Augmented Reality is not Virtual Reality
This past week I took the train into NYC to attend my very first meetup for the Augmented Reality New York (ARNY). Due to a rain/traffic combo, I missed the earlier express train from New Haven and arrived at the Porter Novelli office on Varick Street just after the first presentation, a game demo, had ended.
I was happy to start things off with a new AR demo from the restaurant review company Zagat. Having just recently spent $10 on the full Zagat 2010 guide for my Droid, I was anxious to see what’s next. As opposed to just transforming their print guidebook to digital, Zagat is actually adopting some real AR “point and view” technologies that will be especially helpful in major metro markets (where Zagat is best known anyway). One interesting new function they had was the ability to zoom forward and back amongst the floating restaurant tags while still within the virtual browser. Other apps that I’ve seen require you to set the “visible” distance you want to reach out to BEFORE firing up the virtual browser. After the five minute demo, they allowed five minutes for Q&A from the audience (exactly like Video 2.0 NY Meetup Group does). During the questions, someone asked about a Zagat layer for Layar, to which Ryan Charles smiled and said that something was in the works with Layar but that he couldn’t talk about it. Hopefully my $10 investment will transfer! One feature they need to consider is launching restaurant websites in your default mobile browser of choice (Dolphin) instead of their built-in Zagat browser.
With kudos being foisted upon the Zagat representative for developing a very handy mobile phone rig that attached a video camera and a iphone to the same structure for demo purposes, the next company, Acrossair, was stepping up to the plate. Dana Farbo, president of the company provided a mediocre demonstration of their new AR browser. This is the company responsible for some very niche AR browsers – like subway finder and the Stella Artois finder app. Somehow they came to an epiphany that maybe people will not actually want to download a separate finder app for McDonalds and a separate app for Wendys and a separate app… You get the picture. So Mr. Farbo demonstrated a new ‘super” browser that began to combine these elements together. While I did record the demonstration, the interface was interesting but crowded and not very elegant; very reminiscent of something from the Idiocracy movie or this crazy new “hyper-reality” YouTube video that is both interesting and alarming at the same time. One unique feature I did note about this new browser from Acrossair was the ability to rotate the floating tags without actually having to spin yourself. It seems we are starting gain some real-world, “street” realities about walking around like idiots starring at tiny screens and spinning in circles while the rest of world stares in wonder. I didn’t record the Q&A part of this demo, but I didn’t get any real sense of excitement about what Mr. Farbo brought to the group.
While I thought I had killed a lot of time and resources just getting to this little hour long meet-up, Noora Guldemond, from Metaio, had just travelled from California (via Germany) to demonstrate a project her team is developing for Lego. While she had some difficulty (go full screen for best detail ) getting the webcam to engage because of lighting issues and a flash going off (no thanks to Tish Shute), she did get the demo to work well enough to where people could get the idea: Install a Lego kiosk/scanner in a store, a child walks up to the device, scans the cover of the box (image recognition) and then would see onscreen a working 3D rendering of that specific constructed lego set. The 3D model would have video motion and could be rotated so a child (or adult) could see what that particular set looked like compared to others.
While I have seen this kind of 3D “pop-up” book kind of thing from other recent AR projects, I don’t understand the practical application. Couldn’t we do the EXACT same kind of functionality with a cheaper and more highly evolved (50 years old) barcode scanner (since every Lego box already has a barcode) and the same pre-packaged 3D renderings saved to a SD card and displayed on a 10” OLED? Why is it important that I rotate the box I’m holding as a virtual display platform? The same is true of the recent hype around the Esquire magazine AR issue: Who cares? It’s seems to be the same level of hype as when the CueCat came out in the 90s and was going to “revolutionize” publishing by allowing people to scan an icon in a magazine and get more details about products from advertisers. We have that already – it’s called a website! If Esquire wants to show me more pictures of some nearly naked model in their magazine or the uncensored video interview with Robert Downey Jr., why not just put a note in the magazine that encourages me to go visit a unique URL for that content? Why do I need to set up a webcam and install software to make CG pop-ups jump out of the magazine and videos play stupid messages? I’m not getting it yet – but I am still open to the possibilities. It simply seems we are confusing the 3D models and virtual reality worlds with legitimate uses for augmented reality with no real quantifiable benefit. Noora concluded her five minutes of fame by demonstrating that this new image recognition tool with 3D pop-up book would also work on a portable device. A powerful demonstration, but again, someone could take any of a dozen barcode scanner apps for any portable device and tie it back to a specific 3D model, video, digital coupon, etc. all driven by Lego or Stella Artois or Proctor & Gamble and so forth. Maybe what Lego could focus on instead is something of an AR instruction book, like this demo, that would allow kids to actually construct the theme pictured on the box!
The last demo of the night I was most excited about because it was identified in the AR NY Meetup agenda as the Whisper Deck. Given my recent rants about the need for mobile AR to deliver more audible cues to people and allow them to give verbal commands as opposed to pointing and spinning, I was looking forward to this demonstration. The demo provided by Craig Kapp, an NYU student, was indeed powerful and impressive, as you can see from his own website. One of the factors I didn’t comprehend was his desire to be away from his computer, yet his solution required both of his eyes to be covered with display goggles (HMD) and both ears would be covered with a headset/microphone. What good is it to be disconnected from your desktop if you are still tethered to it anyway and can’t walk because your most important senses are being blocked? I really don’t want to take anything away from what was shown because it was indeed very cool. Everything he built was using off-the-shelf hardware brought together with existing websites (Google (why not Bing visual search?), Google Trends and Wikipedia mostly), a lot of ingenuity and brain power from Mr. Kapp. Clearly the best demo of the night!
While I spent nearly five hours of my life getting to and from this event, I think it was very powerful because it shows some very early stages of what will clearly be a fundamental change in how we see and experience our future world. And, as an entrepreneur, I certainly came away with some solid business ideas that could change industries entirely. I look forward to attending more ARNY meetups in the future and may even make an attempt to attend the national AR event in California in June (with Bruce Sterling as keynote!).
UPDATE: ARNY co-founder, Chris Grayson, posted a much better quality video of the entire demo + Q&A session on Ustream!
-pjc
PS: I certainly realize that many of my recent posts have had little to do with 80s Music, Media, etc., so I have started to develop a separate site/page/brand for Superempower. This may be the last tech/super-empowerment type post I’ll put here on 80sAirwaves. While its not quite ready, if you’re prone to this kind of subject, please fan me at the new Superempower Facebook page or follow my new Superempower alter-ego on Twitter.