MyLineRider

Following my post from yesterday about augmented reality, what better than to link to experiments made by Seb Lee-Delisle with PV3D and FLARToolkit.

The followng video shows the awesome concept…

Papervision3D augmented reality wormhole from Plug-in Media on Vimeo

Enjoy!!

A few weeks ago I saw a post on the PaperVision3D list about augmented reality using a 3D instantiated using PaperVision3D. I didn’t know what to expect, but I follow the link to check it out. The post at Sander Wichers blog, shows a nice combination of a 3D cube (made with PV3D) that can be manipulated in the real world. Sander uses a Mammoth media server (in alpha) and an augmented reality library named ARToolKitPlus as a server plug-in.

A couple of days later a saw another experiment using also PV3D and FLARToolkit a Flash implementation of ARToolkit (is in Japanese) made by Sagoosha. 

Papervision – Augmented Reality (extended) from dpinteractive on Vimeo.

I found some other interesting work on augmented reality by a French company called Total Inmmersion, that specialized on this (commercially). They have presented at the DEMO conference in 2004 and 2007. The following video is from their 2007 presentation

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You can access the DEMO 2004 presentation at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6523761027552517909

A few days ago, via the Papervision3D blog (again), I found that Sagoosha published even a cooler demo to wish all of us a Happy New Year.

[wp_youtube]TW6_X9qBeds[/wp_youtube]

And you can even interact with this one by going here. Enjoy!!

Today I went to monthly meeting of the BFPUG (Boston Flash Platform User Group) to see a presentation about Gamebrix. Naveena Swamy, the founder of the company, showcased their platform, and it was a real threat.

I believe Gamebrix is up to something big. With their platform you can create games in 2 ways: One, by using the Gamebrix express, in which you can customize preexisting games or game templates by changing assets (graphics, audio, animations). The otherone by using the Gamebrix Builder. With the later you select your assets (graphics, animations, audio), either provided by the system or by importing your own. Then, you can add intelligence to your objects (again images or animations). By intelligence I mean interactivity – user actions (mouse clicks on the object), behaviors (how the objects react to events- i.e. to collisions), constraints and more. Finally you create the game, which is compiled on the server and produce a swf file (Flash file) that can be placed in any website or social networking site.

The platform has been built with Adobe Flex and its very easy to use. Once a user finishes creating a game, she can share it through the Gamebrix platform or post it in her own website. The game creator can easily edit games, change graphics, sounds and logic and quickly produce completely different games based on the same main storyline.

One cool idea is to use the platform to create contexts. A company can define certain rules, like use those graphics ( a logo, and some other branding elements) and use these themes to create games for that company in exchange for prizes and recognition. If you want to explore the potential of this for your own organization you may need to contact the company.

Right now the platform is in public beta testing and the access to create and share games is totally free of charge. We discussed a little about their business model, but not enough to be able to mention anything in here.

Well, what are you waiting for. Go there and create some cool games and share them with the world!!

A couple of years ago, I attended a presentation/demostration by Mok Oh, from Mok3 Inc., about their 3D modeler solution from photographs. It was amazing. At that time there were some other applications that  allow creating 3d models from pictures, like  PhotoModeler. However, the work flow and the power of the Mok3 technologies were unbeatable.

Last year Microsoft made a lot of noise with a different approach to create 3D models from pictures: Photosynth.
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

There is also an interesting video about Photosynth at: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

However, I just came across a new technology, VideoTrace, which allows creating 3D models from video. VideoTrace is been developed by The Australian Centre for Visual Technologies at the University of Adelaide, and The Oxford Brookes Computer Vision Group,

According to their website, http://www.acvt.com.au/research/videotrace/, “VideoTrace is a system for interactively generating realistic 3D models of objects from video—models that might be inserted into a video game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence. The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modeled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple 2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model. Each of the sketching operations in VideoTrace provides an intuitive and powerful means of modelling shape from video, and executes quickly enough to be used interactively. Immediate feedback allows the user to model rapidly those parts of the scene which are of interest and to the level of detail required. The combination of automated and manual reconstruction allows VideoTrace to model parts of the scene not visible, and to succeed in cases where purely automated approaches would fail.”

On the site they have a video showing how it works, and it’s just AMAZING.

Enjoy!

I was reading this post at bit-101.com and I must agree with Keith. I mean, I was inspired by LineRider (check the domain name here and the Why the Name link), and I feel disappointed to see how complex they are making the game.

I think the reason it became some popular and viral in the first place, was because of its simplicity. With a minimalistic user interface and practically no learning curve it was really contagious. Although the learning curve was zero, the experience curve was huge. People could play for hours experimenting new ways to draw there paths.

I haven’t tried the latest version, but from what I have seen, it is now just like any commercial game. For me the enchantment is over.