Augmented Planet, one of our favorite AR blogs, has released the results of their 2011 Reader’s Choice Awards, with metaio winning 2 categories and placing in two others.

Readers chose our junaio interactive TV experience with Galileo for Best AR Marketing Campaign. Even better, they chose the now famous / infamous Red Bull Racing experience developed by our partner Circ.us as the runner-up.

metaio also took home the trophy for Best AR Developer Took Kit for the free metaio Mobile SDK. Released only two weeks ago, we’ve seen a phenomenal response and interest in developers that exceeded our expectations. This most recent award is the Gravity-Aligned icing on the cake after such a great year.

Make sure to check out the links above to see all of the results of this year’s Readers Choice Awards and learn more about all the exciting things we did this year.

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. 

We are pretty darn excited.

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.

This is the same software that has driven over 10 million downloads and enables millions of magazines delivered every month with mobile AR content.

We’re either completely crazy- or very, very passionate about what we do. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

Read the press release.

Download the SDK.

Get excited.

Following Dr. Alt’s Welcome Address, CTO Peter Meier took the stage to talk about progress, growth, and most importantly, the process of making the experience of accessing digital information more intuitive and convenient.

In his address, “Making the Digital a Natural Experience”, Meier stressed the importance that all digital experiences need to be natural, intuitive, and fun- an interaction that bridges the gap between virtual and physical. Meier added that though there are many that talk about accomplishing this, metaio is making measurable steps to make this a reality.

“It’s important to have a dream- it’s also important to make it come true,” noted Meier.

junaio is one of metaio’s most visible benchmarks- the world’s most advanced AR browser saw tremendous growth in the last year in available content, developers, and channels in development (per developer) of at least 300%.  More channels active per developer means more content, and both Meier and metaio believe that great content combined with great technology is the key to utility.  Overall usefulness is imperative for AR to become the next mass medium.

Meier detailed some of the advancements we’ve made in the past year:

• junaio has incorporated visual search, giving any user instant access to junaio AR content
• junaio’s SCAN functionality incorporated QR code and barcode reading
• metaio created 8 new patent families, with 10 patents granted in the past year

In addition, 2011 saw great content advancements for metaio and junaio:

• the junaio Galileo Channel for ProSieben was the first augmented television experience ever
• approximately 10 Million magazines with junaio enabled AR content are delivered every month
• artists and digital designers have been turning more and more to AR to deliver dynamic, original art projects
• the German Green Party used metaio technology to develop a political mobile with large potential for change

Meier announced what will eventually be the metaio Creator, a point and click interface for easily and quickly creating AR content for our software. The Creator will start with junaio and eventually be rolled out to all of metaio’s advanced software solutions.

Meier went on to demonstrate cutting-edge research that would eventually be presented at ISMAR in October- inarguable evidence that metaio is looking toward the future. We may be a product company, but no small part of our efforts are devoted to continually research and developing new technologies and interfaces. And as Meier explained, emerging technologies clearly favor AR. NFC, HTML5, and high powered telecom networks all point to enabling richer, smoother AR experiences.

Our CTO closed his presentation with a brief comparison between AR and the gaming industry, which had a gradual climb before ascending to a $65 Billion industry. Some of the gaming industry’s largest advancements came in the form of outside hardware and chipset manufacturers like NVIDIA. metaio has embarked on similar initiatives by entering into collaborative R&D partnerships with mobile chipset and hardware providers.

As Meier said at the close of his presentation, “Let’s go make this a $65 billion industry!” With the right content and hardware providers working with metaio’s technology, anything is possible.

Stay tuned for our next post- a recap of John C Haven’s insideAR keynote, “Virtual Advertising Rights”.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be rolling out videos from this year’s insideAR. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, we hosted a fantastic event with over 500 registrations- almost twice the attendees from last year. This is a clear sign of not only a growing interest in AR, but proof that metaio has made significant progress in the last year.

