Life as a Developer Marketing Manager » Android

Popcode natural feature recognition SDK

augmentedplanet — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:00:19 +0000

Augmented reality and natural feature recognition are hot topics at the moment, particularly amongst mobile developers. Thanks to companies like Metaio with their easy to use junaio glue platform we are starting to see even more solutions finding their way to market.

To keep the guys over at Metaio on their toes, Popcode is a new free SDK that has been released by Extra Reality Limited here in the UK. The Popcode SDK contains everything that a developer needs to build their own natural feature recognition applications for the Popcode client available on: Google Nexus One, the HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy S. They are adding support for more devices so the list will continue to grow.

Currently the SDK is in preview but it does look like fun and easy to use. Check out video below of the interactive tee-shirt for an idea of the powerful features the SDK contains.

For more information about Popcode and to download the SDK, visit their website: www.popcode.info

Interactive tee-shirt demo

Building your first Popcode application

Google Enter The Augmented Reality World

augmentedplanet — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:07:55 +0000

Google have just announced their first augmented reality application for the Android device. Google Googles for the Android allows users to search by taking pictures of real world objects and having Google provide related information. However unlike existing augmented reality browsers that rely on a compass and location based services to provide search data, Goggles uses a visual recognition engine and location based services to provide results. In theory that would mean that if you take a picture of a well know landmark, eg Big Ben in London it would check the image against buildings in the local area to provide a better match.

Multi Search Topics

Aside from landmarks, Google Goggles supports other searches, if you are in a museum and see a famous picture and want to know the artist, just take a picture and it will search Google for the picture and artist name. In your local supermarket and see a bottle of wine and wonder is it a good year? Just take a picture of the label and Google Goggles will tell you.

A good year?

It looks pretty exciting. Google Goggles has been released as a Google Labs product so it’s very much in a beta phase. iPhone owners don’t panic. Google plans on releasing a version for the Apple iPhone once the application is out of beta.

Google Goggles offical video

MMORPG Augmented Reality Game

augmentedplanet — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:06:45 +0000

In my daily scan of the iPhone application store I noticed that Parallel Kingdom -- Age of Emergence has arrived. It’s has also hit the the Google Android.

Parallel Kingdom is a massively multi-player online role playing game that takes place around you. The game uses GPS to figure out your location and places the character directly in your neighbourhood where you can explore, declare war on other players or just fight the many creatures that live there. It’s interesting to see your surroundings plotted with monsters, trees, caves and other exotic items. I had never noticed that there was a castle at the end of my street before.

I have only just installed the game and it seems to be pretty complex and loaded with options so it is going to take a while for me to figure out what the hell I am doing, but like all MMORPG’s the object is to kill, collect gold and build up your level.

Given it’s complexity it’s hard to give a full review but I guess the question is, is it really an augmented reality application? Well that depends on your point of view.

If you are a traditionalist who believes that augmented reality is defined by using the camera and blending computer graphics in the camera feed then you probably won’t see Parallel Kingdom as a true augmented reality game. If however you take the wider view and believe that augmented reality is being aware of you surroundings and enhancing them then you’ll see Parallel Kingdom as the first true augmented reality MMORPG. Either way, Parallel Kingdom is free so worth an install and making up your own mind.

Game Trailer