The above image is from the beta version of Google Earth, according to this Slashdot post. Of note is the 3D city. Can an augmented reality interface be far behind? If you’re interested, you can see some of my previous comments here, here, on a Setpoint Originator blog entry here, and on this post over on the SL Future Salon blog.
(edit – for more images, check out newrecruit’s news entry here).
Wired online is carrying a nice little article on Boston’s Cyberarts Festival. For me, the above image in their online gallery showing creator/artist Feng Mengbo inside Quake 3 is the most interesting, but I suppose that has more to do with my familiarity with the game than with what’s being done (I should give Feng my Squidgun model, the Rocket Launcher is so 90’s – besides being copyright id Software). From his site, it appears this is more documentation than interaction unfortunately. A shame.
For cool interactivity, Imaging Places is probably the highlight as it’s starting to move into new territory. From Wired:
Imaging Place reflects that real-and-virtual connection, by allowing viewers to navigate a map image, projected against a wall in a darkened room. The viewer of the Lowell piece, for example, mouse-clicks on certain parts of a satellite photo of the Lowell area, and zooms in to see videos of oral histories and bits of wisdom as told by local people.
This reminds me of my previous entry regarding augmented reality being used at historical sites. If only Feng was pulling that one off. I’m just waiting for someone to stream 3D data based on GPS position. Maybe then Feng’s visuals will mash-up with the interactivity currently limited to 2D imaging. And then… well, then we can fight over a virtual doll and create our own virtual holiday.
Saying someone was living in their own world used to be a metaphor. More and more it’s coming to mean something else. For some reason there’s been a resurgence of online discussion about Augmented Reality and the MIT Technology Review site has a new article on it. I don’t know about AR graveyards though. I was really hoping for something more along the lines of “ARQuake” (maybe a multiplayer version with tasers….).
This all goes hand-in-hand with the big tech news for the past few days: Demo. Yahoo News has a short article (probably temporary too [Edit: it was, so I removed the link]) on a few of the hyped technologies at the Demo conference that maybe makes this augmented reality stuff more relevant: Intellifit body scanning, Novint Falcon haptics, MDA 3D modeling. This is all sounding very cyberspace-y. But instead of re-reading Snow Crash, go rent Videodrome. Confusion may be the order of the day but long live the new flesh, eh?