Michael_Curator writes to tell us that mobile phones now have a "reality overlay" app that combines a smartphone's camera, GPS, and compass to augment a user's view of a particular location with metadata. "It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each [commercial] partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers."
It is sort of like "Terminator Vision", except corporations can buy ad space in it: John Connor identified, targeti...SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM MCDONALD'S: COME IN NOW WITH YOUR PHONE FOR $1 OFF A COMBO MEAL!!!
Someone has to pay to keep juice flowing to the servers. Either the app is free/cheap and advertisers pay for it, or it costs and arm and a leg and a subscription and they load it with all kinds of content. If someone were smart and working on building these apps and a business model, they'd do like Google does and put "preferred" results up top, but let all of them through.
The problem is that it don't display "Kill Sarah Connor" but "Buy shoes there!". But anyway, if we ever want to have terminator vision whoever develops it should have some initial funding, and ads seems to be the candy that makes most public advancements possible lately.
I think it's fair to say that every technology has good and bad uses. If we're only worried about the bad uses of a new idea/tool/etc. then even agriculture wouldn't work.
Imagine a ratebeer.com layer permanently on your phone. Whenever you're in a new city, filter by whatever beer you like, or for pubs within the top 20% ratings for the city.
Except it won't be run exclusively by family-friendly institutions. There will be a lot of other content in out of the way places. Some of it will be encoded with euphemisms, slang terms, steganography, encryption, etc., and will be cross-referenced to more detailed information on the net.
Don't worry, there will be something for everyone.
Our intrepid explorer stands in the middle of the block on a dark evening in a strange part of town. He scans his surroundings with his cell phne until he sees the small red letters "GFE" hovering over the door of an apartment in a building across the street. Bingo.
Read "Halting State" by Charles Stross. (True, the version he was writing about was a bit more advanced...but it's clearly the same thing.)
Or read "The California Voodoo Game" by Larry Niven et. al. Again, a slightly more advanced version. If you've got a flexible imagination then you could try "Dream Park" (same author). There he was talking about holographic projections, but this is the same sort of thing, and there he was talking about something not much more advanced than this.
I wake up in the darkness, totally lost. I fumble for my smartphone, knowing it's the only was I'll manage to reach home before dawn. What I see is not comforting.
"It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
Haven't relatively mature technologies like GPS devices been providing augmented reality for some time now? I mean, my GPS can show me the location of Dunkin Donuts shops long before I can see them on the street.
Integrating the GPS-located items in the camera view seems to be the only innovation here.
Haven't relatively mature technologies like GPS devices been providing augmented reality for some time now? I mean, my GPS can show me the location of Dunkin Donuts shops long before I can see them on the street. Integrating the GPS-located items in the camera view seems to be the only innovation here.
"Augmented reality", as usually discussed, means overlaying data relevant to the current view over a normal view of the world, so the part that it adds is the part that makes it "augmented reality".
"Prescience" entails a great deal of paying attention.
I tried to buy Vinge lunch at CHI '99, but he declined, saying that he had to meet with the folks from the MIT wearables group. A Deepness in the Sky was freshly out, but he was already soaking up info to pour into Rainbows End (no apostrophe). I wonder who he's hanging out with now.
Alas, it doesn't look like his retirement from teaching is having much effect on his cicada-like rate of new releases...
How long will it take for the National Sex Offender Registry overlay to be created? Then you can be sure your kids are safer, when your phone alerts you to a nearby sex offender.
http://www.familywatchdog.us/ [familywatchdog.us]
Put a chip in all of the offenders so that when your kid's cell phone gets close to them, like say 30ft the phone starts playing the "Danger, Danger Will Robinson" sound clip from the Lost in Space TV series.
So this wouldn't really just be another means for greedy people to control and manipulate my perception and information in such a way that it benefits them? Like having selective "points of interest" in navigation and mapping software, those inclusions only being available to those "points" willing to pony up a chunk of dough for the privilege?
This "reality overlay" is really about reality control/filtering.
