Augmented Reality (AR) is a huge right now even though the technology isn’t quite there to make it mainstream. Sure you can do some lightweight AR in Flash with the FLARToolkit, and I say lightweight because of the restrictive processing power of the Flash Player.
There are some AR specific software and browser plug-ins like D’Fusion from Total Immersion. But then you’re limiting your web audience because of the tiny penetration rates. However, it was used to make the We Are Autobots microsite for the Transformers 2 movie and it turned out pretty sweet.
There are also some advances on the mobile side of things with software like Layar. But then you’re entering into the whole mobile nightmare of 5 billion different models, differing software between carriers, etc. However, one thing I like about what I’ve seen from Layar is their take on AR.
With current web AR, I haven’t seen much practical use other than “wow” factor. But introducing AR into the mobile world opens up a plethora of possibilites. Just looking at Layar’s demo reel gives me a bajillion ideas for practical mobile AR applications.
Let’s compare the differences between stationary (desktop) and mobile AR:
Stationary
- Not everyone has a webcam
- Webcams are super crappy video cameras
- It’s stationary, so forget about using GPS and location-based services
- Need a bunch of seperate, unrelated software to make everything work together
Mobile
- Cameras are built-in
- Video capabilities continue to get better and better (in Japan a phone is crappy if it doesn’t have at least a 5 megapixel camera)
- The majority of phone’s have GPS capabilities
- Software to control the hardware is already installed and usually transparent to the users
Honestly, the future of AR is in the mobile world. Sure, it has it’s place on the web but it’s ultimately going to thrive on our phones.
3 Comments
I like the mobile examples we’ve seen this week. But I can’t help feeling that the real goal is direct visual display, whether with glasses, retinal projection systems, or something like that.
jd/adobe
That’s a really good point that I didn’t touch on because my thoughts we’re mainly focused on the near future of mainstream AR. Dedicated AR devices are totally sweet, but on a public commercial level they’re not very feasible because of the small number of people would actually own these devices. However, private AR applications with dedicated devices could be a very lucrative specialized market.
From the demos I’ve seen of Project Natal it seems ARish and it’ll be sweet to see how games run with it. I’d wager that Microsoft probably has a headset in the works to do some kind of AR action for the 360, but that conjures up memories of the wildly successful Nintendo Virtual Boy.
I think you pose some great points. I would add to it the inability of certain technologies to overcome registration errors (http://blog.augmentality.org/?p=126). True Layar works fine, but in order to have real precise AR these registration errors need to be overcome.
One Trackback
[...] Augmented Reality [...]