This is a video-based argumented reality app example.  By seeing through the camera of   iphone or ipad, user could gain a similar view appeared in the movie Terminator as the app name implies. It utilizes the face recognition technology and by capturing one person’s face, it will compare the image captured and one’s facebook profile photo. If two matches, the relevant information like name, age, gender, place of living etc, will be shown surrounded the person on the screen. But as seen from the video, the recognition process is a bit slow.

Though the dark dim red sight of view appearing distracting, I think this is still an excellent app in aspect of AR experiences. Unlike those seemingly fancy AR games on the market, this is the one having the potential integrating into people’s daily life. This is the app you would use frequently if in the future more advanced HMD is developed. It saves us from the embarrassing scene like forgetting new acquaintance’s name and helps knowing our friends better. It can even show the recent activities of your friend posted on the facebook. It is also a good example of meeting the need of huge amount of data required by AR by retrieving directly from those comercial SNS website.

The “Human Pacman” was mixed reality take on the classic PacMan game by the Mixed Reality Lab of National University of Singapore. The idea behind it is such that each players starts off in a physical location and move along the grid that appears before them through their hmd. The main aim is to collect the cookies, that appears infront of them in a form of augmented objects while trying to evade ghosts, who are fellow players. A mix of sensors as well as devices are used to bring the augmented reality experience to live, not limited to the GPS tracking and HMDs.

Why i like this experience would be because of its novel use of participants in game like environment together with augmented reality. Additionally also due to the fact that the idea brings to live a classic game that most people would have played before but giving it an augmented/real life twist, it brings about a cool factor. Thus inspiring me to create AR/MR applications that gives the experience of bringing to life games that  they might have played before in a normal environment like a computer or a board game. I am also inspired on how the game game-mixed reality example can be done without the need for the heavy equipment. Another inspiration that this project gives me would be the ubiquity of how the entire experience is and should be.

Wide-Area Augmented Reality allows the users to set up their own environments for the characters to interact in. Around the one minute mark in the following video, a little dog runs around an obstacle course that the user was still rearranging. The virtual creature that seems to freely roam in the augmented environment of trees (which are stationary in the position of their cards) is what makes this demo the most appealing to me. It makes me think that a similar augmented reality experience could be used by the military to train their soldiers who would wear augmented reality glasses as they crawl, jump, and run through a bigger, more complicated obstacle course. A simpler use of wide-area augmented reality could be to simulate the behaviors of other pets or small wild creatures like butterflies for children to learn about them in great detail.

Videos:

1.

My project, which I have titled “AR/MR Narrative Interactive Theme Park Experience”, will involve the creation of a digital, interactive theme park environment which will be represented by a large overhead map characterization of an area with various themed environments through with the user will navigate. By using their finger, the user can select an area, zero in on that area and select a ride on which they wish to embark

Throughout the park and the various themed sections, there will be rides which model realistic engineering projects that utilize augmented reality and mixed reality design through out their course and/or duration (See Video 1). These will be activated through their selection by the user, initiating a corresponding (interactive) video sequence which “takes the user on a ride”. The rides will have a narrative focus and will composite various storylines for the user to explore. Different rides can be embarked on in differing orders to vary up the sequence of narrative.

My inspiration for this project comes from various aims to achieve the same means: the ultimate, fully accessible, interactive MR theme park. By venturing into the area of AR/MR, I am able to navigate the obstacles of accessibility and costs with relative ease in comparison to making an actual physical park. In addition, a park where the rides in differently themed sections of the park can compose a multitude of narratives for users to explore is something that greatly appeals to me as a design goal. I think of the experience akin to a real life MMORPG, which is in fact what I intend to achieve, starting from this project.

We travel around the world and more often then not, we will will visit places that are featured in a particular movie or some major news or event happen. This application even though do not qualify as a true augmented reality by Azuma, it does not overlay 3d  nor does it show the real environment behind it, is a nifty idea to bring to life a place that was used for some production. In this case it is a movie but many things are recorded everyday, from news to documentary and historical events. A featured movie replay or a maybe a documentary of this locations history in the scene brings about much more value to the place then just listening to what happened or how it was used.

The idea itself entices me the most as imagine a travelling device, be it a mobile phone or viewing glasses, with advances in matching and rendering, we could easily overlay events as its viewed or even reverse the time line. From the time when the movie used the place for a shoot to a historical event that happened a few decades back, the user may “rewind” time and view overlayed footage rather then  just text, a definite plus to any experience.

This clip is about having everybody step into the world of National Geographic. in some kind of a public display in a mall there is a large screen and cameras where it detects people at the designated spot to be surrounded by all sorts of animals, including prehistoric dinosaurs. This interaction allows users to experience a scenario which is impossible in the real world. Being adjacent to prehistoric animals or even dangerous animals such as the cheetah is near impossible, yet through augmented reality, it gives a partial scenario of what it could be like. You could observe the bedazzlement from the audience that they are enjoying this whole new experience. I particularly liked this example because it presented the fact that it will allow people to enjoy all sorts of scenarios which they normally would not be able to.

Many demonstrations on YouTube qualify as augmented reality as described by Azuma. A small subset of these use the technology to enhance a real-world experience in a meaningful way. This museum experience introduces several applications of augmented reality. At the beginning of the museum, an exhibit on Benjamin Franklin invokes an avatar of the famous scientist to theatrically describe his life. This video then uses Franklin to act as tour guide of other exhibits throughout the museum, directing patrons to points of interest and providing continuity through disparate themes and exhibits.

Introducing multiple historical figures as tour guides would allow a museum patron to view each exhibit through separate viewpoints: An Aztec warrior would be amazed by Franklin’s balloon, but Neil Armstrong might describe it as quaint. Encouraging museum patrons to view exhibits from new perspectives can strengthen the relationship between the patron and the physical artifacts on display.