Back when Google was running the first round of the Android programming challenge, a lot of excitement was generated by an augmented reality app called Enkin. To everybody's surprise, it didn't make it into the first round of finals, and seemd to disappear from sight. Turns out that Google had some other plans for them [androidguys.com].
I did see one AR app in action on a G1, but I don't remember what it was called. The results were so-so... Hit and miss, sometimes it would get the buildings right, sometimes it wouldn't. But
You're probably thinking of Wikitude, which has been around for a while, and overlays wikipedia information on buildings and landmarks. It's a pretty cool app, and a bit more altruistic than Layar (which does it for commercial purposes).
For those not familiar with augmented reality [wikipedia.org] a very recent Japanese anime series called Denno Coil [wikipedia.org] is a good place to start.
I was telling people twenty or more years ago that I wanted a handheld device that I could take on the trail, hold up, look through like a little window, and see an overlay showing trail distances, climbs/descents, geographic feature names, and so forth. In 1990, you could do it as a slow, clumsy demo on a "handheld device" tethered to a room full of equipment. Now, with GPS, built-in cameras and good inertial tracking, we're really just a good eye-tracking layer away from a true implementation.
When Google StreetView can get the street numbers right, this might actually work.
For now, it's just going to be another ad delivery system.
The cool app for this would be one that, when you enter a restaurant or store, sounds an alarm if the business has a problem, like a poor Yelp rating, a poor BBB rating, a poor health department rating, etc.
For those of you who read Wm Gibson's Virtual Light [wikipedia.org] (1994) I'd guess we're a step closer...:-)
If you haven't read it, the book centers around a pair of special glasses that sport "Virtual Light". The concept of VL adds optical data for the wearer. In the book, this can be whatever supplemental data you've uploaded. Load the right data, and when you look at a garden though the VL glasses, you get a little tag overlayed on each plant, telling you that plant's name and other info. Cops might see forensic data overlayed when they look at a crime scene. Or a land developer might see future, planned buildings in place of what's there now.
In the book, the macguffin [wikipedia.org] was supposedly the Virtual Light glasses, but really it was the data on them and what it meant to the data owner.
... as pictures are taken the location can be stored in a database and a digital reconstruction of reality can be created. why drive a car with a camera on top when you can get humanity to do all the work for free by providing a service?!
Interesting idea. But I doubt the phones will be uploading pictures to a database until the pricing structure of data plans changes.
The service will be less competitive against other similar services if it chews up your data allocation by uploading pictures while the compe
First off, you're thinking of Wikitude, and I agree, it's not original, the idea's been around for a while, it just hasn't been entirely feasible till now.
But it's far from useless. Just because YOU don't have a use for it doesn't mean others don't. I, for instance, am a huge astronomy buff, and think that Google Sky Map is very cool. Instead of spending an hour orienting and aligning my telescope to Polaris, and constantly tweaking it, I can point my phone at the sky and it's tell me what I'm looking at and where to find other objects. Very handy for me, not so handy for someone who doesn't go outside.
Last year I spent a week in Europe, including Prague, and would've loved to have Wikitude point out building data and points of interest. It's a brilliant tool for tourists.
The technology is VERY useful, but it's only in it's infancy right now. Once upon a time people thought GPS was useless when it was first introduced to the commercial sector. Now many people can barely drive without it. Whether you like it or not, semantically associating data online with reality is the future, and makes that data infinitely more useful.
PS - Maybe you'd find a use for it if you ever went outside;)
See, while I actually do find this useful for traveling, etc., it's actually a rather weak form of true AR.
For it to be the real deal, first of all, requires a heads up display be it a corneal implant, actual functional eyeglass display or whatever. It needs to have the ability to contextually figure out what I'm doing and respond appropriately. Say for instance I'm working on my car and I'm not sure exactly how a part is supposed to fit. A true AR setup would just overlay a holographic image of the
For the conceptually challenged: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:For the conceptually challenged: (Score:4, Funny)
John Connor identified, targeti... SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM MCDONALD'S: COME IN NOW WITH YOUR PHONE FOR $1 OFF A COMBO MEAL!!!
