 "Photo: Sarah Koepke / Staff Photographer")
The possibility of virtual reality in the 1990s was the wave of the future. As the ‘90s have gone and a new millennium is here, a new challenger of immersive technology has emerged in the form of augmented reality.
Not quite reality and not quite virtual reality, augmented reality is exactly how it sounds; digitally enhanced the real world in image form or merging the virtual world with the real world.
Some of the most recent uses of AR are demonstrated in the December issue of Esquire magazine with an inside look at iPhone applications and the viral marketing campaign for the action blockbuster “Transformers.”
While AR has only recently been exposed to the public, it has been used during the last decade in live television sports coverage. The lines that appear on the screen, representing the first yard line, are some of the earliest forms of AR. What viewers have seen is the live footage that has been enhanced by digital elements.
On the cover of the December issue of Esquire, actor Robert Downey Jr. is sitting on top of an odd-looking square that can be “activated” to show AR on a subscriber’s Webcam.
Users can experience the magazine in a more interactive and realistic manner than ever before. “There are a variety of experiences you can have, all enabled by (the) little marker on the cover of the magazine,” Esquire’s Editor in Chief David Granger said in a YouTube tour.
Having Downey Jr. “jump out” at the reader is not the only AR experience available today. This technology is also being applied to people’s daily lives.
When AR is used for sporting events it requires a lot of equipment and programming, but now it can be done from an iPhone or Webcam. For example, General Electric Co. created an AR Webcam application that enables users to manipulate a wind farm with their own hands.
In the realm of mobile technology, the iPhone 3GS is the phone that uses the most AR.
The first application released with AR technology was an Easter egg, or hidden feature, in Yelp’s iPhone application, dubbed Monocle. On the iPhone, the AR program uses the system’s video camera, mapping software and global positioning device to create a real-world view of the nearest restaurant by providing real-time distances and directions. Monocle, however, is not the only AR application for the iPhone.
A Washington D.C.-based tech firm called Intridea created another up-and-coming AR application. Its Car Finder application does exactly what it sounds like: It finds a user’s car. Using the iPhone’s map, GPS and camera capabilities, this 99-cent application allows users to find their car once they mark their parked location.
Once a user activates the application, they can see how far away, and in which direction their car is parked. Brendan Lim, director of Mobile Solutions at Intridea and developer of Car Finder, made the program once the AR technology became available for the iPhone.
“We didn’t think it would be as popular as it is,” Lim said.
“I was messing around one weekend and wanted to build to an AR application real quick,” he said. “Using the AR kit, it was really easy. It took about a week’s time. It was extremely fun to develop.”
The AR kit is available for developers to best market the iPhone 3GS’ AR ability.
Lim said that there are currently limitations with the application and the iPhone’s assisted GPS chip. He said the current limitation with Car Finder is the absence of elevation details, such as if a user was in a parking structure.
“We plan to fix that in the next release,” Lim said.
Based on the popularity of Car Finder, Intridea is currently developing another AR application, but the details are not final.
“All I can say is that it will allow you to do more than Car Finder,” Lim said.
The future of AR is a world of great possibilities, according to Lim.
“It’s going to be part of the norm. You can overlay information that is necessary, (and) there are many applications of the near future,” he said. “One thing, if the technology was better with the GPS indoors, there’s a huge market for applications — shopping malls, store maps and things like that.”
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