Sorry for the lack of insideAR updates recently- we have been quite occupied with the free release of our metaio Mobile SDK. Rest assured, updates will continue as originally promised. Oh, and look! It’s snowing.
For those of you who weren’t able to attend insideAR 2011:
Not only did you miss a fantastic talk by Transitional Media Founder John C. Havens- you also lost the chance to see this guy rock out on blues harmonica. No really- that’s how John started off his presentation entitled, “Virtual Air Rights: How Augmented Reality Will Transform Advertising and Identity”.
Mr. Havens recently wrote an article for Mashable dealing with the same issue- his presentation at insideAR took the long form of expanding upon many of his ideas and theories regarding the role Augmented Reality will play in the future with regard to social media and targeted advertising.
For Mr. Havens, the question of virtual air rights is one that has yet to be answered or defined, but can be seen as an opportunity for the AR community when posited as a question of identity, especially that of the individual user.
According to Havens, when you take into account the emerging technology such as image recognition like Google goggles, social facial recognition platforms like Viewdle, gesture and eye tracking interfaces like the Microsoft Kinect, and general GPS and location-based services, the implications are pretty shocking when paired with social media data.
The future is not far from the following: “I walk into Starbucks and using my Google wallet I [pay], using Google Latitude I automatically check in [to the physical location]… I walk near the counter, as NFC improves, and you already know my preferences because of [shared social media data] and the idea is that you already know what my coffee is.”
Havens imagines a future where social technology turns the consumers into the marketing and leveraging tool rather than advertisements and paid media.
Brands could reward consumers for brand advocacy and loyalty every time that person shares or recommends something socially that could influence a purchasing decision.
Where AR comes in is the ability to access and display this information. Facial recognition technology could easily be used to pull up this kind of data, especially in a future where AR glasses or contact lenses exist.
Havens imagines a system of “Accountability Based Influence”- social metrics and purchasing data that contributes to an overall drive of marketing and reward systems:
“To me this is inevitable- you’re watching your show, American Idol or something. The next day you walk to work and you get a text: “Hey you watched American Idol last night and Coke is a sponsor, do you want a free Coke for being a loyal fan? And then you walk into a store, someone hands you the Coke.” And of course, any other purchases would be made using Facebook Credits, which Havens believes may be one of the largest banks in the world in just a few short years.
Mr. Haven is a regular contributor to Mashable, and you can find him on Twitter at @johnchavens where he tweets about Social Media, Augmented Reality, and new technology that will almost assuredly control our every actions without us ever knowing it. We were very happy he joined us at insideAR and hope to see him again in the future.
Mobile devices are evidently the warmest place to hide.
metaio had the opportunity to develop this very cool mobile application with Universal Pictures to promote the highly-anticipated prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter cult-classic of the same name, out in theaters October 14th. We wanted to create a game that drew on the same suspense, horror, and isolation of the film while generating excitement for its release.
After downloading and launching the free THE THING: Flamethrower application for Android or iOS, players assume the role of one of the surviving Antarctic scientists, trapped in a virtual laboratory and assailed from all sides by creepy alien hybrid versions of their former colleagues.
Sounds like fun, right?
We really mean all sides, because this game is played in 360 degrees- players will have to move their mobile device in real life to defend themselves from the attacking aliens. FYI- it’s dark, the lighting quality is very poor, and you only have a limited amount of flamethrower fuel.
Try to hold out as long as you can, but as fans and people familiar with the film know- it’s very difficult to survive THE THING.
After playing, check out the INFECT YOURSELF feature that uses our advanced Facial Recognition AR capability. Watch as THE THING literally rips your face apart. Even Danika of @twitt_AR fame succumbed to the crafty invasive life form:
This game utilized metaio’s advanced Mobile SDK, the most comprehensive solution to create Augmented Reality applications for iOS and Android. Featuring a high-level API and the latest image recognition technologies, it allows developers to produce high-quality applications with low effort. And best of all: we’re releasing a free version in the near future.
Once again- the film hits theaters this Friday, October 14, so get out to your local cinema and happily cringe to this great horror thriller that more than does justice to the 1982 film.
For more info, check out the press release and don’t forget to download this amazing game.
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.
Has this ever happened to you: You are in a store, you’ve found the perfect kitchen appliance, but what about the color? Will it fit with your kitchen at home? Does the vendor have any better alternatives? If you could only try it out!