Wake me up when anyone can put their stuff on it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the belly laugh. Brought back memories of the game more than the movie. That freakin' shooting range was awesome!
Guided world tour (Score:5, Funny)
'And on our right here, we have the parking lot that is affectionately nicknamed 'The Hobo's Restroom'. Please watch your step.'
Re:Guided world tour (Score:5, Insightful)
We weren't content with just the billboards that reality already has...
Parent
Re:Guided world tour (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's fair to say that every technology has good and bad uses. If we're only worried about the bad uses of a new idea/tool/etc. then even agriculture wouldn't work.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that the world isn't a museum, and I don't need a guided tour of every chain convenience store within walking distance at any given time.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You simpleminded dilettante.
Imagine a ratebeer.com layer permanently on your phone.
Whenever you're in a new city, filter by whatever beer you like, or for pubs within the top 20% ratings for the city.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, there will be something for everyone.
Cool but Useless (Score:2)
Sure it's cool, but can anyone give me a situation where they would actually use this in real life? I'm still waiting on the basic stuff, like Flash.
Re: (Score:2)
Our intrepid explorer stands in the middle of the block on a dark evening in a strange part of town. He scans his surroundings with his cell phne until he sees the small red letters "GFE" hovering over the door of an apartment in a building across the street. Bingo.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, due to local magnetic anomalies his compass is three degrees off and it's the wrong door...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
You never visit foreign countries?
Re: (Score:2)
Read "Halting State" by Charles Stross. (True, the version he was writing about was a bit more advanced...but it's clearly the same thing.)
Or read "The California Voodoo Game" by Larry Niven et. al. Again, a slightly more advanced version. If you've got a flexible imagination then you could try "Dream Park" (same author). There he was talking about holographic projections, but this is the same sort of thing, and there he was talking about something not much more advanced than this.
N.B.: All of these s
I can see it now (Score:5, Funny)
I wake up in the darkness, totally lost. I fumble for my smartphone, knowing it's the only was I'll manage to reach home before dawn.
What I see is not comforting.
"It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
Re: (Score:2)
That is awesome. I really wish I had my mod points on this story rather than the last, but you won't need them.
Sounds a lot like Parallel Kingdom (Score:2)
http://www.parallelkingdom.com/home.shtml [parallelkingdom.com]
finding public bathrooms in strange city (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
No Thanks (Score:2)
If I want to know what building I'm looking at, I'll read the letters on it, not some ad on my phone.
Done and done (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Augmented reality", as usually discussed, means overlaying data relevant to the current view over a normal view of the world, so the part that it adds is the part that makes it "augmented reality".
OTOH, it so
Rainbow's End (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
"Prescience" entails a great deal of paying attention.
I tried to buy Vinge lunch at CHI '99, but he declined, saying that he had to meet with the folks from the MIT wearables group. A Deepness in the Sky was freshly out, but he was already soaking up info to pour into Rainbows End (no apostrophe). I wonder who he's hanging out with now.
Alas, it doesn't look like his retirement from teaching is having much effect on his cicada-like rate of new releases...
Phht (Score:5, Funny)
/unimpressed.
Call when they develop THIS app.
http://www.pictureshack.net/images/9846newlayar.JPG [pictureshack.net]
(Yes, it's sloppy; it was a very quick photoshop.)
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably yes. Just need to link your facebook profile to your location (and get everyone else to do that).
Sex Offenders Registry Overlay (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Put a chip in all of the offenders so that when your kid's cell phone gets close to them, like say 30ft the phone starts playing the "Danger, Danger Will Robinson" sound clip from the Lost in Space TV series.
Re: (Score:2)
How long will it take for the National Sex Offender Registry overlay to be created?
About twenty minutes after one of the developers reads your post.
"Each [commercial] partner", eh? (Score:2)
So this wouldn't really just be another means for greedy people to control and manipulate my perception and information in such a way that it benefits them? Like having selective "points of interest" in navigation and mapping software, those inclusions only being available to those "points" willing to pony up a chunk of dough for the privilege?
