PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD If anyone has doubts about whether we've entered the "fast ramp" phase for augmented reality, they should read R. Colin Johnson's blog post on the topic, dated Feb. 17, in which he reports and substantiates an assertion by ABI Research that AR revenues will rise to more than $3 billion by 2016.
Johnson explores two credible avenues whereby AR may achieve ubiquity in the next few years. The first approach is via AR browsers—a category invented by Layar, enhanced by Google and now being supported by AR data aggregators such as Mobilizy. The second possibility is via AR social games like "Jewel Collector" (a Layar platform app with a "collect phantom jewels from real places" motif) and the provocative "Inch-High Stunt Guy"—a QualComm prize-winning app that lets you build phantom 3D obstacle courses on a marker surface on your desktop.
If you're like me (my wife says: "Be glad you're not like him ...") you're ready to start downloading AR toolkits and rolling out the phantom content.
Toolkits come in two basic types. Those of the Layar variety use camera location and orientation sensing to position imagery in 3D space and project it into the camera's 2D view. These are flexible, in that your potential 3D overlay universe extends to the whole world; but they are not appropriate for some applications because present-day location and orientation-sensing facilities aren't fine-grained enough to allow highly granular, rapid or continuous interaction with projected objects.
Marker-based toolkits like ARToolKit (a popular open-source toolkit) solve this problem by using 2D marker patterns—normally simple patterns of squares on paper—as anchors defining location and orientation. Once calibrated, the AR system can pattern-recognize the marker in real time, compute its distance and orientation, back this out to discern the camera's position, and compute the proper projection of 3D data from marker-anchored 3D space onto the camera's moving window. Marker-based systems can offer fine enough granularity to permit direct interaction with 3D content via the phone's touch screen, or via handheld markers used as "handles."
None of the conventional toolkit solutions, however, makes AR authoring accessible to non-geeks, or use the smartphone as the primary development platform. At the moment, that's the unique niche occupied by Hololabs, whose MixAR iPhone app debuted in early December, funded by $5,400 in grassroots investment obtained through KickStarter.
Available this quarter, MixAR provides a marker-based AR environment in which a primary orientation marker (normally placed atop a horizontal surface) anchors the 3space, and handheld handle markers are then used to conveniently position content elements within it, using the camera to judge positioning. Currently, MixAR only handles 2D content primitives—any image with a transparent background, basically. So to build up dimensional and fully 3D content, you create multiple flat images (e.g., the six square sides of a box), import them sequentially into the 3D workspace, attach them to a handheld marker and orient them appropriately.
3D purists will, of course, bemoan MixAR's lack of meshes, polygons, voxels, extrusion operators and other esoterica. The rest of us will appreciate that iPhone's native image- and photo-editing software (plus the MixAR app) is all we'll need to make cool AR novelties, set them to floating over desktops, and take and share pictures and videos of our creations.
Good morning from Los Angeles! #ibmcloudThat's it from me! Over to North America.The data processing of Roland Garros 2012 (#RG12) rests on IBM Private Cloud http://t.co/JUaY1ItM [French Press release]IBM Accelerates Business from Supply to Demand with New #Cloud Offerings For Smarter Commerce http://t.co/OFxknOb0 [Press Release]How IBM #SmartCloud Foundation technology powers cloud adoption?
IBM VP @SLHebner explains here http://t.co/sSzfa0O5 [VIDEO]IBM's Fiona Cullen will present ‘The Power of #Cloud: Driving Business Model’ On May 24 @ Utrecht, Netherlands #cloudforum2012 #ibmcloudBlog Post: Why service providers should not ignore cloud http://t.co/ZfQyue4r via @eMarcusNet #thoughtsoncloudHave any #cloudmoment? Share your story with us via Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and tag it. See other stories http://t.co/J4ntsaQ5Sign up now for IBM #SmartCloud Enterprise! No charge for select VMs (only till May 28). More Details >> http://t.co/2LEzOUZC #ibmcloudRT @HansMoen: See this video from @IBMCloud to learn how to cut costs in building innovation in your business http://t.co/XOyJoFn6 #clou ...
Like us on Facebook 
Follow us on Twitter 
Get the Smarter Tech Newsletter 
Register to view the archived "Data Center Optimization Techniques: Stop Wasting Time & Money" eSeminar
Register Now > 
