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Zugara’s First Webcam Based Augmented Reality Flash Game Utilizes Its Proprietary Motion Capture Technology

Integrates Facebook Connect To Put Casual Gamers And Their Friends In The Same Game.

August 12, 2009, Los Angeles – Today we’re launching another emerging media application, “Cannonballz”, an interactive webcam based flash game. Obviously it’s not news that an interactive marketing agency has built a flash game. The news is that “Cannonballz” is the first casual game built using Augmented Reality and our proprietary Motion Capture User Interface Engine (A.K.A. ZugMo Technology). ZugMo Technology enables anyone with a webcam (and a Flash plug-in) to physically engage with various elements that are integrated within their video stream. No mouse and no keyboard, it’s all done with gesture recognition. With this immersive technology you no longer just play games, you get to be in them. It’s a whole new experience.

Feel like giving the game a go? You can visit www.cannonballzthegame.com to play it now.

If you just want to see a demo of the game, please check out the video below.

With “Cannonballz”, we’ve used ZugMo Technology to build a casual game to showcase the potential of this technology. We previously used the technology to build an online shopping application called the Webcam Social Shopper. While we hope that people find this game to be fun, it’s not “the star” here. The technology is, and the possibilities of how it can be utilized are really as endless as a company’s creativity. Think about it: educational games for children; an entire section of games on Yahoo; casual games that engage consumers with a brand; product demonstrations; an interactive element in a corporate training session; etc.

“We chose casual gaming as a way to showcase the ZugMo Technology because over 200 million people play casual games every single month” said Matt Szymczyk, CEO, Zugara. “It’s an experience we’re all familiar with, and we hope will allow people to see the greater potential for this technology. Gaming is also the perfect execution to show the power of social media integration. For ‘Cannonballz’ we integrated Facebook Connect to allow users to not only bring their friends into the actual gameplay, but to quickly and easily share their scores and the game with their friends via their news stream.”

So, what do you think? We’d love to get your thoughts in the comments below.

About Zugara

Zugara, a member of the Augmented Reality Industry guiding “AR Consortium”, is an interactive marketing agency with a passion for emerging media and technologies. Unlike most agencies, we don’t claim to do everything: Interactive Video, Social Media, Mobile Marketing, and Website & Application Development are our core competencies. Since our doors opened in 2001, we’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the world’s best brands such as Reebok, Sony Computer Entertainment Of America, Toyota, Activision, Jelly Belly, Casio, The Air Force, and Lexus to create strategic interactive campaigns that focus on accomplishing their business objectives. Based in Los Angeles, we’re currently in the process of expanding, and opening our second office in New York.

www.zugara.com

www.zugarastudios.com

www.freetwitterdesigner.com

www.cannonballzthegame.com

For more information on this technology, including purchase of the Software Development Kit so you can create your own applications, please contact: cannonballz(at)zugara(dot)com.

For all press inquiries, please contact: press(at)zugara(dot)com.

Copyright 2009 ZugMo Technology
Copyright 2009 Zugara Inc.
Patent Pending
Song in video courtesy of David Rovics.

Augmented Reality’s Biggest Barrier To Adoption On The Web

Augmented Reality is pretty hot right now and is looking like another evolutionary step not only for the web but for mobile, retail, print and other marketing & advertising channels.  But for the web specifically, Augmented Reality is going to have to overcome a pretty large barrier to adoption in order for it to become mainstream.

Can you guess what that might be?

If you said, “Webcam” that’s only partially right and not the main barrier to adoption. Here’s why:

• 40% of Facebook videos are uploaded via Webcams
• The market for webcams was 1.8 billion in 2008 and is anticipated to reach 3.2 billion by 2015

Most webcams cost less than 50 bucks and are also coming standard in laptops so without doing too much math you can see that webcam usage is skyrocketing.

