We are very happy to share the great news: our technology has been used for the first time at fairs for official communication! Our Certified Developer Concepteers GmbH has developed the Drupa app based on the junaio Plugin for the Drupa fair, which serves the print and media industry. This is a great example showing that metaio‘s software is a unique tool for bringing extra content to various scenarios and usage models.
In the last year AR rapidly established an interesting and more personal connection between product and end-user. When the reader sees the advertisement via a smartphone or a tablet using the mobile application based on the junaio software, a 3D animation starts up on the screen. This directs the user to the Drupa’s website, which provides extra content to the exhibition.
Although print is still the leading medium, this digital innovation elevates the traditional, well known print to a whole new level by making it helpful and exciting. AR establishes a unique dialog between the company and the user bringing the latest information right into the customer’s hands and providing up-to-dated information just a click away.
Concepteers has many years of experience in the media industry combined with solid experience in the IT business consulting. Concepteers develop cross marketing concepts to successfully target their audience through a multi-channel strategy. They have become metaio’s Certified Developer based on exceptional quality of their work on the metaio’s Augmented Reality junaio Plugin software.
Concepteers Creative Director Michael Sommer at the annual Drupa convention
junaio is software like no other. It is smart and offers brilliant opportunities too. Using junaio developers can create interesting applications like the Drupa app. AR is a great potential for buyers, advertisers and service providers. Thanks to junaio the classic ways of communication are now upgraded to a new level, providing experiences like never before.
Back in September, CEO Dr. Thomas Alt announced that we’d be releasing a free version of the metaio Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) in an effort to both ensure and encourage the massive development and adoption of mobile augmented reality by 2014.
In that time, we researched and developed like crazy to make sure that our software would be the most advanced mobile solution available. We implemented Gravity Aware Feature Descriptors, a patented technology that makes image recognition and tracking faster and more robust. We benchmarked our technology by winning the 2011 ISMAR Tracking Competition. We integrated Unity3D for hardcore game developers and designers. And most importantly, we embarked on collaborative research partnerships with chipset providers like ARM, ST-Ericcson, and Texas Instruments. It’s been a busy fall.
As a result, we have for the entire mobile development community a powerful, advanced and industry-proven SDK, free of cost right from the start, with unlimited app-deployments for iOS and Android. A built-in advanced 3D rendering engine means you can start developing immediately. And it’s not a watered-down piece of shareware- this 3D rendering engine has been used in over 70 professional mobile apps, including our Augmented City demo.
metaio is pleased to announce that the latest version of our Design software is now available for download.
Once again, AR is neither a sci-fi fantasy nor something limited to gimmicky one-off applications. Our design software enables anyone with a Windows PC to produce rich, interactive content. Our clients and partners use Design in trade shows, integrated marketing campaigns, classrooms, commercial applications, internal demonstrations and much more.
If you’re not already familiar with Design, you may have heard about our wonderful project with LEGO, now deployed in every LEGO-branded store in the world.
For the new 2.5 update we’ve rolled out the following updates:
New features:
Facetracking: for tracking a users face and overlaying3D content (e.g. hats, glasses etc.)
Extensible tracking: for tracking in unknown environments the system automatically creates and updates an internal map of features for tracking based on the camera image. This allows you to move around freely with your camera and the system adjusts on the fly.
A Design license (post-activation) is bound to the user’s PC, so moving / transferring the license is not allowed. There are however cases where a user would need to transfer a license, such as when uploading to a new machine. Starting with Design 2.5, license holders will have the ability to transfer their licenses twice.
To send a request or purchase a license dongle, contact sales (at) metaio (dot) com.
To transfer your license, go here. Enter your activation key and click Get Licenses.
Augmented Reality will fundamentally change the way how we access, understand, enjoy and share digital information. The vision of being able to point a mobile device camera at anything in the real world and instantly receive contextual information is beginning to take shape as a roadmap to the future of AR. Enabling technologies and the vast growth of content will turn AR into a daily-used standard interface. The 2011 insideAR event in Munich, September 26-27, will demonstrate that AR is here to stay.
An outlook on the Roadmap of AR and the vision of an Augmented City – where contextual, digital information displayed in the real world is only a fingertip away – can be seen at this joint demo by the Media Processing Division of ARM and the R&D department by metaio:
Come and visit us at insideAR and experience the Augmented City of Munich!
