More blending of the real and virtual. While virtual worlds tend to emphasize their digital nature, augmented reality will do anything to hide its bits and bites background by blending almost seamlessly into reality. One of the most interesting applications of this augmented (or projected) reality was recently showcased by the Fraunhofer Institute.
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Posted on: September 2, 2008 | 1 Comment »

With the recent Interface debate and competition I thought it was nice to bookmark and link the great overview of ‘futuristic interfaces‘ Smashing Magazine has posted recently. Amongst some of the things I posted about earlier, they list some prototypes that seek to improve the immersion into 3D, or bring virtual (3D) scenes to the [...]

Posted on: August 19, 2008 | No Comments »

Just a funny clip of an augmented reality application. It can really be as simple as that, a virtual pet rummaging about in your room. All the cuteness of real life with the advantages of virtuality ;)

Posted on: July 10, 2008 | No Comments »

Every time I see digital technology move away from our traditional desk top set up (desk, chair, PC, 17′+ monitor) I get excited about the new opportunities of breaking this static environment of interaction with data. When the Wii introduced a mainstream audience to alternative ways to interact with applications I was shocked at how [...]

Posted on: May 14, 2008 | No Comments »

Virtual culture, future and business blogger Wayne Porter pointed me to the presentation of internationally celebrated inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil at the Game Developers Conference. He tells us (as I’ve said before in 2 earlier postings how games show Virtual Worlds the way): “The games industry fits in well with the acceleration of [...]

Posted on: February 29, 2008 | 9 Comments »

Ross Dawson over at rossdawsonblog.com created an interesting ‘map’ of webtrends for 2008 called the ‘Trend Blend 2008+‘ (click to see the complete map, PDF warning). The map is based on the Shanghai underground, having 5 major lines (Society, Politics, Economy, Technology, Demographics) - connecting 5 big trends (Digitalisation, Globalisation, Ageing, Anxiety and Virtual Worlds) [...]

Posted on: January 30, 2008 | No Comments »

Augmented reality (AR) the technology which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and “augmented” by the addition of computer-generated graphics. Tobias Lang displays how to merge 2 techniques, Virtual reality and Augmented reality, to [...]

Posted on: January 20, 2008 | 3 Comments »