Augmented Reality

By now we've seen quite a few examples of augmented reality being used to let people zap virtual creatures in devices like the Nintendo 3DS and the appBlaster. Now John Atherton, inventor of the jaja stylus, is shaking up the concept by making the targets your friends and adding virtual collectibles and objectives into the mix. With his AppTag Laser Blaster attachment for smartphones, you'll be able to play first-person shooter games in the real world on any iOS or Android device, complete with virtual power-ups and other features usually reserved for console games.  Read More

A number of anonymous Google employees are reporting that the company is currently developing Android-powered glasses that can provide a heads-up display to the wearer and connect over wireless data services. The glasses will purportedly work like a wearable version of the Google Goggles app, providing real time information on a user's location via GPS and motion sensors. Even more surprising, the same sources are saying these "Google glasses" could be available to the public by the end of this year.  Read More

Before we are able to download knowledge straight to our brains - Matrix style - gaining medical expertise will remain a slow and painful process. That's fine by most people, who can just go and visit a trained doctor. But what if you are a member of a small team of specialists operating at a remote, isolated location with no immediate access to medical resources? Then you either need to be a doctor, or you need the Computer Assisted Medical Diagnosis and Surgery System. Devised by the European Space Agency (ESA), the augmented reality-based CAMDASS aims to provide astronauts with instant medical know-how.  Read More

New media entertainment company, d'strict, is pushing the concept of virtual reality to a new level with the "Live Park 4D World Tour," a new theme park that recently opened in South Korea. The park is comprised of 65 different attractions over a 10,000 sq. foot (929 sq m) space, which houses several large interactive displays as well as some installation art pieces. Visitors wear RFID wristbands that allow the displays to identify them, while Kinect sensors detect their movements, voices, and faces. Many of the attractions center around having users create an avatar of themselves that they can interact with and take on a virtual adventure, which is portrayed using 3D video, holograms, and augmented reality technology.  Read More

Here's an unlikely recipe for successfully spicing up a winter clothes catalog – make the models lose their clothes, or to be more exact, allow your clients to see what is hiding underneath the bulky winter garments. The X-Ray augmented reality app by clothing retailer Moosejaw does exactly that. It uses your mobile device's camera and some augmented reality trickery to grant you X-ray vision, as you scan both female and male models' bodies in the catalog. All you have to do is position your device over the catalog pages.  Read More

When Sony wanted to highlight the immersiveness of movies available on the Playstation Store, they turned to UK-based agencies Studio Output and Marshmallow Laser Feast to create a series of shorts around the theme "great films fill rooms." Using the Playstation Move, the production team shot a handful of scenes depicting an ordinary man going from his couch to flying above skyscrapers as a robot and fighting sea monsters. The best part: not a single aspect of these videos was added in the editing room.  Read More

Fans of the original film in the Terminator franchise will recall how various bits of data were shown to be overlaid on the cyborg's vision - in particular, they might remember the list of possible responses that could be used when someone was angrily knocking on its door (for those who don't remember, its chosen response wasn't very polite). Such augmented vision systems are now a little closer to reality, thanks to work being done by a team of scientists at the University of Washington and Aalto University, in Finland. They have created a contact lens that displays information, which is visible to the wearer.  Read More

Although many of us don't know how we ever managed without our car navigation systems, they are not without their flaws. For one thing, when that voice says "Turn left in 100 meters," you may find yourself looking out the windshield and wondering "Does that mean this left turn, or the one just past it?" The Wikitude Drive augmented reality navigation app is designed to address these problems, by overlaying directional arrows on real-time video of the road in front of you.  Read More

Augmented reality (AR) seems to be touching almost every part of our lives at the moment. It's bringing arcade games to life, keeping back seat kids entertained during long journeys, offering on-the-spot translations and helping us to see the world in a different light. Now, Sony UK has developed an online tool that uses AR to help users visualize a new big screen TV in their home without needing to resort to a tape measure, or just leaving it to guess work and hoping for the best.  Read More