Today was the public release for the mobile app of the Green Party of Berlin and their election campaign. With the app you can actively participate in the real public space by posting or interacting with others on topics of interest, such as payable living space, education, energy consumption or production and public transport. By placing a virtual POI you can express your needs or thoughts in the real world. All off this nicely embedded into the campaign framework of the green Party named “Da müssen wir ran” what could be translated as: “we have to tackle this.” The second function brings the billboards to live, when scanning one of them you can see a video of the election candidate referring to the topic. A truly interactive and integrated campaign! The Augmented Reality features are powered by the junaio Plug-In and the content will be available on junaio itself starting on Monday. Here`s a video of the political participation function:
And here´s the “speaking billboards”:
Have a nice weekend and maybe you would like to think about where you could go green in your life or what changes in your neighborhood could help make life more sustainable and worth living…
There are several ways of integrating augmented reality into your strategy, business model, project, product or ballpark. With junaio and its open API everything possible in mobile AR is possible. You can start right away without any monetary invest. That´s how for example artists play around or museums evaluate the latest digital technologies. And after you find out, that you can generate buzz, more turn-over and real added value for your clients you now can even integrate a junaio Plugin into your own app. That´s what publishing house Bauer Media did recently with two of their magazines and the related apps. With Smart View and Trailer View they enriched their print magazines with trailers and animations. The AR features are powered by metaio´s image processing technologies running smoothly in the background. The result is new experiences for the “readers”, new sales channels for the ad department and more creative fllexibility for the editors! And here you can see how the “Welt der Wunder” branded app works:
I found two very intersting stories, which fit perfectly to an ongoing discussion in the AR sphere: property rights of virtual space. Is it possbile to place your interaction POI directly in front (on top, behind, around…) the outle of a competitor? Can you use the logo of a company to display your own point of view? Or: Who Owns the Advertising Space in an Augmented Reality World? The author of the one latest story John Havens points at many more open issues, which will be discussed a lot in the next years. If you do not share my opinion, what about the other story: “Heavy’s “Pirate Banker” channel is an augmented reality takeover of the Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides “Captain Barbossa” (Geoffrey Rush) movie poster. You can place the poster in your camera view to trigger a short movie texture that reveals Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as the real “pirate”. (…)”. More information about this nicely done guerilla campaign can be found: here. So, who owns the space in front of a poster? I think my new colleague Trak should make an interview with Lawrence Lessig soon… (http://www.lessig.org/info/bio/ )
My blog-mate Lester from Augmented Planet is the host for anybody interested in AR development and who couldn´t make it to the recent ARE in the US (watch out for next week´s wrap-up of this event). And he invites you with this:
<<<Augmented Reality (AR) is the latest red hot technology that is taking the world by storm. Have you ever wondered how you can use AR to build your own solutions that use the following technologies:
Natural feature tracking
Visual search
Face recognition
Augmented reality browsers
If you have wondered how you can use these technologies to build mobile applications for Android, iPhone, iPad 2, bada, Symbian or the web then Augmented Planet 2011 is the event for you. Augmented Planet, the No 1 blog dedicated to all things AR is back for our third London conference. This year we are focusing entirely on the development of AR applications and we have assembled the best speakers from the AR industry for an exclusive event in London.
At Augmented Planet 2011 you’ll hear from industry leaders, AR tools and platform providers and the UK’s leading AR developers. It’s not a death by PowerPoint event but an opportunity for you to see how easy it is to take advantage of AR.>>>
And indeed, one of the industry leaders tightly registered to this blog is taking part in this event: junaio´s Frank Angermann is showing you, how to develop über-cool junaio channels and generate buzz or business (or both) for your company or of course for expressing your creativity. Here´s a snapshot of MotiveNYC´s recent campaign, just for your inspiration (FYI):
While tablet computing may in future transform the whole computer industry, it is already changing the way we look at augmented reality. And this is not only because of the big display. More and more different devices for multiple OS platforms are expected to appear on the market, equipped with advanced sensors such as high-resolution cameras. The cost of data roaming is likely to drop and considering the millions of people expected to buy such a device in the next few years, there are incentives enough for optimizing augmented reality (AR) tablet software and to start creating really useful and fascinating applications taking full advantage of the promising, new capabilities. metaio, with its junaio 2.6 release, a junaio plug-in for third party app integration, and the revised mobile AR SDK Unifeye 2.5, is well prepared and ready to go for the next generation of AR applications. If you want to learn more about mobile AR in general and on tablets, everything is summed up here: http://www.metaio.com/specials/augmented-reality-on-tablets/
And here you can find a movie with almost everything we´re working on: 3D tracking, markerless 2D tracking and image processing, virtual manuals, interactive TV, smart packaging, advertising as a service, context sensitive product visualization, AR gaming and so on. By the way: to my knowledge it´s the first AR demos running on the Android 3.0 based Xoom!
Ball Packaging Europe and the junaio team are doing great stuff these days. On the one site Matthias, the product manager of junaio, is experimenting with various tracking approaches in order to track a can. This is not as trivial as it sounds. Obviously a can is not flat and besides that the material has some reflections and the trackable pattern is not too big. Nevertheless, the first results make me confident, that we will have a promotion or game or whatever comes to the mind of the creative Plattform “Dosionair” (Dose is German and means: can). Please find the first try out here:
As mentioned, this is only the beginning. A print campaign running right now, integrates the current advertising clip into the ad. You can find more about this here on the other site: http://www.dosionair.de/augmented/ Also there´s a growing canbase (sorry for this one…) on facebook, discussing about packaging ideas of the future and getting connected to the brand and values. Summing it up: Ball is really into AR and I am looking forward to the results, when a can for one of these huge soft drink brands will become one of the first “things” in an internet of things as an augmented object…
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