This is what the new iPad 3D Studio App by Bosch (developed by metaio) does for the buyer. ColorGlass kitchen appliances from Robert Bosch Hausgeräte GmbH, from ovens to microwaves, have received various design awards and can be delivered in a range of colors and surface styles. The free app helps the buyer make the right choice. Take a picture of your kitchen, select the type of appliance you are interested in and pick a color. With the help of Augmented Reality the chosen appliance can then be placed, correctly scaled, on the image of your kitchen in order to let you see how it looks. Feel free to experiment with all colors and styles available.
Alternatively, if no picture of the user’s kitchen is at hand, the app offers a choice of kitchen scenes. This app is a brilliant idea to remove any nagging uncertainty and to guarantee the right choice for a significant purchase of this kind. Be sure to watch the video and visit the links above for more information, and easily start designing your new kitchen!
Hatsune Miky is an adorable, completely digital Japanese celebrity created by Crypton Future Media in 2007 using YAMAHA’s “Vocaloid” Software. The (evidently) 16-year-old, 5’2” songstress’s voice has been samples in thousands and thousands of user-generated videos, audio tracks, animations etc. Her albums have even topped the Japanese charts- not bad for a girl that doesn’t exist!
Hatsune Miku may be a digital construct, but the great thing about Augmented Reality is that we can take digital and 3-D content and breathe life into it by placing it in the physical world. A virtual entity could assume all three dimensions and interact with the real world- and that’s exactly what we did for the beautiful Hatsune Miku in this most recent development for Toyota.
Toyota has been enamored with Hatsune Miku for quite some time now- they’ve produced numerous (and clever) video spots featuring the star interacting with people as though she were a real person, as well as print ads, billboards (they’re everywhere here in San Francisco) and an integrated social media campaign. We were happy to be able to (literally) bring a new dimension to Hatsune Miku’s recent introduction to the states.
iOS users can immediately access the experience by downloading the free Toyota Shopping Tool App in the iTunes App store. An Android update is coming soon, but until then users with Android devices can download metaio’s free mobile AR browser, junaio, and search for the “Hatsune Miku” channel to get the same cool performance. Once the app is launched, just point the camera at the image below (called a “ToyoTag“) to see Hatsune Miku singing “Big Dream” and dancing alongside her favorite vehicle, the 2011 Toyota Corolla.
metaio used the junaio Plugin to develop this app for a Toyota, a feature that combines the technology, audience (1.7 Million Downloads) and accessibility of junaio, the most advanced mobile Augmented Reality browser, with the added value of a custom branded white-label application. We were able to use the same superior image recognition technology and tracking algorithm as we use in junaio to integrate this experience directly into Toyota’s mobile app as if it were a white-label application. Even better, the modular structure of the Plugin allows content to be easily and efficiently modified and changed, making the junaio Plugin a great development and branding solution.
Read the full press release here, and be sure to stay posted on all of Hatsune Miku’s exploits in America with Toyota. And make sure to check out this great video of the experience below:
South by Southwest Interactive 2012 might seem far off, but the voting deadline for panels is quickly approaching. I am happy to say that metaio is participating in four different potential panels, and we’d really like to see them get a great response from our followers. We’ve got some very cool topics in the works, so we’d really appreciate your support! You can vote for as many panels as you like, so please be generous. Make sure to create an account, it only takes a few minutes- just click on the titles of the panels below to go straight to the voting page!
Augmented Reality promises the future, but who is actually building new things with it? How are they making any money? As new projects demand six-figure budgets, can privacy rights, humanistic design and fun coexist with user metrics, brand messaging and a lust for “k-factor”? We’ll take a look at what’s been built, why it did and how we might design better games for players and clients alike moving forward.
Every new project is defined by the business practices that enable them. So why do so many Augmented Reality experiences fall short of the expectations of both the buyer and end user? With dissatisfied clients and rumors of low ROI, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate how we sell AR. Roman Hasenbeck, Director of Sales and Business Development at metaio Inc., the nation’s leading AR Tech firm, explains the process of selling AR the right way. He shows us why the Hype Curve is just a crutch for lazy producers, and how the most crucial yet often-ignored components to ensuring a great project and closing a sale is taking the time to learn the tech, design a thoughtful experience and communicate it effectively to the client.
