Popular nerd site, Gizmodo, is offering online electronics courses for their readers. Wish this had been around when I had to take electronics courses in college. Sometimes, simple videos that you can play and replay can do so much more for you than a PhD clad professor and a book.
This is going to bring out the inner nerd in everyone....
The Layar browser (video above) looks at an environment through the phone’s camera, and the app displays houses for sale, popular restaurants and shops, and tourist attractions
Where does this information come from? Who creates this information? Selected sources/companies who pay to have their information posted? A whole new competitive marketing strategy in the making.
it’s not truly real-time: The app can’t analyze data it hasn’t downloaded ahead of time.
I can only imagine crowds of people walking the streets staring at their apps, running into people and lamp posts, not to mention getting run over by cars... I think this technology might weirdly affect the health insurance industry.
You know more, you find more, or you see something you haven’t seen before.
this is supposed to be the advantage of using AR from a commercial perspective... it is still self-centralized.
Nokia is currently testing an AR app called Point & Find, which involves pointing your camera phone at real-world objects and planting virtual information tags on them
This can be a really cool feature for teachers if they have a closed-group option. If you are part of the large network, there is all sorts of things people might plant that you don't want to see or know about... Another thought, if there is a closed-group option, perhaps this will create a whole new way of drug trafficking and helping illegal organizations hide information from authorities.
the hardware is finally catching up to our needs
Nvidia Tegra, a powerful chip specializing in high-end graphics for mobile devices.
place (real) Skittles on the physical map and shoot them to set off (virtual) bombs
I tend to agree with the author, though I would be interested in seeing evidence to support his claims.
I remember playing the classic horror survival game "Alone in the Dark" (from 1992) The graphics were fairly primitive by today's standards, the controls could be clunky, but I felt more immersed in the experience, even upon replaying years later.
By contrast, I played through first-person shooter and survival horror game F.E.A.R. recently. The graphics are very realistic and the controls are smooth, but something was missing that kept it from being an immersive experience for me.
People who haven't played the original "Alone in the Dark" may recognize more with games like "Resident Evil" in comparison with "Half Life".
saves developers from having to develop
has a high learning curve for those who haven’t already experienced many first-person games
This is an opinion article that talks about immersion and the first-person camera angle in video games. He argues that game developers should re-evaluate the assumption that the first-person viewpoint is inherently more immersive than other gaming experiences.