outdoor AR

hi guys,
sorry for my long absence but now i'm back from my summer break and plan to keep you up to date more frequently again. what i've recently been working on is outdoor applications of augmented reality for architectural visualization. this i've done using two different methods. on the one hand side i was using geo-referenced models and gps, compass and accelerometer input to calculate the current position of the camera. on the other hand side i was going on to experiment with the qualcomm augmented reality package and its capabilities for outdoor use.
i'll try to post some of my latest experiments and results over the next week.
i hope you will enjoy it and you give me some feedback.

video sample - augmented reality-project presentation

hi,
finally i managed to find some time to prepare a little sample video of my latest application. it was built as part of a project presentation for a design course. the project itself can be found here.
i hope you enjoy the video and, as usual, please leave a comment for any further questions.

update

hi,
the first official version of the qcar sdk was just released a few days back. it brought some great improvements on the tracking performance and on the list of supported devices. right now every android phone running android 2.1 - 2.3 should be supported.
that's one reason why i'm pretty busy at the moment. the process of updating existing projects to this new version takes a while. the second thing keeping me working is actually quite exciting for me. next week we will use an augmented reality application the first time to actually present a project we did for a design class at university. i hope by the end of next week i'll have a video for you ready showing you what we did!

as i recently realized the interest in virtual buttons seems to be pretty big. after i was not so happy about them at my first try i decided to give them another chance and prepare something after next week.
if you have any suggestions just send me a message.

sample video - apartment shadow scene

hi everybody,
i just posted a new video demonstrating the implementation of some light scenarios into an augmented reality application. it was built on base of the shadow demo project from unity that can be downloaded here. for performance and usability reasons i removed the interaction possibilities with the model.
the model has about 6000 polygons and 8 light maps with 1024x2048px each. on my xperia x10 the app reaches about 17 fps while on a samsung galaxy s it's about 50 fps.



for any further questions or suggestions please leave a comment or send me a message.

augmented reality to control your home

have a look at this very interesting project of a colleague. the idea of controlling your home with a mobile device like a mobile phone is not new but using augmented reality to do that is a great approach. although there might be some more steps to take to have such a system for everyday use there could be a lot of potential.
let me know what you think about it.

qualcomm - the future of mobile applications

hi,
this video clip is from february but i just thought about it.

"Liat Ben-Zur, Senior Director at Qualcomm, believes that in the future, mobile applications will be able to bridge the physical and virtual worlds through augmented reality and contextual capabilities."

the clip and quoted text were taken from this site.

in the video they mention a super market as example. you could get additional information on nutrition or cooking instructions as well as advertisements for related stuff by facing your camera towards a product.
but there are also completely different possibilities to use such technologies. by implementing geo-referenced 3d buildings you could be able to see different states of a certain area during time. just imagine walking through a city like rome with your mobile phone in your hand. it could give you the possibility to see how the street you just walk along looked a few hundred years ago. in addition you can still get information that might be of interest for you (see layar or wikitude).
of course the same also applies for future projects or unbuilt alternatives that can be shown with such an application.

this is one of the areas i want to work on in the near future. so if you have any suggestions, ideas or critics(!) please leave a comment.