Lazy8s said:
AR Tennis is a research project using a customized ARToolKit for exploiting the advanced features of smartphones for multiplayer gameplay, translating the movement tracking of the phones into control over the tennis rackets and feeding back tactile response for ball contact to the player with the phones' vibration function.
http://www.hitlabnz.org/route.php?r=prj-view&prj_id=35
I had a play of this a while ago when it was still a reasearch project at the hitlab. It was interesting, but the hardware was definitely the weak point.
It was based on a modified version of
AR Toolkit Plus from memory. ARTK+ is basically a modification of the standard ar toolkit, adding a few (desperately needed) features, and supporting fixed point processing.
From what I know, the AR-tennis project received an nvidia-sponsored grant to pursue commercial development and application.
Overall to be totally honest, the AR toolkit is pretty bad. The code is a shocker, and it's tracking performance can be down right terrible. It is difficult to setup as well. But at least they are finally investing some proper money and time into getting it into a more commercially sound state, however licensing the toolkit is still a struggle (to be kind).There are other alternatives out there. There is the
MXR toolkit, which is *much* smarter than the ar toolkit, and has *far* better tracking performance, however it's code is probably even worse, is bloated, is no longer updated, is buggy, and has performance issues.
Even the BBC has a secret project to do their own tracking toolkit, but I don't know the details. The BBC actually used the AR toolkit in a medical themed television programme a while back.
I'll add that the ARinterior software seemed rather slow and primitive. Once they've got the camera lens matched, they should be able to draw 3D at full rate over the top. They woud benefit greatly from taking a mirror-ball photo to get a spherical illumination map. Then at least the furniture would match the lighting and fit in rather than looking like a composite with 1990's vector graphics!
There are real-time implementations of this (mirror ball for ambient lighting). They look very good too, however the camera calibration has to be absolutely perfect. The hitlab have yet to update their site with information on the project however. Here is a
paper on the same subject.
The non-gaming apps make more sense to me. An idea I had yonks back was virtual museum exhibits, where you stand inside a virtual structure and use your mobile device as a window to view it. Perhaps a large blue room that could fit lots of visitors in with various markers on the wall to track, and the software determines where you are looking and renders the ancient building in that view chromakeyed to the background. That'd be a really nice advance for museums and work very well with large screen portables. Something like PSP ought to be ideal at that.
Done already a few times. With varying levels of success.
example that is slightly different but still in a museum - here is a
video.
I don't have any hand-held examples I can link to, but they are out there. Anything else gets into the 'too expensive' or 'too dangerous' or 'too unhygenic' department. So all the museum based ones are usually fixed.
The exhibits I've programmed have ended up being mostly single user activities, the exception is the AR-starwars project I did last year, which is on tour with the 'star wars: where imagination meets science' exhibit. (was in boston till a month or two back). -
picture - thats not me btw. This project worked VERY well for user interaction.
