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"Terminator Vision" Is Here For the iPhone
musefrog writes "The BBC is reporting that so-called augmented reality has arrived — in the UK at least.
From the article: 'Via the video function of a mobile phone's camera it is now possible to combine a regular pictorial view with added data from the internet just as the fictional Terminator was able to overlay its view of the world with vital information about its surroundings. For example, UK-firm Acrossair has launched an application for the iPhone which allows Londoners to find their nearest tube station using their iPhone.' The page features an impressive video demonstrating AR in action."
Does the Terminator vision for the iPhone also overlay Apple II assembly code?
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Zoe Kleinman tries out Acrossair's software that uses a phone's camera to tell you where the nearest London Underground station is.
It's using the phones GPS, compass and accelerometers to decide what to draw on the screen, NOT the camera, if you watch the video the bloke even says as much. Mush more impressive would be applications that can use what the camera sees by reading text/barcodes or recognising objects and combining it with GPS and internet data to offer more infomation on the world around us.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
It seems to me that the real hindrance is in getting a transparent display into a set of glasses. By this, I don't mean getting a bulky display mounted on the outside of a set of glasses, but in getting a transparent display built directly into the lenses, such that when the display is turned off, it's just a set of glasses.
I think we'll start to see real products once we can build both those sorts of lenses and a camera into a set of glasses, and not have them be too ridiculously heavy, bulky, and ugly. Also, it can't be too expensive.
People keep saying it's "almost ready" because there are practical and functional HUDs, but they all require this bulky machinery to be strapped to your head in a way that looks stupid. For geeks or specialized purposes (e.g. soldiers in combat, who are carrying heavy equipment anyway and care more about functionality than looks) that's all fine. But it won't be productized until people can walk down the street wearing them and still look cool.
There are three basic problems with HMD style displays.
1.) Single eye solutions confuse the brain after a short period of time. The brain tries to correlate both eyes input and can't, so it starts dropping information. That causes tremendous problems because the brain doesn't know which information is appropriate to drop. Using a two-eye HMD solves that problem.
2.) The other problem is that the brain is very perceptive of information that doesn't actually coorelate to the real world. Think about an artifical horizon that doesn't quite keep up to speed with the real horizon that the pilot sees. That slight delay error will cause problems for the pilot similar to the above, where the brain quits using and relying on that information.
3.) The last problem is the biggest. How do you get an image focused at infinity. The traditional way is to use fancy optics to lengthen the path from the emitter to the eye to make it appear that the image is beyond 6' or so. Getting that done is very tricky and bulky. Just putting an image on the lens isn't enough... it must be presented in such a way that they pilot has a reduced work load (on the eye muscles) so that it is not a tiring experience.
I see that VirtualHUD as quite an innovative solution for that problem because, 1.) it's aready presented to both eyes simultaneously and 2.) it's focused at infinity (or darn close to it) by default. Generally the propeller is already far enough away from the pilot.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
I think what you are looking for is an EyeTap. http://eyetap.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyetap
anyone else notice the BBC player's volume goes to 11?