Category Archives: Augmented Reality

My Wired.com Interview

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Wired.com interviewed me the other day on the subject of Augmented Reality.

Here is the article, which is currently the featured story on the site. – “If You’re Not Seeing Data, You’re Not Seeing.”

Being a huge Wired fan since the inception of the magazine it was a thrill to be directly contacted by them for my perspective on the dawn of the AR industry. I was asked specifically about the product mix focus for Ogmento, so I hinted at the fact that we are in talks to create mobile marketing campaigns around some major movies and toy lines.

I was slightly miss-quoted on the comment “In 2010 every blockbuster movie is going to have a mobile AR campaign tied to it.” I am not in the position to speak for “every” big movie marketing campaign, but I did share that all of the major movie studios we have met with love the possibilities of mobile AR. It is certain we will see a lot happening in the movie marketing space by end of year and into next.

Augmented Reality Comic Con

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I just returned from Comic Con (my 15th year), where I was showing people our iPhone Augmented Reality demo (ogmento.com). I am happy to report that there is fantastic buzz on our application with lots of interest from the entertainment, gaming and publishing sectors. It’s clear many are ready now to take the AR plunge!

While I was walking the convention floor with our mobile AR demo, I was pleased to discover 2009 to be the first year AR was showing up at the convention.

Focus Features had an AR demo using a webcam for the movie “9″ produced by Tim Burton. The poster for the movie is just a giant QR code, which will unlock the movie trailer. The AR demo had kids holding a postcard with a marker on the back in front of the webcam, and a static animated figure appeared.

Sony’s District 9 was also being promoted at Comic Con, and they have an AR exprience online promoting that movie too.

The most interesting official AR presentation was by Mattel, which introduced toys based on the movie “Avatar.” The toy line is being released with an augmented reality counterpart, as each toy comes with a 3D tag (i-Tag) which can be held under a webcam leading to an animated 3D vehicles coming alive on your computer. These vehicles can do battle as if you were playing a video game. Total Immersion developed this AR experience for Mattel, and they certainly are the reigning kings of the webcam-based experiences. The animations and audio were really nice, and the overall experience is a great bonus feature enhancement to the toy line.

I think this was the first entertainment convention where AR made a big splash. More and more people are now being introduced to Augmented Reality, and 2010 is looking to be a banner year as movie studios, toy companies and publishers begin to embrace the technology.

VAST Media

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I have been following the Augmented Reality (AR) scene for some time. If you are not familiar with AR, I highly recommend Ori Inbar’s website, GamesAlfresco.com, which has a great overview and ongoing coverage on the subject. Another great mind covering the AR scene is Robert Rice, who recently posted his of what AR will bring in an article called “Augmented Vision and the Decade of Ubiquity.“

Here is an excerpt:

“2010 to 2020 will become The Decade of Ubiquity. Not only will Level 3 become a reality, but the advent of this will spawn entirely new industries, professions, and hundreds of thousands of jobs. The impact of L3 will be equal to or greater than the effect of the Internet and the Web combined. Nearly every industry will change in some way, and L3 technologies will have a dramatic effect on our day to day lives, jobs, education, entertainment, culture, politics, society, and so on. Even newspapers will evolve and reinvent themselves. Today’s web designers and artists will become holoscape designers…”

Both Robert and I have started to use the term “VAST Media” to descibe this new landscape. I had initially suggested VAST to Robert as a term to express Virtual, Augmtented, Simulated, Tansformative Media. Robert started to use it instantly, but changed the “T” from Transformative to represent Technology, believing not all tech is transformative.

The term VAST seems to also cover media that goes beyond the 2D web… it has a geospatial feel to it, and AR gets very exciting when introduced into the environment and world around us. The term also expresses the immense opportunity and grandness of this burgeoning space.

If you are involved in creating virtual worlds, augmented reality or other simulated technologies, feel free to embrace this term if you like it. New Media, Digital Media, and even Emerging Media dont cover this world very well, but VAST Media gets much more specific. Let’s see if this sticks!

I have started to post some fun AR videos over at vastmedia.tumblr.com.

There are some very exciting experiments being done now, and even a few commercial products coming out (Topps, Lego, Toyota…). 2009 and especially 2010 are looking to be banner years for VAST Media to truly emerge and get mainstream attention.

I must also give credit to the iPhone as being a real game changer here… smartphones with their touch screens, built in cameras and accelerometers allow for unique location-based applications, and provide a “magic lens” if you will into a new realm… a realm where our reality is augmented and the possibilities are vast.