[-empyre-] Welcome Patrick Lichty

[Julian Oliver]

..on Thu, Apr 07, 2011 at 08:21:54AM -0500, Lichty, Patrick wrote:
> Conversations with Rod:
> In talking with Rod about the reemergence of AR, we remarked that how a theory of AR seems to be inextricably linked to the technical capacity of the day.  For example, when Jaron Lanier was trying to champion VR as the next online medium, how could he know that the technology was really 20-30 years ahead of capacity?  Display technology was no way near what was needed, the head mounted display was more Ivan Sutherland than Vuzix, and there was just no infrastructure.  Now, almost everyone has a smart device of some sort that can support AR, the IT infrastructure is in place, and even with the new technologies. AR-ready videoglasses are available off the shelf for under $500.  This is similar to my rant against the CD-ROM in the 1980's - I thought it would never work because of price point, and I was terribly wrong.
> 
> So, is AR an emergent phenomenon, an outgrowth of exteant ideas and emergent technologies, or otherwise?

AR is really a modern implementation of a very old idea, one seen with
Phantasmagoria like Pepper's Ghost, some Op Art like Perspectival Anamorphosis,
of Trome-l'Oeil and work by the (rather astonishing) Varini.

The coining of the term really came into popular light around an actual fiducial
marker tracking software toolkit, ARToolkit, developed at Nara university back
in 1999. The ideas, of positioning the visual cortex as the site of exhibition,
are however the same. 

The fact that the art can be pose-reestimated independent of viewer position is
the innovation wrought by software. That said, only because ARToolkit was open
source do we have 'AR' in popular distribution today. Almost all of the first AR
demos seen on YouTube use (with little or no credit) this toolkit. FLARToolkit
(web delivered AR) and a vast variety of AR apps on Android and iOS still use
this common code base.

Cheers,

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Berlin, Germany 
currently: Berlin, Germany 
about: http://julianoliver.com
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