Oh my, what an interesting week for augmented reality, especially in the business front:
- Nokia Beta Labs revealed Live View, a revolutionary mobile augmented reality application. Well, unless you consider Wikitude, Layar, Junaio and many other “AR browsers” that came out in the last three years. Nokia was once a leader in AR research, it’s a sad day to see them show off a product like that.
- Vuzix and German research institute Fraunhofer announced strategic alliance for development of display technology. Vuzix’s CEO is optimistic (as am I) – “We have already seen results that we feel will provide a paradigm shift in the style, performance and cost of wearable displays“.
- Microsoft licenses GeoVector’s tech. Slashgear says the goal of this move is to challenge Google Goggles. Patent war against Google (like the current one against Android) can be another reason.
- PrimeSense’s (Kinect) competitor, Omek raises $7 million from Intel Capital.
- Someone (well, Beck’s) augmented the Statue of Liberty.
- Is the hype around AR disappeared altogether? That’s at least what this article, named “What happened to augmented reality?” claims.
This week’s video features a cool street art by SWEZA named QRadio. Graffiti boom-boxes around Berlin start to play music when the QR code drawn on them is scanned. Via Wooster Collective.
Have a great week!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Fraunhofer, GeoVector, linkfest, Live View, Microsoft, nokia, Omek, Vuzix |
Games Alfresco 
Nokia “AR research” – good one! Here’s the quick synopsis:
– Founding an “AR” lab in Palo Alto run by – admittedly very good – computer vision / computational photography people, who obviously considered AR an embarrassing second-class topic, and who preferred pursuing their other research hobbies instead.
– The Palo Alto top dog being a “manager’s engineer”, the type of person who thinks he can judge a person’s technical skills by the firmness of their handshake. He also drop(s/ped) such gems as “the iPhone is no phone and thus no competition for us, it will never sell well” and “Nokia’s main problem is that one day, everybody and their dog will have already have a Nokia phone, and who will we sell to then?”
– Founding another AR lab in Hollywood, run by “system designers” and artists, who are heavy on the PR-side of things.
– Being so well-coordinated that the two “AR” labs were not aware of each others’ existence.
Small wonder Mr. Pulli ran as far as he could, even though Nokia gave him some sort of a Nobel Prize recently :-)
*****
“Has the AR hype disappeared altogether?” Which hype? Since the late 80s there were at least 2 or 3 separate major hype phases of AR. The really big AR hype in academia and startup-wise started in the mid-1990s and ended in the early 2000s, even if some regular commenters on this blog refuse to acknowledge this and prefer the illusion that they are somehow “writing AR history” NOW. (ISMAR and companies such as metaio, e.g., are products of the PREVIOUS AR hype and not of the post-2009 one.) The postmodern iPhone-type AR hype is obviously pretty much dead, and good riddance!
Seems the allegedly “small” problems of accurate real-time registration (unsolved problem) and the lack of appropriate displays – which have plagued AR for the last 25 years – DID not disappear spontaneously because some bored marketing executives jumped onto the AR train. BTW, as far as they are concerned: good riddance too!
Oh yeah, BTW: Don’t worry, AR will be alive and kicking. The people who have done AR research for 10 or 20 or more years before the recent know-it-alls discovered the topic will still be working on it, maybe quietly, but steadily. Unlike the PR-driven dudes who came up with “ideas” like “HYPERLOCALITY!!!” in 2009 / 2010, these researchers also actually understand what the challenges are and what it will take to solve them. There will be some awesome AR system, but in 10 or 20 years’ time, and this development will NOT involve anybody who ever used the words “App” and “Venture Capital” in the same sentence.
Glad to have you back Joshua. Giving so many clues – now I have to find out who you really are.
Personally I still think that mobile devices are almost a prerequisite to successful, commercial AR (though it seems, not a sufficient requirement).