Nov 18 2012
Barclaycard Launch an Augmented Reality App in Time for Christmas
We have looked at augmented reality games in the past, with it’s camera and high quality screen the iPhone naturally lends itself to Augmented Reality platforms, where computer generated graphics are super imposed over real life images.
Barclaycard have embraced this technology and have launch their Toys Unleashed App, a technically impressive but fun little collection of AR games based around bringing toys to life on your hand.
Games are played on the real word, you simply hold out your hand in front of the camera and using the latest on skin detection technology the app automatically works out the position and distance it is away from the camera and scales the on-screen character accordingly. You then interact with on screen objects with your finger. When talking about how the App works Perry Price at DARE who created the app said:
“Using the latest parallel programming techniques the phone splits the image into appropriate channels, rapidly strips away areas of the cameras feed that aren’t skin, identifies regions that might be a hand and then makes a decision about which of those is the more likely to be the tracked hand – all this takes place at a steady 25fps on most models.”
Three games are included in the App, featuring Mr B the Monkey, Chomp the Dinosaur and Mike the Robot, each with their own slightly different objective, you need to throw bananas in a set direction to Mr B, feed Chomp by throwing the right food at him and defend Mike from UFOs.
The games aren’t exactly rocket science but they are fun and are good examples of how augmented reality can be used to good effect, and as the image below (with Art work by Lee Baker) shows with a bit of imagination using the App can become creative. Check out Toys Unleashed in the App Store now
