Day 9: Finishing adding models, implementing fun dynamic model interactions

ALVAR marker tracking

ALVAR just announced that they are releasing the latest version of their marker tracking software, which can  in fact track 2D and 3D objects in the real world! The fact that you won't need marker cards any more would be a massive improvement in interactivity over the current system, so it will be worth looking into this.

Would be interesting to have fireballs emanating from your hands, computerized hats follow your head about, and other random stuff.

Open Day Preparations

Tomorrow I'll be demoing the AR demo to a load of sixth formers who are thinking of applying to university. My job is to let them know that we do fun stuff in Computer Science (which, naturally, is super-easy because everything is fun in Computer Science) so today I finished off all the model-related problems in order to have a fully working and fun demonstration for schoolchildren to enjoy.

Some of the highlights include a high resolution spinning basketball suspended off the marker card. You can increase and decrease the spinning speed by hitting page up and page down, and because it's in mid air you can pose around it looking like you're holding it there with your mind or something. The force is strong with this one!

There's also a platform upon which a variable number of golf balls are randomly placed and bounce about. You can specify the number of golf balls and dimensions of the platform, and the system will randomly place the balls on the platform without collisions and without leaving the platform dimensions, and set them bouncing up and down. The gravity is also variable on the fly by using the up and down arrow keys. In its entirety, this took for ever to code...

There is also quite a range of static models, I do quite like the creepy insect:

Too close for comfort

Tomorrow I'll start looking at making GUI's to control the awesome interactive things, as well as adding sounds. The result will be a super-interactive megathon of augmented reality goodness, it's only a matter of time!