Top 16 AR Business Models

September 14th, 2009
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Personalized Media have developed a list of the top 16 Augmented Reality Business Models.

Will AR be the evolution of computer interaction?

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1. IN SITU:

Aiding sale by seeing projects placed in the environment before completion. The benefit of a customer or client seeing a finished project, before it is complete. For example 1) real estate agents can scan and show an empty house full of stylish furniture or 2) an architect who can show the billion dollar client the skyscraper as a model perfectly aligned with the other buildings on the empty site and 3) Customers who want to see what the clothes look like on ‘them’. The list of applications goes on.

2. UTILITY:

Selling life enhancing AR applications perceived as useful. Development and commercial sale of applications such as underground train orientation, bus stops & times, traffic alerts, airport gates & plane arrivals etc: all overlaid in real space. Sometimes called AR browsers as they cross reference what or who you are looking at with anything or everything off the web.

3. TRAINING:

Hands-on with complex equipment and work scenarios. Using ‘outline’ recognition this allows us to be virtually ‘hands-on’ with complex equipment in difficult-to-practise work scenarios. Bomb disposal, surgery, flight simulation. . Indeed according to wikipedia the actual phrase Augmented Reality was coined by Tom Caudell in 1992 while at Boeing where workers trained to wire aircraft on AR systems. A massive industry for the developer community charging b2b rates.

4. SOCIAL GAMING:

Both connotations of the word, pay-per-play mixed reality games in physical space. The potential to run pay per play (e.g: virtual paintball style) games in physical location and also live connected betting on sports or other competitive play – e.g: You point your iPhone at the horse and wirelessly place a bet – mid race! (odds adjusted of course) or using basic surface AR you play with others in a new kind of ‘games’ room!

5. LOCATION LAYERS:

Blended guides to new places, tourism, enhanced travelling or themed space. For travellers just arrived at your city, theme park or other experience you can provide them with pay for tools that will help them take the most ‘mutually beneficial’ route after they arrive. Free data from wikipedia, local bloggers or more commercial entities add depth.

6. VIRTUAL DEMO:

Display to promote sale, of product in pre-release or remotely via catalogue etc: To promote advance sales before the consumer gismo hits the stores, an AR display or the device/s so potential customers can manipulate it, see it from all sides, even customise the order. We may see future stores displaying the majority of items on the shop floor as AR while the item is shipped to your house before you get home! The reverse of this, an AR catalogue that pops up models to help you build or see the product in 3D.

7. EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION:

Pay-per-visit educational services to museums, ancient sites etc: Pay-per-visit (ppv) to visit highly experiential museums, theme parks, zoos, ancient sites or exhibitions but with a higher purpose of providing deeper levels of information & visual sense than a simple plague or hard to follow guide book ever will. The sleepy animals in the zoo come to life, the ancient fossil is animated into an overlaid Google Earth, the Battle is enacted ‘on the original battlefield.

8. ENHANCED CLASSIFIEDS:

An AR directory that promotes local 3rd parties product & services overlaid at the location. One of the obvious apps where someone in a city or town looking for a specific item could be ‘guided’ to it. A very affiliate model where the company that owns the Augmented Reality listing mechanism will take a slice of any fulfilled sales. A lot more to this of course.

9. 3D VIRALS:

Branded company or personal promotion & ads using ‘cool’ 3D toys. Pattern based 3D model that entertains and is spread virally. The YouTube moment as a million links to cool ‘3D stuff’ that takes place next to you. Already we see some AR apps that allow you to record scenes of you interacting with said ‘3D viral’ and pass those around too, titillation, quirky giveaways– JibJab-type, put ‘you’ in the cartoon but revered, they are with you in 3D space.

10. PERSONALIZED SHOPPING:

Walking around stores made relevant, opt in personalization and targeting. The oft mentioned Minority Report example. But in the pulled model, here you can deliver information to potential customers scanning stores, streets or shelves for discounted or personally relevant products.

11. COOPERATION:

Service industry for augmented virtual meetings. We are all familiar with video conferencing, a few have dabbled in 3D virtual world get togethers but AR meetings are a game changer. The potential here using ‘discrete’ personal screens is to have the inevitable remote meeting with live feeds of your colleagues, blended into your room – pay-per-ARmeet

12. BLENDED BRANDING:

The equivalent of hoardings, virtual poster ads. Once given a reason to be scanning outdoor areas with their AR devices the potential to deliver topical, timely and relevant ads or branding into the scene. Again care must be taken as AR spam (like social network spam) will quickly irritate, but like free to air TV, using various sponsored or freemium biz models will mean a certain amount of branding will be acceptable.

