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.
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:
How spectacular architecture, superb design and the hottest trend in advertising fit together can be found on the website of recently opened hotel nhow Berlin. As soon as the user holds up the image brochure of the hotel in front of a webcam, he is taken on a virtual journey through the fascinating premises. Your host today: Ray Cokes! Of course there´s a video of the experience too:
By the way: unfortunately the video was not recorded by “Rob the cameraman” – man, how I loved Most Wanted!
I think some time ago, when I was discussing with Blake about the pros and cons of various web technologies for the implementation of augmented reality, there was his killer argument of penetration. Flash is installed on 99% of Macs and PCs – thus flash based AR is superior to other solutions, based on Shockwave for example. I still have the opinion, that some concepts with advanced interaction / gaming logics should be developed with the latter software. But there is a lot of demand and possibilities (high and rising) with flash based AR nevertheless. So, driven by many and various requests, here´s the augmented reality software provider news for today:
metaio introduces it´s BETA version of a new AR web viewer based on Adobe Flash technology and the proven Unifeye platform. It offers robust markerless tracking and, as it is Flash based, has the best penetration ratio you can reach – running within all browsers and on all platforms. No plug-in, no installation, no barriers! Finally it has a great connectivity to existing web APIs. The product release of the Unifeye Viewer Flash is soon to come. Go to: http://www.metaio.com/flash and check it out!
Posted by Trak 
