People often tend to think of Augmented Reality as a visual sense, but other senses can be augmented as well. There was the Smell Enhanced Augmented Reality headset and now there’s a way to augment what you hear as well.
iFilm has a great article on a fascinating iPhone app called RjDJ that augments sound around you into interactive music. Christopher Nolan (director of Inception, Dark Knight, Memento) is also involved with this in regards to an augmented version of the Inception score. Check out the embedded video below to get a sense of how an augmented sense of hearing can make your daily commute much more enjoyable…
SPOILER ALERT!!!! (Bonus Video and text below refers to the movie Inception – DO NOT READ if you have not seen the movie yet…)
Bonus clip – If you’re a fan of Inception, you might have caught on to how music in that film is augmented in a way as the team goes deeper into each dream level. As time slowed down, so too did the music to ‘wake up’ people. Didn’t catch this upon first view and just adds another layer to a great film…
I contributed an OpEd on AdAge today on the upcoming battle defining virtual property rights in an Augmented World. This is one area to keep an eye on as we get closer to a world where certain legal and ownership rights for physical presences has yet to be defined. I included the OpEd in this blog entry so feel free to comment on AdAge here or below…
Picture this scenario coming soon to a future near you: You are out and about looking for something to eat. As you walk along a row of restaurants, you decide to put on your augmented reality glasses to see ratings, a video greeting from the restaurant owner and interactive displays of their daily specials. However, as you look closer at the restaurant, you notice a virtual advertisement and coupon from a competing restaurant just a few blocks away. Touching the advertisement, you’re then given animated directions to the establishment, the virtual coupon and video recommendations from the competing chef. Your decision on where to eat has just been made for you.
Sound like science fiction? Not really. As augmented reality and location-based services continue to evolve, companies will need to start thinking about their ownership rights in virtual space.
Right now, the technology exists to tag virtual information onto a physical location in a very basic form. You can use an augmented reality mobile application such as Tagwhat that knows your general location (based on GPS) and you can access consumer generated information (videos, images, etc.) specific to that area. But as the U.S. government launches its next-generation GPS system, we’re looking at future GPS accuracy that will be “less than a meter”. The only question remaining will be if the government will allow this type of precision for civilian use and subsequently, new location-based systems.
Nothing right now is preventing companies from delivering virtual advertisements on a physical competitors’ presence. Physical presence is defined by square footage and boundaries of your building and other rights that might be granted to you property-wise. But where do rights to your space begin and end in an augmented world?
Geofencing is one step in the right direction as it allows for a virtual boundary for your physical location. This would allow you to potentially defend competitors from digitally tagging your physical property based on current laws, but what about 50 feet above your property? We tend to think of physical boundaries on an X and Y plane but where does your space end on a Z plane? How will public virtual space be defined and monetized as well?
Pillsbury Law Firm has recently started a division that is specifically setup to help define law in virtual and augmented space. James Gatto, leader of Pillsbury’s Virtual Worlds & Video Game Team, has been working with clients to help protect them from the potential issues mentioned above. “In emerging fields like virtual worlds and augmented reality, it is important to understand the unique legal issues these new technologies can represent. Real world laws will need to be redefined to bring order out of the potential chaos an augmented or virtual world will usher in for unprepared companies.”
A recent exhibit at MoMA in New York allowed people to view augmented art works via a layer app on their smartphones. Though not seen by the naked eye, these virtual works of art could be seen in an Augmented View in the exhibition space. You might also recall a recent battle between Audi and BMW through the use of physical billboards across from each other.
Imagine how this advertising battle could escalate in an augmented world with virtual ads targeted to specific customers. It’s important for companies to start thinking about all of this now because an augmented world is closer to becoming a reality than many of us are prepared for.
Check out the first commercial coming out for Xbox 360 Kinect. This is the start of a revolution in interaction that you cannot stop and can only hope to contain!
Came across this video for an Augmented Reality game for the Android called Modroids. This is optimized for the Samsung Galaxy which is playing up its mobile AR capabilities on the Android-based tablet. Love the multiplayer aspect of the game and ability to play anywhere…
As Mobile Augmented Reality continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see (from a UI perspective) how these applications will show Augmented information integrated with the live mobile camera feed. Cities are one natural environment for this and we’ve already seen how Layar is allowing people to see how the Berlin Wall looked, where it was placed, etc. This is fine when there might be open space but how do you show the past on existing structures? While browsing my RSS feeds, I came across these amazing photos from English Russia (image above) which are combining imagery to show elements of the city in the past with the city in the present. An iPhone app called Streetmuseum, created by the Museum of London, already partially accomplishes this by showing historical images in select areas of London (image below.)
Will this ultimately be how Augmented Reality will overlay information, imagery and video on existing structures? I’m curious to everybody’s else thoughts on the matter so welcome comments below or on Twitter @Kobrakai.
With Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect and Sony PlayStation’s Move set to usher in the era of NUI (Natural User Interface) gaming, it’ll only be a matter of time until certain gestures become mainstream through popular motion-based games. Think the swipe of the finger on the iPhone now to interact with content but without touching an actual device. What was seen as the future in movies like Minority Report and Iron Man 2 is now becoming a reality and will help mature the Augmented Reality field even further.
Zugara’s Blake Callens had a previous blog post summarizing these new gaming systems at E3 and how they will usher in the NUI. But this post is more about the marketing behind these games and their respective videos. So below are a few videos showing Kinect and Move and the various games that will have your body and movements act as the controller.
Needless to say we’re excited about both systems and the evolution they represent for gestural interaction, the NUI and Augmented Reality.
I’m personally still on the fence regarding tablets in general, but it’s refreshing to finally see an electronics manufacturer (Samsung in this case) get it – and by get it I mean how suited AR is for tablets with front and back facing cameras. This is the new Samsung Galaxy tablet with more details from Crunchgear and from the Galaxy product site.
We Are Organized Chaos (WAOC) is Zugara’s (www.zugara.com) interactive marketing and advertising blog where we’ll be featuring some great projects and discussing upcoming trends in the digital world. Work — good and bad — will be critiqued. Hope you’ll enjoy reading our insights and thoughts on interactive.
