News
Esquire magazine - Augmented Reality
Written by Olivier Adam on Wednesday, 02 December 2009 20:45
I hope you've had a chance to read our article about Augmented Reality, if not, click here first and then come back after to read this news! Esquire published their last magazine with tons of Augmented Reality features integrated in the magazine. You have markers all over the magazine that pop up a different scene on the screen whenever you put it in front of your computer. You can also have some type of interaction with what happens by moving the magazine in different ways. This is a "cool" use of AR and will definitely make the subject more known toward the masses.. But at the same time, it just reinforces the point that there is little value coming from AR in this type of setting. Yes, it makes the magazine come to life, but nothing that could not be replaced by simple YouTube videos.. Once the novelty value goes away, there will sadly be little benefits left for Esquire, except maybe a small boost in sale for the current issue.
Check it out [here].
Upcoming Trends: Gesture and Full Body Remote Control
Written by Rejean Bourgault on Saturday, 20 June 2009 11:47
For the past year, we have been predicting that Gesture Remote Control will become a big innovation in both gaming and everybody’s life. Earlier in 2009, at the Electronic show in Asia, Gesture Based remote control started to get some attention; with as an example of an application being a remote control for your television set. Where your open hands mean, “turn on the TV”, your closed hands mean “turn off the TV”, thumbs up means change the channel, etc.
In Video Games, the Wii from Nintendo is a form of Gesture remote control, but it is still in its infancy state. A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced its Project Natal for the Xbox 360 video game console; using cameras and full skeletal mapping to track user movements. You could imagine playing tennis in a Virtual world, without any remote control, just by doing the movement of playing tennis, same for any sports or even driving a car. There isn’t a need anymore for having a device in your hands.
We strongly believe, that after the era of gesture and skeletal mapping, the next move in the industry will be full immersion, where in addition to the movement track, bio sensor will monitor your body, including temperature, heart rate, etc. One way to reach full immersion will be to wear a full body immersion suit.
Gesture remote control, Skeletal mapping, Full immersion are all kind of tools used to augment the reality; basically the zone where pure reality as we know today and Virtual Reality overlap.
As we describe in “a year in 2050”, you could imagine, in the future, doing a Walt Disney Monster ride sitting in your living room in a full body immersion suit, and where at the other end, another person or a Robot transmit over the network all the sensations you would be getting if you were physically there. Transmitting the view, the heart rate, sensations, etc. Think about people who are sitting in a wheel chair or in an hospital who might never have the chance to visit a Walt Disney Theme Park in person. The Walt Disney experience will come to them instead...
How will you play tennis in 2083?
Written by Olivier Adam on Monday, 01 June 2009 08:28
Lacoste released, for their 75th anniversary, a very interesting video showcasing how they foresee the future of sport, in this case tennis, 75 years from now. The video shows a player, equipped with a full suit that enhances his strength and give him faster reflexes. His "goggles" give him real time information about the game and enhanced clarity. How much of this we will see in the future? I'm convinced quite a few of these enhancement will appear at one point in the future, the question will be how long it will take before they allow any type of body enhancement in sports. But as soon as one allows it, all the other professional sports will have to allow them as well as they would loose too much of their spectators otherwise.
Virtual worlds for kids
Written by Olivier Adam on Friday, 22 May 2009 08:14
After wildly successful MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) like Everquest and then later on, World of Warcraft, video game producers have been focusing on a new segment of customers, kids below 10 years old. While early teens will already be quite interested in the current offering, younger kids will usually not be as attracted by those games. Using existing licences, a few developers are hard at work to make these world a realities. BarbieGirls is one of these games, which has been attracting girls for 2 years already. For the boys, even though there are a few games available out there, they will have to wait a little longer for Lego Universe as it has been postponed for a 2010 release. Nevertheless, this is already predicted to be quite a hit with kids as soon as its released. Let's just hope that some of the addiction that we see in older gamers will not become a reality for the kids that join those worlds. Eventually, we can expect virtual worlds to become the major form of entertainment for everyone, more popular than movies, TV shows, music, reading books, etc.
Freshly printed book anyone?
Written by Olivier Adam on Monday, 18 May 2009 12:13
Many would argue that the life of books is counted. Indeed, it seems that with tools like the Amazon Kindle and other of the genre, books (and newspapers) will become a niche product at best in the future. On the other hand, some will argue that it is quite satisfying to open a fresh new book and to devour the pages, discovering what is inside. The Espresso book machine plans to create a solution right in the middle. Instead of printing millions of books, many of them will end up being unsold (or sold at a tenth of the price in the bookstore discount bin), this machine allows you to print books "on-demand". What is quite interesting is that this machine gives the possibility to offer a very large choice of publications, with a very limited space. It would become more interesting to have very specialized publications available, as the cost of keeping those would be nearly non-existent. Hopefully, we will start seeing those machines in our bookstores, libraries, etc. soon so we can start benefiting from all it can bring us.
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