"Terminator Vision" Is Here For the iPhone 245
musefrog writes "The BBC is reporting that so-called augmented reality has arrived — in the UK at least.
From the article: 'Via the video function of a mobile phone's camera it is now possible to combine a regular pictorial view with added data from the internet just as the fictional Terminator was able to overlay its view of the world with vital information about its surroundings. For example, UK-firm Acrossair has launched an application for the iPhone which allows Londoners to find their nearest tube station using their iPhone.' The page features an impressive video demonstrating AR in action."
Youtube Link / mirror (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Classic Cyberpunk (Score:5, Informative)
Launched or not? (Score:4, Informative)
The summary says it has launched.
The Acrossair page says they need beta testers.
The app page (on the Acrossair site) says it will launch when Apple approves it.
Does anyone know which is correct? I tend to believe it has already launched since the article and summary corroborate.
Perhaps someone on the other side of the water could try to pull it up in the iTunes store.
Camera? (Score:5, Informative)
Zoe Kleinman tries out Acrossair's software that uses a phone's camera to tell you where the nearest London Underground station is.
It's using the phones GPS, compass and accelerometers to decide what to draw on the screen, NOT the camera, if you watch the video the bloke even says as much. Mush more impressive would be applications that can use what the camera sees by reading text/barcodes or recognising objects and combining it with GPS and internet data to offer more infomation on the world around us.
Re:Hud? (Score:5, Informative)
1.) Single eye solutions confuse the brain after a short period of time. The brain tries to correlate both eyes input and can't, so it starts dropping information. That causes tremendous problems because the brain doesn't know which information is appropriate to drop. Using a two-eye HMD solves that problem.
2.) The other problem is that the brain is very perceptive of information that doesn't actually coorelate to the real world. Think about an artifical horizon that doesn't quite keep up to speed with the real horizon that the pilot sees. That slight delay error will cause problems for the pilot similar to the above, where the brain quits using and relying on that information.
3.) The last problem is the biggest. How do you get an image focused at infinity. The traditional way is to use fancy optics to lengthen the path from the emitter to the eye to make it appear that the image is beyond 6' or so. Getting that done is very tricky and bulky. Just putting an image on the lens isn't enough... it must be presented in such a way that they pilot has a reduced work load (on the eye muscles) so that it is not a tiring experience.
I see that VirtualHUD as quite an innovative solution for that problem because, 1.) it's aready presented to both eyes simultaneously and 2.) it's focused at infinity (or darn close to it) by default. Generally the propeller is already far enough away from the pilot.
Bill
Re:I like how this is it arriving. (Score:3, Informative)
Darn it, that was supposed to be a link [computerworld.com]
Re:Hud? (Score:3, Informative)
The Apache system actually only projects into one eye, but can be switched to either side. In addition, the information they present is not generally coorelated with the outside view so they avoid some of the issues. However, even with that, they're still having problems with pilot fatigue with them.
As for other aircraft, generally, they use the classic style HUD, not an HMD. With a HUD, you use a combiner plate (glass plate in front of pilot) to achieve a forward field of view, however narrow it is. These types of units start at about $200,000 each.
Bill
Terrible demo (Score:3, Informative)
Impressive? The demo suggests that Oxford Circus and Great Portland Street are the nearest tube stations to Piccadilly Circus. It doesn't even mention .... Piccadilly Circus.
Layar (Score:2, Informative)
Check out Layar.com for a cool Android application that has the exact same vision. Their video on the site shows a demo with houses for sale in Amsterdam.