ARE2011

Still recovering from an augmented reality that happened last week. The video footage below shows elements from the Augmented Reality Event (ARE) 2011 in Santa Clara, CA on May 17-18.

This was the 2nd annual event of the largest conference dedicated to the business of augmented reality. Start-ups, developers, mobile and hardware companies along with organizations within entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more, will gather to evolve this hot technology sector into a productive, sustainable and entertaining new medium.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsN0tCkAR-Y

I will have written highlights from the event soon.

The app requires 4.0 and I only have my 3G with me at the moment, so I could not test myself, but found a number of videos posted with people using it.  Must of the time, it works well. I have not seen anyone really test it on complex backgrounds, but that is not the point of the app anyway.  The real win here is the Augmented Reality part of it.  The fact that it replaces text with the detected background then overlays new text AND background colour is nothing short of amazing. There are limits. If the text is too small the app cannot read it in real time well enough. Right now it only iphone ipod, but it will be on the next version of the iPad which will have cameras.  I would also expect to see this on the Android platform by the end of Jan 2011.  Now, could you get the value by just taking a picture and translating that?  Sure, but what fun is that?

Well lets have a look.  First the ‘demo’ video.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs

Now lets see it in real life..

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2sjrAOtieg

Nice eh?  Right now it only supports Spanish at a cost of 5$.  Cheap!  I’m sure other Latin translations are coming.  The next big challenge will be translating Asian languages.  Japanese anyone?

BTW, check out this stress test video.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7PIr4uy_28