Using a variety of original source material, Chris Grayson will give an overview of the global network, as envisioned by thinkers at ARPA before the creation of the ARPAnet. Examples include J.C.R. Licklider’s “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” 1960; Douglas Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect,” 1962; and Ivan Sutherland’s “The Ultimate Display,” 1965. Some focus will also be given to the people and personalities involved. Lisa Murphy will provide the technical explanation for many milestones in the evolution of the internet, making the case that the human interface to the network has historically been limited by the available technology, and with Augmented Reality, we are now entering an era that truly begins to deliver on the original vision.
Our life styles are increasingly evolving into hybrid experiences that blend the physical with the cyberspatial and the virtual. Moreover, these interactions are creating new forms of communities for fun and commerce, where consumers and businesses increasingly use hyperlocal incentives to leverage our immediate surroundings. In this panel, we’ll explore how games, collaborative consumption, Augmented Reality, consumer to consumer brokerages, experience augmentation, visual discovery and local commerce are providing the glue for diverse hyper-local experiences and communities.
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Outside voting counts for 30% of the selection process! Help us get to SXSW so we can bring these great panels to life.
Augmented Reality as a technology is often seen through utilitarian eyes. AR has many appropriate industry uses, such as improving mechanical safety inspections, interactive training procedures, mobile instruction manuals, and assembly-line safety. But over the past few months, we’ve seen developers use our technology more and more for personal, emotional, most importantly artistic expression.
XYZ Site Gallery AR experience
It’s difficult to try to comprehend the almost limitless design possibilities when you have the potential to take any digitally-designed or rendered object and place, overlay, or otherwise anchor it to the physical world. Imagine: a vast museum of virtual artifacts and objects occupying the same space as the Louvre- accessible only through your mobile device! The term “mixed media” is barely sufficient anymore- we’re beginning to see a real blending of the virtual and the physical, with a substantial emphasis on using metaio’s software, like junaio, to curate and design galleries, exhibits, art and space augmentations, and even use “basic” functionalities of junaio to guide and navigate around them.
Chris Hodson and Sarah Staton recently designed an experience for the Sheffield, UK Site Gallery in which they designed and implemented sculptures that were part virtual and part material, including marble, concrete, metal, wood, glass, wool and cork. The experience was triggered by a series of markers placed around and inside the museum- such a simple installation process for something so complex! Hodson and Staton even worked with physicist Dominic Hosler to design a “cuboid game of life and death”, in which “infinitely accumulating and dissipating cubes” loop themselves into eternity.
Anyone living or vacationing in Italy this year should already be familiar with the 54thVenice Biennale Art Exhibition. This year, we’re pleased to announce there will be a junaio channel running the duration of the event until 27 November 2011. The channel, “Venice Augmented”, was developed by San Francisco-based Certified Developer Vitamin AR under the direction of artist Amir Baradaran, and places examples of Baradaran’s work in POI’s around Venice and the Biennale, as part of his “FutARism” campaign:
I am interested in how small acts of resistance, particularly within so-called virtual domains, can create pockets of transformation. Seeking to generate much more than novel surprise, my art explores new ways of being.
These are just two ways in which artists are using junaio to design wonderfully interactive experiences. Below is a list of links to recent examples of junaio augmenting the art world. What kind of projects could you envision, knowing that what you design is not bound by the laws of nature? A Borgesian map, perhaps?
Wink.
-Trak
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Scope, Cabinet Exhibition, Peninsula Arts Gallery, Plymouth, UK; Vladimir Geroimenko and Roberto Fraquelli
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/ )
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!
Our German Partner Kreativagentur Thomas did something smart, successful (host and guests were overwhelmingly inspired and happy) and maybe comparable to an event previosuly described. And I also repeat myself: get in touch and let them touch… So, the acengcy invited their existing and potential partners and customers to experience new technologies live and direct, which are influencing the communication process of manufacturers and brands these days. After a day full of speeches and demos dealing with social media, print to web and of course augmented reality the absolute highlight was the concept car presentation for Molitor Racing Systems GmbH, competitors in the Porsche Mobile1 Supercup and the Porsche Carrera-Cup.
Kreativagentur Thomas designed the complete vehicle beginning with the first drafts and 3D renders to the finished model. At the same time, they prepared the data for several kiosk applications and an iPhone and Android app based on metaio’s Unifeye platform. At the launch event, the interactive prototype concept car was presented on touch screens via Augmented Reality. Attendees of the event could then also configure and adjust the car’s paint scheme and appearance. Please find the application and the handsome metaio racing team below:
Posted by Trak 
