Next-Gen Augmented Reality Rears Its Unreal Head

andylim writes "Separate teams at Oxford university and Zentium, a South Korean company, are working on next-gen augmented reality solutions, which make it possible to fuse real and 3D computer-generated visuals on the fly using mobile phones. The team at Oxford university has named its solution Parallel Tracking and Mapping (PTAM) and it has licensed its technology to QderoPateo LLC, which has ambitious plans to grow the mobile augmented reality market and create an augmented reality search and gaming engine running for its 'Ouidoo' smart phone. Zentium's solution is called D-Track and is being used to develop the first markerless mobile augmented reality pet, called iKat. D-Track's mapping technology is very similar to PTAM and allows your phone to recognise the space in front of the camera and create an appropriate space for an augmented reality object or pet."

ARToolkit is awesome

[anomnomnomymous]

I've recently started exploring some Augmented Reality toolkits, and I got to say that for now I -really- like ARToolkit [washington.edu]: An open source toolkit, which is very easy to set up, and I'm astonished at how good it is.
If you want to fool around with AR, be sure to give this package a go. Very easy to set up, and the results are amazing.

Only downside (imho) to this is that, for now, it only supports .wrl 3d models (VRML 2.0): But other than that, the source is very cool to modify, and I've been able to let it run (albeit slow) on my N900. Still a lot of work to do though.