13. AUGMENTED EVENTS:

Pay-per-use of enhanced sport or pop concerts. At live events spectators can pay and then scan their view of the ‘match’ for the latest information on sporting achievement or pop star gossip and of course tracking trails or watching replays in situ, merged over say a static real sporting scene.

14. INTERTAINMENT:

New form experiential TV and films. Following on from my ‘AR story’ post, we know people will pay a premium for a new kind of ‘film’ experience where you ‘live the experience’. How about one that plays out at ‘your’ place. Semi customised marker or location AR apps will layer Brad or Angie into your lounge, onto the coffee table or your ‘composited’ in real time into the latest Mixed Reality TV show. Combined with 3D viewing technology will make Blu-Ray seem so 18th century.

15. UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMS:

Creating AR for internal or exploded views of complex objects. Primarily useful in training or helping sell something where physically taking it apart is not possible a view of a car or other complex object can be enhanced. Labels or even an exploded view in real time can help get the message across.

16. RECOGNITION & TARGETING:

Pushing ‘relevance’ to outdoor consumers – facial recognition linked to online data. To be used with care! It will be interesting to see how privacy laws affect this but in a pushed model you could ‘scan’ visitors to your store, identify their faces, do background links to their ‘social networks’ followed by personal targeting while they are shopping. We all know this is going to happen!

via: personalizemedia.com

FLARManager v0.6

July 4th, 2009
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You can see a nice video tutorial from gotoandLearn here.

FLARManager is a lightweight framework that makes building FLARToolkit augmented reality applications easier. it is compatible with a variety of 3D engines, and provides a more robust event-based system for managing marker addition, update, and removal. it supports detection and management of multiple patterns, and multiple markers of a given pattern.

Where can I get it?

FLARManager can be downloaded via SVN at http://transmote.com/codeshare/FLARManager. Released versions are available in the /deploy folder, and current development lives in the /dev folder. (note, i don’t make any guarantee the code in /dev will work, or even compile!

Note: FLARManager is built to compile to Flash Player 10.

What are the licensing options?

FLARManager is available for download and use under two licenses:

* GPL License: FLARManager can be used for free under the GNU General Public License, v3. Source code of applications using FLARManager under the GPL must be provided free of charge on request.

* Commercial License: Source code of FLARManager applications can be protected with a commercial license, offered exclusively by ARToolworks. Applications using the commercial license do not have to provide source code, but must pay a licensing fee. Contact ARToolworks at sales@artoolworks.com for more information.

How do I use it?

You can find full documentation here, and tutorials and other info here. if you just want to get started quickly, read on…FLARManager is developed using Flex Builder, and a FLARManager project is included along with the source (that’s what the /.settings folder and .project and .actionScriptProperties files are). to get going with FLARManager in Flex Builder, go to File>Import>Flex Project…, set the ‘Project folder’ to the folder to which you downloaded/unzipped the source, uncheck ‘Use default location’, and hit Finish. you should be good to go.

To use FLARManager in other environments, just be sure you’re compiling one of the four (currently) example files as an Application/Main/Document class. this applies to Flex Builder as well, though it’s taken care of for you in the included Flex Builder project.

The four examples are:

FLARManagerTest_2D.as: a simple example that draws 2D outlines around detected markers.

FLARManagerTest_2D_NoVideo.as: runs marker detection on a source loaded from a file (e.g. .swf / .jpg) instead of a camera. Good for testing when it’s dark out, or when you’re cameraless.

FLARManagerTest_PV3D.as: The standard FLARToolkit + Papervision3D example, with lil’ cubes strewn around wherever you leave a marker.

FLARManagerTest_Flash3D.as: Draws a 3D outline around detected markers using Flash Player 10’s native 3D capabilities.

Upgrades

Adaptive thresholding

Markers are now detectable in varying and low illumination — great for web apps, where developers have no control over the end user’s lighting.

Support for Alternativa3D, Away3D, and Sandy3D

FLARManager now supports the above three frameworks, along with the existing support for Papervision3D and Flash Player 10 3D.

Tutorials and examples

The Inside FLARManager section in the nav bar above provides access to documentation and tutorials about FLARManager, as well as links to FLARToolkit-related content. simple tutorials are now available for basic 2D, 3D, and collada applications.

Optimization

Some changes under the hood, accompanied by extensive testing and profiling, allow FLARManager to run faster and more efficiently than before. Additonally, a number of features are now exposed to the developer to tweak performance on an application-by-application basis. Stay tuned for a detailed writeup on this.

FLARProxy update

FLARProxy allows developers to simulate marker detection with a mouse and keyboard. The functionality has not changed in this version, but it can now be activated via the external config file.