all you beta testers out there – if you liked it, go for it. And when the app is finally out in the store, well, you´re welcome to join in untill November 19th 
And please find the author of this blog now also at the junaio blog
Do Good Research And Talk About It
November 5, 2009
As we are part of the research project AVILUS, which is funded by the german federal government, with the goal to develop, evaluate and implement virtual and augmented reality techniques to various industries, we were also part of the new media project by the federal ministry for education and research. The goal is to make the reserach in germany more visible. Said and done, here is the (german only) video. Please take special notice of the 3D tracking part starting at timecode 2.30!
http://www.ideen-zuenden.de/de/857.php
From Metropolis* To Interactive Websites
November 3, 2009
BUZZIN MONKEY, die agentour and metaio were once again successful with the „World premiere of the new MINI Convertible” and have won an ANIMAGO Award 2009 – one of the most renowned CG awards in Europe. Blending 3D data onto a print ad with augmented reality convinced the jury in the category “Best interactive production”. The price was handed out at the ANIMAGO Conference in the FX-center of the Babelsberg Studios on Thursday evening. It was nice and inspiring to be on the conference and on stage with Paul Kanyuk a technical director of Pixar or Tim Borgmann from “Infected” – a very friendly 3D artist, who won an ANIMAGO for this fantastic project. So I proudly present once more the making-of of a campaign which was the first in a long row in 2009 to bring augmented reality home:
* A remastered version of this piece of movie history, which was produced in the Babelsberg studios, will be presented at this years international film festival in Berlin!
REPORTAR
October 19, 2009
We only need one man like Ori to cover all the latest and best in augmented reality at the ISMAR. Finger stretched, fully trained, no need for sleep and on fire he will bring you the complete package. Check out the (un-) official blog for the AR event of the year.
If you still do not know, what is happening there, here a little sneak preview.
And Hey, of course i did not want to go to Orlando while winter is arriving in Munich. Couldn´t wait to see my old fella… Grrrrr!
By the way: I am working on junaio (see picture) – which has been presented already at one ISMAR workshop: www.socialaugmentedreality.org
Hand From Above
October 15, 2009
Big respect to Chris O`Shea and his work for FACT: Foundation for Art & Creative Technology and Liverpool City Council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool and the Live Sites Network. To see why the kids on the picture above have so much fun, got to this website or watch the video, which refused to get embedded, here.
Chris answered my questions about the project as following: ” The software I wrote myself in c++ using the openFrameworks & openCv libraries. The BBC Big Screen is fitted with a CCTV camera, linked into a computer that runs the software then outputs to the screen. The software picks a person based on their proportions & how alone they are from other people, then tracks the blob over time using optical flow. If the giant hand removes, flicks or shrinks a person, firstly it rubs out the person from the live video using the background reference pixels. Then the tracked person is redrawn over the top in relation to what the hand is doing, i.e. being picked up, or flying out to the left of the screen (not shown in this video). When the hand shrinks a person it redraws them into the video at half scale. When there is too big a crowd it resorts to tickling people, with a random selection.”
Here are two pictures showcasing the magic behind this adorable installation:
Augmented Reality Is An Award Winning Technology
October 14, 2009
It generated a lot of buzz in the media planning and advertising strategist / planners newswires, but this thing has not been mentioned in the official “I love shockwave based augmented reality” blog, which you are reading at the moment. The campaign, which used the cover of Popular Science magazine as a stage for GE´s smart grid augmented reality advert, won the “Buzz Award” by the US american “Adweek” in the category Print. Here you can find the ADBUZZ 2009 winners and here you still can check out the most stable, robust and strategically interesting augmented reality print2web campaign of this year.
And because I like to do things very consequent, here´s the rest of the self-adulation programm for today: metaio has also won a “caught their eye” trophy at this year´s IBC and has won the Mobile Startups LaunchPad by GigaOm. I did not know, that we are a still a start-up, but I can use a quote of my mom here: you are always as old as you feel
Come And See The Berg – For Real
September 17, 2009
In case you haven´t heard of The Berg, it is an utopia developed by the creatives at Mila Berlin. When it was time to think about new spatial concepts for the former airport “Tempelhof” in the heart of Berlin they had a great idea. The Manifesto goes a little like this: “While big and wealthy cities in many parts of the world challenge the limits of possibility by building gigantic hotels with fancy shapes, erecting sky-high office towers or constructing hovering philharmonic temples, Berlin sets up a decent mountain. Its peak exceeds 1000 metres and is covered with snow from September to March…” After officially contributing it to the contest people all over the world could testimony, how an idea of a place transforms the place itself. People created fictive postcards with The Berg, integrated it into the advertising campaign of Berlin and created many other visions of how the city would actually look like with having The Berg. So after all, The Berg at the beginning was fiction, something virtual, somehow becoming reality. And that´s where we came in, because that´s actually what augmented reality is all about! Now, by holding a map of Berlin in front of your webcam you can see The Berg grow and take it in your hands. It is there. On your table, and maybe within the playmobil figures you are using to create a little movie with real and virtual elements. So, as a starter, here´s a little movie of The Berg in someones hands. Would you like to video-answer? What comes to your mind?
And just in case you are reading this, while you are breathing the Berliner Luft, hey, go to The Berg Fest at fabulous St. Oberholz today. Here´s the flyer:
