Augmented Reality

February 22nd, 2009 by Tom

GE’s Ecomagination website offers a pretty neat “Augmented Reality” advertisement gimmick in which what’s shown on your computer screen responds to how you’re holding a piece of paper in front of your webcam. Go ahead, print your own and enjoy your personal augmented reality experience as well! Note that you need a printer and webcam for this to work.

Check out the video clip below to get the idea:

In May 2005 General Electric (GE) unveiled its $90 million “Ecomagination” PR and advertising campaign (press release). Ecomagination is GE’s commitment to address challenges such as the need for cleaner, more efficient sources of energy, reduced emissions and abundant sources of clean water.

To make this “Augmented Reality” possible, they used the AS3 FLARToolKit (based on the Java/C#/Android NyARToolkit, which is in turn based on the C/C++ ARToolKit or “Augmented Reality Toolkit”).

Here are some more technology demos: