Galileo, popular ProSeiben network show, did a feature on Metaio and Augmented Reality [video]
New Tutorial video for junaio for non-programmers [video]
Augmented Reality Interface for Spatial Anatomical Education [blog]
Diego and Dario in Augmented Reality at insideAR 2012 [blog]
upcoming events
insideAR, Oct 1-2 in Munich will feature speakers from Lego and Ikea, among numerous others – register today and don’t miss this exciting augmented reality event [newsletter]
In case you’re curious about the culture of the Oktoberfest, check out the full version of the infographic above [right here]
Trak Lord will be delivering the keynote presentation for the mobile developer M3 Conference, Oct 25-26, Columbus, OH [event site]
Metaio will be presenting at the upcoming Connected Enterprise event in Dana Point, California Nov 9-11 [event site]
Our CFO Andreas Wiedmann will be presenting at TOC Frankfurt on “Innovations in Sales and Marketing”, October 9 (“TOCPartner20TSpeaker” for 20% off registration [event site]
The largest Augmented Reality Event in Canada, OARN is a can’t miss for the industry- Oct 5-6, Toronto (get $25 off admission with discount code METAIOSAVE25) [event site]
there are things that are happening
Google’s Project: Glass made a surprising appearance on the runway during New York’s Fashion Week, with Diane Von Furstenberg, of all people [article]
UK company’s augmented reality glasses could be better than Google’s [article]
There’s a new iPhone 5 and it’s selling like hotcakes [article]
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.
Hopefully by now you’ve all seen the teaser video and read about the very, very cool announcements we made at insideAR this year. I honestly wish that I could adequately describe insideAR. Maybe it’s because I helped assemble and move 15-20 very heavy table. Maybe watching these camera arrays and industrial prototyping demos come to life, piece by piece gives one more of an appreciation in seeing the finished product. Maybe it was just my first time in Germany, combined with the anticipation of Oktoberfest in Bavaria, combined with the excitement of meeting all of the people with whom I’ve only ever communicated via Skype or telephone or email. Luckily, we don’t have to rely on my floundering attempts at description- we have videos!
This is the first clip of many that we plan to roll out over the coming days and weeks, demonstrating the current and future technologies under the hood (sometimes literally) of metaio.
insideAR was divided into various exhibition segments- one of these was called “Augmented Living”, where we demonstrated some of the potential uses of AR in the household, including the new junaio 3.0 SCAN release that allows the user to get pricing and ingredient information from grocery item barcodes. In that same area, we were also showing our Bosch 3D studio app for iPad that allows people to practically redesign their kitchens with new appliances- without ever leaving their homes.
Many attendees played around with the Around Me Geo Trivia junaio game is a very creative example of how gaming, education and mobile AR can work together to shape an engaging user experience. Sensor fusion takes elements that we tend to take for granted — orientation, geographical relative position, radial distance — and translates them into usable information- in this case, a very fun trivia game.
Our company was built on out-of-the-box industrial solutions, so it should be no surprise to see those prototyping examples in the above video. The sub-millimeter tracking with a guided camera-arm would allow any manufacturer the highest digital scrutiny in examining a prototype on the factory floor; and with the “window-to-the-world”-type 3D mapping you can overlay the original wireframe to the real-word object itself, regardless of its size. With this kind of technology, metaio is naturally bridging the industrial gap between the digital creation and the physical construction of a given product.
Really cool stuff we’re talking about here. Really cool.
Once again, we’re going to be rolling out all sorts of video in the near future, so be sure to either subscribe to this blog or to our YouTube channel (or both!) in order to stay posted.
If you haven’t heard from TechCrunch, Dexigner, or Augmented.org, this year’s insideAR brought some very significant developments for metaio. To sum it up, we made three important announcements to over 450(!) attendees:
The release a free version of the Mobile SDK, soon to be integrated with a game engine
The release of an AR-publishing tool, junaio Creator, to enable virtually anybody to create AR content for junaio
Strategic partnerships with the leading chipset IP supplier ARM and mobile platform developer ST-Ericsson on joint R&D
What this means for the industry
Mobile SDK is now free
This is a big deal. AR is a young industry- we want to see it into adulthood. We want developers, researchers, students, newcomers etc to be able to test the limits of their imaginations and creativity with one of the most comprehensive and advanced mobile AR solutions out there. I can’t wait to watch these independent developers shape the future of AR applications in their endeavors.
