augmented reality

after following some links from a guys iotd on gamedev, i saw this..

http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/

i'm pretty sure this qualifies as the coolest thing i've seen on the internet in 2006. yeah.. only 1 day and change, but... i think it'll hold the position for a long awhile.

so ok yeah.. neat project, but i don't want to fly to new zealand to witness it..

well.. if you have a decent webcam and a printer, you can download the dudes opensource software and run the binary.

HOLY SHIT.

www.z425.com/videos/video_2005jan02_0001.ASF (1.8M)
www.z425.com/videos/video_2005jan02_0004.ASF (1.2M)
www.z425.com/videos/video_2005jan02_0005.ASF (2.6M)

and finally.. the first revolution controller prototype!

www.z425.com/videos/video_2005jan02_0006.ASF (2.4M)

i had to run it on janel's machine because the bastards (creative) keep pushing back the release of their x64 webcam drivers.

those vids are without calibration. i can't get my cam to calibrate because it has some crazy wide fov. look at how damn precise that is anyway. awesome. when i was first looking into orientation tracking for the robot i did look into vison type stuff, but damn.. this is impressive. this might be the better first solution than the accelerometer. it'll also push my hmd project way up the chain.

just imagine a crazy board game that has monsters that ANIMATE. holy shit.

again... AWESOME.