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Virtual Reality Book Overlays
fiannaFailMan writes "The Magic Book is a technology that allows a user to look through a handheld viewer with a built-in camera and see 3-dimensional models as if they float above the book. The software is clever enough to keep track of where the page is, so if you move the book, the model moves with it. One application is displaying content telling the story of the America's Cup. You can download the application and use your own webcam to view this, minus the 3D effect of course."
Advance the pattern recognition a bit then
Imagine the applications for this with household objects, items at a museum, body parts, mechanical components.
Build it into eyeglasses and have an informative heads up display.
I don't think anyone commenting truly understands the possibilities that will be available when 3 dimensional screens (will they be called screens??) become our everyday monitors.
Right now, for example, we represent 3 dimensional shapes in a 2 dimensional manner. A cube is represented as three rhomboids in a plane. This gives us a representation of what a 3D object would look like in 2D. So far this has worked out great, primarily because except for actually building a 3D model, we are limited to drawing cubes in 2 dimensions.
Having a third dimension will make the representation of length, width, height a piece of cake. However, the real benefit will be the possibility to draw 4-dimensional shapes like hyperspheres and hypercubes in 3 dimensions. Whereas 2D screens limited us to representing 3D objects, a 3D screen will allow us to represent 4D objects.
With physics rapidly moving towards multi-dimensional theories about our universe, it makes sense that we start using screens that can help us visualize what those higher dimensions look like, even if our own minds are unable to grasp the true natures of those shapes.
Dancin Santa
If you need a special viewer to see the 3d models, why have a physical book there at all?
You don't even need to improve the pattern recognition.
I've seen other applications of this kind of technology: they just use a big obvious target the camera can track. You can put them on the wall, on a table, wave them around, the 3d projection follows the target. Put coded targets around the museum displays so the software can see where to project the image, and it'd just work.
So your "book" could be reduced to a card with the target on, and an interface to turn the pages. A tagged thimble the camera could track and you could tap on virtual buttons with would be enough. Putting it in a physical book is just marketing. Probably necessary, at this point, but it seems way too limiting to me.
While it's most common to do this with ARToolKit, as other posters have mentioned, that shouldn't discourage you from doing the whole thing yourself. It's buckets of fun, I promise.
This is a big piece of _nothing_. The ehh "technology" is about recognising white squares in the book, and overlaying 3d images at the blanks. The article did not mention, but I guess the 3d info is on the cupplied CD. So the only piece of innovation I see here is using a white square in a book as a 3d input device. Why would i want to use their book as an input device for the 3d video as a background? Why don't they put the backgroud ont he CD also, and voila, no need for a book. Any sheet of blank paper will do. vajk