The main barrier to adoption for Augmented Reality on the web is something that’s proven time and time again to be the death knell of many web based software programs – the Internet Browser Plug-In.  Software reliant on a consumer installing a plug-in when visiting a site to view it won’t increase it’s adoption rate. Anybody remember Shockwave? I can tell you from first-hand experience over the last 10 years that it’s very rare if we ever present any web based technology to our clients that requires a plug-in as it’s become a form of taboo in interactive marketing circles.

Right now there are 3 competing technologies in the Augmented Reality space specific to the Internet Browser. (Note: I know there are more but the 3 main ones I’m going to list for now.)

Those 3 are:

1. Total Immersion.  Requires a proprietary plug-in.

2. Metaio. Requires a proprietary plug-in.

3. FLARToolkit.  Requires Flash 10 plug-in which is currently installed on 86.7% of browsers.

So right from that list you can gather that options 1 & 2 require the consumer to download an additional browser plug-in from an unknown source while FLARToolkit only requires the Flash plug-in that’s pretty much standard on everybody’s browser.   It’s no secret that consumers do not like installing plug-in’s to view content on a website, so this issue might be insurmountable for both Total Immersion and Metaio’s proprietary plug-ins to overcome.  Unless of course they have the type of cash that Microsoft has to pay developers and sites alike to try and force feed adoption of a technology like Silverlight.

Finally, there is one final barrier to adoption if you’re using Augmented Reality on the Web.  Making sure your tech is actually working.  This is from the Coraline site and somehow my top of the line Dual Core, 2.16ghz, 2gig RAM Alienware PC is not compatible.  No bueno…

Why Flash Will Not Be On The iPhone Anytime Soon…

Two words.  App Store.

Somehow Flash Lite or some other form of mobile Flash keeps getting brought up every year as we get closer to a new OS release or next generation handset.  So far, Apple hasn’t caved and is sticking to it’s PR line that Flash is a resource hog and therefore will hinder the mobile internet browsing experience on the iPhone.  Though this is 1/2 true as Flash websites would definitely require more processing power, memory and drain your battery faster, iPhone Apps use many of the same system resources that Flash would.  But, that’s not the real reason.  The real reason is that Apple has a good thing going with their App Store so why invite Flash to basically crash the party?

Think about it.  A good majority of the Apps in the App store could just as easily be Flash applications built into web pages.  And if Apple allowed this, they could kiss some of the 30% of revenue they’re making off the predicted $365 million – $800 million in sales the App Store is generating annually.  They would have no control over what Flash sites or content people are accessing via the Safari browser.  So by allowing Flash on the iPhone they’re faced with both a loss of revenue and loss of control.  Doesn’t sound like your classic ‘win win’ to me…

Flash on TV? Not In This Digital Living Room…

Adobe recently announced that they were extending Flash to TV and set-top box platforms. Dan Rayburn of the Business of Online Video has an excellent write-up on why Flash will not be a dominate platform on TV sets anytime in the near future. As Dan points out:

“Putting all that aside, how well will Flash work on the TV in terms of performance? For starters, when it specifically comes to HD video quality, Flash is not exactly leading in that department. Trying to get HD videos to play on my MacBook from their showcase website is a poor experience, with my six month old MacBook not being able to handle the processing power that’s needed. Yes, it works for 480p content, but only Adobe classifies 480p as “HD” on the web, no one else does. How much processing power will the TV or set-top box need to have even with the “optimized implementation of Flash technology” that Adobe is working on? Flash video is a resource intensive beast and unless Flash Lite is much better, I think the performance is going to be a big issue. I want to see this working at 1080p on a 50″ TV set without someone needing to have a 10MB connection.”

It’s not breaking news that the battle for the digital living room has already begun, but it also begs the question if Adobe is already too late to the game for this. The Big 3 Console Makers (Xbox, PS3, Wii) already have a foothold in the digital living room and what’s to stop someone like Sony from integrating a future iteration of PlayStation directly into their Bravia line of TV’s?