This "reality overlay" is really about reality control/filtering.
Enkin (Score:2)
Back when Google was running the first round of the Android programming challenge, a lot of excitement was generated by an augmented reality app called Enkin. To everybody's surprise, it didn't make it into the first round of finals, and seemd to disappear from sight. Turns out that Google had some other plans for them [androidguys.com].
I did see one AR app in action on a G1, but I don't remember what it was called. The results were so-so... Hit and miss, sometimes it would get the buildings right, sometimes it wouldn't. But
Re: (Score:2)
Denno Coil (Score:2)
once was a game (Score:2)
there was a game that layered the 'real world' video with CG characters.
I want AR contacts, but I'll settle for a phone (Score:2)
I was telling people twenty or more years ago that I wanted a handheld device that I could take on the trail, hold up, look through like a little window, and see an overlay showing trail distances, climbs/descents, geographic feature names, and so forth. In 1990, you could do it as a slow, clumsy demo on a "handheld device" tethered to a room full of equipment. Now, with GPS, built-in cameras and good inertial tracking, we're really just a good eye-tracking layer away from a true implementation.
Re: (Score:2)
Sheesh. Kids these days.
When Google StreetView can get the numbers right (Score:3, Interesting)
When Google StreetView can get the street numbers right, this might actually work.
For now, it's just going to be another ad delivery system.
The cool app for this would be one that, when you enter a restaurant or store, sounds an alarm if the business has a problem, like a poor Yelp rating, a poor BBB rating, a poor health department rating, etc.
Step closer to Virtual Light (Score:3, Interesting)
For those of you who read Wm Gibson's Virtual Light [wikipedia.org] (1994) I'd guess we're a step closer ... :-)
If you haven't read it, the book centers around a pair of special glasses that sport "Virtual Light". The concept of VL adds optical data for the wearer. In the book, this can be whatever supplemental data you've uploaded. Load the right data, and when you look at a garden though the VL glasses, you get a little tag overlayed on each plant, telling you that plant's name and other info. Cops might see forensic data overlayed when they look at a crime scene. Or a land developer might see future, planned buildings in place of what's there now.
In the book, the macguffin [wikipedia.org] was supposedly the Virtual Light glasses, but really it was the data on them and what it meant to the data owner.
You're wrong! You're racist, and you're wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
And it's called augmented reality. Reinventing the wheel is bad for society but good for egos.
If it weren't for people reinventing the wheel, we wouldn't have rubber tires, tank treads, and chrome spinnaz!
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting idea. But I doubt the phones will be uploading pictures to a database until the pricing structure of data plans changes.
The service will be less competitive against other similar services if it chews up your data allocation by uploading pictures while the compe
Re:Not original, not a "Killer App" (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's far from useless. Just because YOU don't have a use for it doesn't mean others don't. I, for instance, am a huge astronomy buff, and think that Google Sky Map is very cool. Instead of spending an hour orienting and aligning my telescope to Polaris, and constantly tweaking it, I can point my phone at the sky and it's tell me what I'm looking at and where to find other objects. Very handy for me, not so handy for someone who doesn't go outside.
Last year I spent a week in Europe, including Prague, and would've loved to have Wikitude point out building data and points of interest. It's a brilliant tool for tourists.
The technology is VERY useful, but it's only in it's infancy right now. Once upon a time people thought GPS was useless when it was first introduced to the commercial sector. Now many people can barely drive without it. Whether you like it or not, semantically associating data online with reality is the future, and makes that data infinitely more useful.
PS - Maybe you'd find a use for it if you ever went outside
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
See, while I actually do find this useful for traveling, etc., it's actually a rather weak form of true AR.
For it to be the real deal, first of all, requires a heads up display be it a corneal implant, actual functional eyeglass display or whatever. It needs to have the ability to contextually figure out what I'm doing and respond appropriately. Say for instance I'm working on my car and I'm not sure exactly how a part is supposed to fit. A true AR setup would just overlay a holographic image of the