Augmented reality experiment from gamemaker Introversion

Introversion Software, makers of thermonuclear war simulation Defcon, are experimenting with an augmented reality version of the game. Our Brandon has more info and a pretty neat video over at Boing Boing Offworld.
"Introversion's DefconAR: mutually destructive augmented reality"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Sagan

Mojave:

Augmented Reality is what you are looking at. Using a standard web cam and a specially printed graphic, in this case a simple square with “Hiro” printed in it, is used as a point of reference. The software can look at the picture and determine what the orientation is then displays whatever graphic on the monitor giving the illusion of it being projected in the 3d space. The graphic moves, so does the 3d render. This is one of the next big and up coming things. AR will be everywhere in 5-10 years time. There will be HUD displaying glasses out mid this year (Vuzix Wrap 920AV just the first ones) which will be AR capable. Google Augmented Reality and have a look.

What use is it? Imagine, if you will, driving down the road and a guide line is virtually projected in your field of view…with 3d Markers pointing out places and objects you can’t even see yet. Or perhaps you’ll have a spot on your floor where 3d Rendered people calling you would pop up and interact with you.. the possibilities are endless. The ‘reference’ point graphics are just a stop gap, I think, until the computing power and software is good enough to recognize what it’s seeing without the reference graphics.
lewisfrancis

If you have a webcam, go here and follow the instructions for a Flash-based AR implementation:

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality
robulus

just imagine how this would look with nukes flying over the globe in realistic arcs, and maybe even 3D mushroom clouds

Awesome. Awesome, is how it would look.
Moriarty

Whatever the coolness of “augmented reality” may be, it’s a stupidly vague term that could apply to pretty much anything. If it doesn’t augment reality, why do it?
lewisfrancis

The First Down line projected on televised American Football games is a kind of early example of AR. Anyone curious about what a world with ubiquitous AR might be like should check out Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbows End”, where location-aware tech and contact lens displays provide a visual overlay on the real world, the content of which depends upon competing consensual realities.
noen

Introversion has some seriously cool games. Darwinia and multi-darwinia are very fun to play. Beautiful music by Trash-80 too.
Mojave

Ok…I think I got it….but is the globe being seen only on the camera, or would I be seeing it if I was sitting at the desk….would it appear to be floating in thin air?
Anonymous

Defcon is a fantastic game, and is only around $10 on steam.

Hmm… reading a bit about “Subversion”. To me it seems obvious that it is a heist game. Uplink with burglary instead of hacking. If it works it could be fantastic.
Ohmz

It looks like they are using the AR toolkit developed by the Human interface technology lab at washington university.

http://www.hitl.washington.edu/

They have some really cool stuff there, like story books that have popup 3d animations when you turn the page.

I wrote about using hte AR Toolkit in my undergrad dissertation.
sinistar

>How about a nice game of chess?

– Joshua
Sagan

Mojave,

No, in this case it’s only on the screen. The leap will be these AR capable glasses that are coming out this year. Check out:

http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_wrap920av.html

Look at the accessories..granted you’ll look like a dork with that little camera ridge on it but this is just the first generation of this kind of device and within a few years you’ll hardly be able to tell them apart from real glasses. Setups like that WILL have that sphere floating in space in front of you.
Mojave

Ok…thanks for the update…so how does this work with the little black and white print out square? What makes it work?
Alpinwolf

One of the key conceptual things is demonstrated by accident in the sample globe vid. Notice that at just past 10 seconds, the user picks up the camera and moves too fast, blurring the reference image, and for a moment the software doesn’t know where to put the globe, faking it for a bit. For that moment, when Earth blinks out, the software doesn’t have it’s grid. It’s back as soon as the software can again see the entire reference clearly.

Since computers are dumb, (quick, but dumb, sofar) it doesn’t know what those other environmental ques are that we take for granted, to know that it’s a desk, with a flat surface, and stuff. It doesn’t know *our* desk, so we have to reproduce something it *does* know: the B&W graphic.

If you take a paper map (or anything) with a grid on it, lay it on a table, and then take a photo of it from a bit to the side, you can tell it wasn’t straight down. You can tell quite a lot about the orientation of the map to the camera because of the gridlines and the map edges. We process that intrinsically, but this software has been programed to compare the map (or simple graphic) to a stored version it has, and backtrack what the condition must be of the remote image.

Internally it has [lovely graphic X] modeled on or over [simple marker Y (with known dimensions)]. Then it’s looking for some image that looks like a possible projection of Y, calculates what that projection must be, and attaches X to it in your local video processor, in the same relative orientation as it has in its model.

And as said above, it’s just on the monitor (right now). A vid is being taken of the meatspace desktop, and projected on the monitor, with the other important software injecting the globe or monster (nattily dressed) into the image on the monitor. Then press record to capture the composite image.
Mojave

Can someone explain what we are looking at here? Remember old people reaad boingboing too…..
jherazob

Mojave,
The little square thing is a sort of marker to make it easier for the computer to know where to draw whatever they want to draw there, in this case the spinning globe and in the near future the flying nukes and mushroom clouds :)

In the future that won’t be needed, and with the glasses mentioned by Sagan (or the ones i’ve read about integrated in contact lenses that are promised in the next 10 years) it’d be quite possible that we’d have little characters running around on our desktops throwing nukes at each other :)
zachary

@MOJAVE

Explanation, video, and ability to play along at home here:

http://www.boffswana.com/news/?p=392

Introversion is using the same technology… the ARToolKit developed by Dr. Hirokazu Kato:

http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/