The junaio Creator
User interface and workflow are two of the most important things that any software provider must consider- we want both of these aspects to be more streamlined, more convenient, more natural- and that’s why we announced the junaio Creator. It’s tool that takes all of the image recognition, the natural feature tracking, and the complex algorithms of junaio and reduces that magic to two simple words: point and click. Whether you’re creating a junaio channel or utilizing our junaio Plugin to add a feature to an existing app, the junaio Creator allows you to do this without a single line of code. Check out the demo in the TechCrunch article and see for yourself.
Formal Collaborations with ARM & ST-Ericsson
I’ve been saying this for years: the surest way to enable the smoothest most immersive AR experiences is to ensure the optimization of the hardware. Though we’ve already been optimizing our software for these wonderful mobile devices that pepper our lives, metaio can now work directly with these processing and chipset providers to find the best way to ensure that mobile devices are AR-ready before they hit the shelves.
In closing
We have a genuine passion for what we do. It may seem as though we ‘re making bold statements, but please understand that it comes from a shared excitement, an almost child-like fascination in its innocence at seeing dreams becoming reality, not just 3D and digital content (though we do that too).
Augmented Reality on Every Smartphone by 2014- It will be magic.
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
We held a conference, called “insideAR”, with focus on current practical applications in marketing and industry as well as on the future of this exciting field, which is being identified by many analysts as one of the most disruptive technologies of the years to come. 250 attendees from many countries and industries were able to follow insightful presentations by Intel, Nokia, Siemens and others about their company`s contributions and plans regarding AR. As the many money-earning practical applications on display during the conference demonstrated, Augmented Reality is definitely here to stay and has found its place in everyday life. metaio, as conference host, took opportunity to present its view of market opportunities, its vision of a seamless interconnection between the real and the digital world, and the kind of advanced technologies available already or being developed at the metaio labs at this point in time.
Unfortunately there is not an augmented me or two, helping me with responding to journalists, speaking at conferences or maintaining our website and other channels. If there was, I could write way more blog posts and wouldn´t have to give you the following link and case list. But there is happening so much, that I have to do it like this:
We are very proud to announce the final program of insideAR, which you can find: here. We will have speakers from NOKIA, Intel, RTT or Volkswagen and many superb best practice and future of AR demos. For all of those, who would like to attend spontaneously: there´s some space left. For all the others: we will set up a media library 1-2 days after the event and share all the demos and keynotes / workshops with you. So stay tuned!
My Nokia Blog tells us, that junaio soon is coming to the Ovi store and that there was a showcase on Nokia´s N8 at this year´s Nokia World!
And junaio is mentioned in another correlation with a big brand: it has been used as the navigation tool and pocket guide at the IDF Intel Developer Forum. Here you can see a little teaser, video to follow soon.
Finally: we have produced a new showreel, also summing up our latest cases, I think images say more than 1000 words:
Context sensitive product visualization on mobile devices is one, next big step for augmented reality. By integrating products directly into the customer`s environment on a smartphone, the shopping experience will become even more convenient and direct. You can see the final usage setting and make a more confident buying decision. And you know what? Vanija, our Swiss partner has finally done this important step together with their customer Möbel-Pfister Ltd and created the App “Atelier Pfister” for their new Swiss Design Collection! The iPhone App, which was created together with Visualcontext Designer Alain Leclerc von Bonin, the programmers Adrian Nägeli & Reto Senn, Bitforge AG and which contains parts of metaio´s augmented reality software, lets users integrate virtual furniture into their own living environment. You take a picture with your smartphone, integrate, combine and arrange the design pieces – and when you like what you see (because it fits well) – you buy what you see. Do you like what you read?
Images: Home Screen of the app and a screenshot from the AR functionality.
Posted by Trak 