Dr. Thomas Alt, CEO and Co-Founder of metaio, kicked off the event this year with a welcome speech that announced a few key statements:

• Augmented Reality will be on every smartphone by 2014
• In order to facilitate this massive adoption, metaio will release a free version of the metaio Mobile SDK
• metaio is investing in collaborative partnerships with chipset manufacturers and OEMs and hardware providers like ARM and ST-Ericsson.

Based on statistics and predictions for both smartphone use and mobile AR revenue growth, metaio believes that AR on every capable mobile device by 2014 is something that we can readily achieve. But in order to foster growth on such a scale, it is necessary to become a leader in innovation rather than just a product. That’s why  Dr. Alt announced that metaio would release a completely free version of its Mobile SDK to the entire developer ecosystem.

By putting these advanced tools directly in the hands of developers, we hope to spark a new genesis of mobile AR development. We are doubly focused on collaborative research partnerships with chipset manufacturers to ensure that the mobile devices carrying these experiences are fully optimized for AR before they hit shelves.

2014 isn’t as far away as it seems. We sincerely believe that working towards these goals will further the industry and lead to progress and innovation.

Stay tuned for more insideAR videos, and check the links above for more information. And don’t forget to watch Dr. Alt’s keynote from last year as well.

(Apologies for the reference, but it had to be done)

While everyone here in the lovely city of San Francisco was preparing Halloween costumes, metaio was at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality presenting research that will not only enable an actual Augmented City, but will lead to more natural, more subtle augmentations of the physical world.

Tracking

metaio has made substantial improvements in mobile optical tracking and recognition, having implemented both 3D object recognition and Gravity-Aligned feature descriptors (GAFD). Through complex algorithms and sensor-fusion, we are able to align the field of vision of the smartphone with gravity. That means no matter where or how the user is positioned, his or her smartphone will always understand “up” and “down” as constants instead of relative positions. Looking at the photo above, you can see that natural feature tracking fell short in trying to describe surfaces buildings- all the windows look the same and there is little variability or contrast in the overall facade. Before GAFD, identifying or isolating only one or two of those windows would have been nearly impossible- defining gravity as a constant however allows the tracking to easily identify each individual window.  Check out the video below for a visual demonstration- you’ll notice that the tracking is faster, smoother, more robust, and above all more natural. Note also that we can align individual elements of a given 3D model with gravity, allowing 3D models and animations to behave more realistically when placed in the real world.

metaio also debuted 3D object recognition and tracking for the first time on a mobile device running on a consumer application: junaio. Not a specifically engineered research platform or prototype, but an iOS and Android application free to download and more importantly, free to develop. And in its first appearance, 3D tracking on junaio won the ISMAR Tracking Competition.

3D object tracking is the obvious next step for mobile AR- though printed 2D images provide a wealth of material for launching AR experiences, being able to track actual real-world objects will open up a whole world of opportunities for placing useful, engaging, and interactive content in the physical world. Combined with GAFD, objects like buildings, automobile engines, complex industrial prototypes, groceries, billboards, and public transportation vehicles become the canvases for the digital world.

3D Reconstruction

In order to have real-time, natural and subtle augmentations of the real world it is imperative that we able to understand and digitally reconstruct our immediate environments. For instance, a realistic digital or virtual piece of furniture placed into a physical room needs to behave as though it is real. You would expect an object in front of it to obscure it, and vice versa. Until recently, the placing of virtual objects into the real world in real-time has been restricted to the foreground of the user’s perspective. metaio however presented at ISMAR research that show the instantaneous online, real-time learning of 3D environments in order to realistically display or remove virtual objects from the physical world. This kind of technology will eventually allow prospective homeowners to furnish an entire house or apartment the first time they step across the threshold, or allow for the construction of truly immersive, realistic AR gaming environments.  Watch the video below to see it in action- note how the camera actually learns its surroundings in real-time, and within seconds adjusts to make a given virtual object or animation appear realistically in reference to surrounding real world objects.

