Update: Augmented Reality
Just saw this cool video by Qualcomm. It can get a bit technical at times, but I wanted to do a quick addendum to my post from the other week.
This is very cool to see because it seems to have addressed some of the limitations I mentioned. It works without QR codes, requiring images and 3D objects which are complex enough for the app to distinguish them (They use an image of a bunch of pebbles as an example). And the glory of it, and the reason I felt the need to call this technology out, is that you can INTERACT with the 3D and 2D objects you create. Not only on-screen, but also by sticking your hand into the scene and pushing buttons or knocking over dominoes or whatever! Suddenly interacting with virtual cards without getting stuck in your device seems plausible!
And my designer heart absolutely loves that they recommend Unity as a development platform, because of how visual Unity is. Which is, of course, also why designers love Flash. Which probably makes me a wannabe sort of developer (my husband, who is a software engineer, scoffs at Flash regularly), but you can’t have everything.
For the best parts of that video I recommend starting around 1:25 – they detail some of their sample apps there, and it is very cool. For the more techy and developers among you, he starts showing you his example app and talking about how to build it around 10 minutes in.
Is anyone using this yet? I’d love to hear reactions and about what you are all working on!
The Reality of Augmented Reality
You walk into your local pub, planning to meet friends. You scan the draft beer chalkboard with your handheld – bookmarking the pop-up descriptions for two or three which seem interesting, and order your favorite brew at the bar. Pulling a chair up to an empty table, you use your tablet computer to log in to your poker game, say something rude to the 3D avatar of your friend from the West Coast who has also logged in, have a laugh, and deal a virtual hand. You’ve just had an augmented reality experience which allowed you to make an informed decision about your beverage, and share time with remote friends that went way beyond FaceTime.
In my admittedly short time in this field, I have noticed that the words Augmented Reality and AR are thrown around constantly. They are used to describe a whole spectrum of technologies, which do some very cool things, but are somewhat less than the above ideal. Despite the relative simplicity of some of these examples, we are going to consider them augmented reality because they all augment reality with computer generated content.
The simplest of these technologies is the QR code. I’m sure you’ve seen these codes around – I recently just saw a large one in front of a house for sale, which was intended to be used from a moving car; I’ve even seen them on my tomato based condiments. These codes can be considered augmented reality because they add computer-generated information to the environment, albeit in a very static way. QR codes aren’t fancy, they do their job of pulling up web content or allowing you to post about your location or whatever they’ve been programmed to do, and then they are done. Note that any web content that is pulled up is not overlaid on the current environment – it is simply shown in a browser. This sort of technology works very well for our interactive beer list idea – allowing you to bookmark things for later reference. And, as you will see later on, we may be able to walk away from abstract codes very soon.
A next step towards our ideal poker game can be seen in applications like ARIS and Tagwhat. Both of these are location based – you do not need to scan codes to access the extra information.
ARIS is a platform for augmented reality games where you can interact with simple characters and pick up virtual objects to complete tasks for these characters. In their Dow Day game, reaching certain locations will trigger photos and videos which further the game’s storyline. What makes this less than ideal is that the characters, objects and media are not overlaid on the environment – they are not visible within the environment (through the medium of the smart phone), but instead replace the current environment, which is more like virtual reality. While this may seem to be a picky distinction, one of the great strengths of augmented reality is that it encourages you to engage with your environment more deeply. By replacing the environment with other content, you are pulled more deeply into using your device, rather than engaging with your environment. If we get really persnickety with the ideal, it would be great to move away from hand-held devices and into more hands-free technologies (yes, I’m talking about those silly headsets from the movies!), so that you can still manipulate items in the environment (ie, drink your beer) while you are playing augmented reality poker!
TagWhat, unlike ARIS, overlays their stories on the environment, so that you can see where there are nearby stories – but the content is much less interactive, displaying statically over the environment, directing your attention away from reality. Again, this is useful for things like our interactive beer list, but less so for our poker game.
Two of the coolest new additions to the augmented reality world are the Nintendo 3DS and Layar.
The 3DS has a dual camera system which allows it to display content in 3D over a card (sans QR code) in the environment. I recommend watching the short video in the link to get a feel for what this looks like. I even tweeted about the coolness of their AR about 3 minutes after I finished charging my 3DS. While not the most informative content ever, it does allow you to interact with virtual items which are overlaid on the environment. However, it also requires the use of the AR cards to help position the graphics – which limits how the user can move and interact with the various characters. If the 3DS had GPS capabilities, this would make for a much stronger contender for ideal AR.
Layar does something similar with its display, but in a less interactive way – it has been touted as the harbinger of doom for QR codes. Layar will recognize specific two-dimensional items in the environment and display information when it does so. So far Layar seems to be used similarly to QR codes, by companies trying to leverage social media, get more feedback from customers, or push visitors to their websites, none of which is extremely complicated. However, until GPS can pinpoint our locations to within a few feet (rather than within 30 yards) technology like this or Google Goggles may be the best method for providing more high-level interactions as well.
What is encouraging is that each of these technologies has some of the pieces we need in order to get to where we want to go, or to the extent we can take this. If we mix them together, we are actually not very far from going to the local pub to play cards with friends in other cities – as people becoming more demanding of their augmented experiences, it will be interesting to see how the technologies merge to meet user expectations.
Game Cognito 