It’s hard to imagine the ways in which augmented reality will change our lives in the future, but one area ripe for picking is the printed press.

Images come alive with augmented reality

Magazines for example, the images are stationary and don’t move or change. A picture says a thousand words but video or interaction says a lot more. Skip forward several years from now and imagine picking up the newspaper and looking at the TV guide, instead of seeing a still picture of the latest episode of Lost you’d be able to see a full length trailer for tonight’s episode.

An AR marker

Of course this is possible already, marketers have been embedding AR markers into printed medium for a while. The problem is those black and white squares where the 3D content will be rendered means very little to the human eye. Unless you have some way to interpret the image into it’s augmented reality form it’s a waste of advertising space. But it’s only a matter of time before black and white markers are a thing of the past and we are able to recognise natural shapes.

Metaio are a company at the cutting edge of augmented reality development, in their latest vision video we get a flavor of how the future of print may look once these barriers have been removed. If you watch the video below you’ll notice how real shapes are used as markers making the content readable whether you are viewing with an augmented reality device or the human eye. Not only that but the augmented reality content is compelling and adds value to the product, a real marketers dream. I can’t sail but I now have an urge to buy a yacht having brought into the dream.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB4F8z5miTY

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1. Augmented Reality – The Services Of Tomorrow
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In their latest demo video, Mataio cleverly track the lego bricks as the boundary to the dragon/knight fight and bring the scenario to life through augmented reality glasses.
 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0PC-glqLp0

 
No doubt this solution was built with Mataio’s SDK, so if you are looking for augmented reality tools take a look here.
 
While this is only a demo and not an augmented reality software solution shipping today, Lego are setting the trend with bringing the bricks to life. DisneyTown Orlando installed a camera where children can hold up the Lego box and see the toy they can build. Very useful in helping them persuade parents to part with their money.
 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UxWkZtUKaI

 
I’m going to sound like my grandad but kids today don’t know they are born. I had to wait until I was about 14 before I finally got hold of a computer, even then it was a ZX81, with 1k of ram and a black and white display. I feel old knowing Lego has more processing power than the PCs I grew up with.

Related posts:

1. Metaio AR Vision Video
2. Augmented Reality Face Recognition
3. Print Is Dead Long Live Augmented Reality