If you build it…

metaio is well aware that in order to see stellar use cases, engaging content, and disruptive interfaces that this kind of technology needs to be in the hands of both creators and users. That’s why all of this research will soon be available through junaio (now, assuredly, the world’s most advanced AR browser) and the advanced metaio Mobile SDK (which if you haven’t heard has a free version coming soon).  We here at metaio believe that Augmented Reality as a whole is far too vast, multi-faceted and diverse to be unified under a sole “Killer App”. That’s why we’re giving people the tools to investigate, experiment, and explore all aspects of this wonderful technology to expand on all potential applications of AR.

For more information, see the press release, as well as some of the articles written about our research in the past few days:

Singularity Hub, “The Latest Updates to Augmented Reality: 3D and Gravity”

TechCrunch, “Metaio Adds Gravity To Their Augmented Reality Platform”

Young start-ups, like metaio, are often responsible for some of the best innovative ideas and disruptive technologies, many of which can make the world better, smarter, safer and more productive. Invited to speak at the ITU Telecom World 2011, Peter Meier (CTO) presented some ideas of how Augmented Reality could help people in under-developed parts of the world, such as Africa, in their struggle to build viable economies.

One of the key issues is in fact equipment maintenance. While international economic aid occasionally provides new equipment for local factories, the ongoing maintenance of industrial installations, production equipment or fleets of trucks becomes a real problem. Production rates then drop after a while due to equipment failure simply because local workers have not been properly trained for maintenance or do not speak English and are thus unable to read the manuals.

In these countries mobile internet connections are often more reliable than landlines. This is where Augmented Reality could be of real help. With a mobile device, AR object recognition technology would identify the equipment to be maintained, and then integrate into the camera view easy to understand graphic overlays (like a virtual spanner) which would point out to the worker exactly which screws are to be loosened or which pipes are to be disconnected for proper servicing.

Who needs a manual? A picture says more than a thousand words, after all.

Model by VirtualcitySYSTEMS

The purpose of this project is to establish a framework in which creative professionals can push the envelope of what has been done in Smart Cities with 3D data sets and to showcase the first generation of services that are available to the public with smartphones during the ISMAR 2011.

The project coordinates resources in the city of Basel and internationally for the purpose of implementing real world mobile AR services, and receives the support of businesses, government agencies, municipal service providers, private and public institutes of learning. In order to help build AR based services for people in Basel and visitors to the conference, the project provides datasets of 3D city models (see image above). This is an interesting challenge for researchers and developers in the field of Augmented Reality. We at metaio are curious to see what our colleagues will present.

Current technology is advancing rapidly. While having a readymade 3D Model available is certainly useful for projecting AR overlays correctly aligned onto buildings or street views (we have been using those lots of times), our current approach at metaio however goes a step further. We now have technologies which can in fact create a model of reality on the spot, dynamically and at the very instant the user looks at the world through his smartphone camera. By using very advanced 3D optical recognition and tracking technologies we are able to capture and reconstruct the environment around the user without having to rely on a prefabricated city model. 3D objects can then be directly inserted into this “live” three-dimensional space in perfect perspective, alignment and occlusion.

It will allow people in the near future to walk through any cityscape with their smartphones and benefit from correctly aligned digital overlays and useful Augmented Reality information services as a completely natural experience. We call this the “Augmented City”. You may have seen this video, but we show it once more to illustrate the point:

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.

Download for Android

Download for iOS

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.
• Markerless tracking: Improved performance and stability
• Licensing: Licenses can be moved to another PC (only full version)
• Uses new version of BsContact renderer (7.2.2.0). For a list of features see the release notes on the Bitmanagement website.
• Several bugfixes for Unifeye and the Workflow Authority GUI

For more information, please see our web store and our extensive documentation on all of our software.

Update

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.