Virtual Worlds

Sound-Generated Augmented Reality Sculptures

Konstruct is an investigation into Generative Art in an Augmented Reality environment. It is a sound reactive AR experience for the iPhone that allows the user to create a virtual sculpture by speaking, whistling or blowing into the device’s microphone. A variety of 3D shapes, colour palettes and settings can be combined to build an […]

Continue Reading

Augmented Reality Gear Simulates Weather

Magic Vision Lab‘s weather simulator is great, but I think it needs an air conditioner slash personal sprinkler to make it more realistic. We examined a range of weather phenomenon and how they may be simulated in a mobile augmented reality system. ARWeather was developed and deployed on the Tinmith wearable computer system to enable […]

Continue Reading
Kinect + Open Drivers + Physics Engine = Piles of Kickable Corpses

Kinect + Open Drivers + Physics Engine = Piles of Kickable Corpses

The net result is a system that recognizes your movements and allows you to interact with virtual objects using the sophisticated physics of Valve’s engine, as the embedded video demonstrates. Don’t miss the bit at 0:30 where John, in the person of a giant robomechanical avatar, kicks a pile of virtual bodies across the screen.

Continue Reading

Interactive Mirror

Alpay Kasal, who helped create Alpha One Labs‘ Twitter-searching Christmas tree, has a new project: a touchscreen mirror. thought to build this version of the Interactive Mirror after I saw some dielectric glass mirrors with LCD panels built into them. They’re meant to be the bathroom of the future, complete with news and weather to […]

Continue Reading

Take a tour of the Arduino… but watch your step

engineerzero was kind enough to give a guided tour of a ginormous Arduino Uno to a handful of faceless Google SketchUp denizens recently. Highlights of the tour included a short stroll down Power Street to Analog Alley, where many different kinds of sensors can be connected. The group also had the incredible opportunity to see […]

Continue Reading
Rendering Kinect data in MineCraft

Rendering Kinect data in MineCraft

Kinect hacker Nathan Viniconis has been feeding Kinect data into MineCraft with some rather impressive results. The process, which is still manual at this point, creates motion by rendering each frame independently and then combining them to produce a seemingly realtime video. Supposedly there is an automated version in the works.

Continue Reading