Esquire Augmented Reality Issue

Interesting or gimmick?

Augmented Reality mobile shooter

Nothing like a good mobile AR shooter on a saturday afternoon. A collaboration between Georgia Tech, SCAD (Savannah School of Art and Design) with the help of Nvidia, this truly takes augmented reality into a space that I feel will get really interesting in the near future.

For the record, I’m not a huge fan of AR ideas where you need to print out a piece of paper and put it in front of a webcam on your computer. Who would do this? I work in advertising and research lots of different techniques and mechanics for delivering ideas and even I can’t be bothered to try most of them out – novelties only last so long. The only way AR will become a success and become ubiquitous is through integration with mobile- if you’re able to look at a marker in a store on a piece of packaging with your phone, then I can see the value of what that could bring to a consumer.

What’s great about this besides the obvious fact that its a mobile AR game, is the level of detail and gameplay that I’ve never seen before. The video does a pretty good job of explaining the in’s and out’s of the game, but the thing that it doesn’t touch on is the notion of how great this could be as a multiplayer experience using the one big marker as a map. 5 phones, millions of zombies…all good fun.

more info here

Topps adds Augmented Reality to trading cards

Only a matter of time that a sports trading card company would get onto the augmented reality train.  Not a bad use of the tech…although not as good as the lego example, or the interactive pokemon cards.

more info here

One more AR post…promise

Another interesting use of the innovation trend of 09.

via rubbishcorp

On the other hand…a great example of Augmented Reality from Lego

I promise this will be the last post on AR for a bit, but after seeing a bunch of executions which didn’t really add up to anything – Lego have found a really useful, engaging way to use AR as part of their packaging and retail environment.  It’s quite simple…you take the product box to a kiosk in store, the packaging for the model has a code that you bring up to the kiosk camera…now the interesting bit.  Once in front of the camera you see the actual lego model fully built – so you can see what you’re buying and how it will look once it completed…great use of packaging right? Not only that, you can then deconstruct the model into little pieces and see how its built and what pieces are involved in the model – really great.

Again, I believe finding the right reason of using technology is key and Lego have found a very useful way of using AR. It not only makes sense for the brand itself, but it makes the packaging something you want to keep, makes the retail experience more engaging, interactive and exciting and finally it serves a purpose to actually see what you’re buying in all its glory, but also lets you see how you build it as a tutorial…all good fun.

more photos here

No better way of saving I love you than, wait for it…Augmented Reality!

Now I did say that 2009 was going to be the year for Augmented Reality, but I have yet to see anything really interesting with it. I can see how your girl might think how cute it is to see your valentines message message pop out in 3d in front of a webcam – and maybe if this was the first execution it might have had a little buzz to it, but I’m still waiting to see who comes up with a truly interesting way of utilizing this technology. Could it be that having to print out a piece of paper with a code/image on it is just too much to ask for people to do? The added step of bringing it in front of a webcam too much? I think the most innovative use will definitely come from using a mobile device as the screen instead, it gives you many more options of where you could interact with a brand on the go – packaging in a grocery store, coasters in a pub, bus stops…the list goes on.

BTW who the hell was the brand behind this for again?

So far the coolest thing I’ve seen is in my last post about AR.