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Showing posts from January, 2015

Head Mounted Displays and Augmented Reality Headgear

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 The idea of immersing ourselves deeper into an augmented and or virtual reality has captivated many of us thanks to sci-fi books like Snow Crash and Rainbows End . It has also created an explosion in growth the past few years of Head Mounted Displays (HMD) and augmented reality glasses projects. AR glasses and HMDs have been around for some time but people really started to get excited about augmented reality headwear when Google announced Glass back in 2012. So let's start the review here. Google Glass : Before the recent announcement of it being discontinued  but now "graduating" from the Google X experimental projects incubator to become its own independent division (that will report to Nest's Tony Fadell), Google Glass was a $1,500 type of wearable technology with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD). It was developed by Google with the mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer. Tailored mainly to work with Google products, Google Glass disp...

Open and Interoperable Augmented Reality

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  In my travels over the years I have had the opportunity to meet some amazing people that are champions for technology open standards. Sure this may not be the most interesting part of a technology's ecosystem but it is among the most important. True most people I talk with agree that standards are important but the passionate individuals I speak of now not only understand the importance of standards, they also advocate for and are actively involved with how the standards evolve. In the realm of augmented reality, Christine Perey is such a champion and heroine.  I could write a whole article on the amazing work this lady has done for AR over the years but this post is a shout out to the AR Community for Open and Interoperable Augmented Reality Experiences , an international grassroots community she organizes. Now on their 12th AR Community meeting, this group is made up of members that wish to utilize open interfaces and standards in their AR projects and/or contribu...

3D Web Performance Festival - Act 1: Merging Art & the 3D Web

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  My first post of 2015 touched into how this is going to be a great year for web3D and the 3D Web. Now while there is a growing number of web developers already evolving flat websites into those with web3D content or into fully interactive 3D Web applications, games, and environments, there is still a lack of 3D Web art that one can visit online. Other than Chris Milk's " 3 Dreams of Black " and a handful of other experiences that leverage web3D, there really isn't much out there in the art-meets-music-meets-web3d realm. I encourage my readers to please provide links in the comments section to any web experiences that fit this criteria that you know of and like.  So why aren't more artists collaborating with web developers to make crazy cool web experience art like 3 Dreams of Back? Well it seems I am not the only person asking this and with that said, I am thrilled to announce the 3D Web Festival.   The 3D Web Festival  will showcase websites that a...

2015 - The Year of Web3D & the 3D Web

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I can say it with confidence in 2015, "The 3D Web is finally here!"  I have been involved with and covered web3D tech for years but it has only been since last year's support of  WebGL  (a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 3D & 2D graphics) by all the major browser vendors that web3D is truly ubiquitous on all desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Gone are the days of having to download and install a plugin or app to run interactive 3D content via the web. The super exciting thing for me is that this web3d tech development has created a groundwork within HTML5 for the highly anticipated 3D Web. What is the difference between web3D and the 3D Web you may ask? I see web3D as all tech related to the delivery and rendering of static and interactive 3D content on the Internet. Google Earth, World Of Warcraft, 3D online gaming, virtual surgery, and military simulations are some examples of web3D applications.  Unity3D ,  Flash ,  X3D-Edit , an...