NEWS
Sony Embarass Nintendo With Smart AR
The Nintendo 3DS had one really promising feature that really stood out from the rest of the handheld's gimmicks, Augmented Reality. Today, Sony have released footage of an advanced version of this tech called Smart AR.
Smart AR takes augmented reality to the next obvious step - markerless AR. Whether or not you have had a chance to play around with AR before, simply knowing about it is quite mind blowing. Nintendo's 3DS featured a number of AR games that were really quite impressive.
Here is a video of it in action, without the 3D of course:
For those who are not sure what AR technology does, it basically tracks an object in 3D space and is then able to draw in computer graphics over the top. With the 3DS in hand, you can move the device around and it seems that the real image that the camera is capturing in front of you has a 3D graphic existing within it, blending the virtual world into the real world.
You can see at the beginning of the video that for this effect to occur the camera has to calibrate the 3D space with a marker, in this case it is a card with a question mark on it. That specific card to which the tech has been programmed to read has to be present for the effect to work, but now Sony have the next step of the tech working, Smart AR.
The advantage of this new tech is that it can identify objects by analyzing features detected from a portion of the image together with their positional relationship. The benefit of this is that the tech can work without markers. It also enables high-speed recognition that is resistant to changes in lighting or the position of the object - even functional if the object captured appears to be comparatively small in the display. The tech works with photos, menus, posters and other similar objects.
Still can't grasp the idea? watch the following video:
As you can see the technology is very quick, reliable and much more functional than any previous marker-reliant AR tech. Although the tech is only functional with flat and thin objects, the markerless capabilities of this new tech will only open up AR to much bigger things.
The chances of this new tech being used on Sony's NGP is very likely. Sony have already made their intentions clear regarding the NGP and AR as can be seen in the video below. Who knows how far this markerless AR can push their ideas with the new tech, but one thing is clear and that is Sony are still the leaders when it comes to Augmented Reality for gamers. Nintendo's 3DS has been out a couple of months now and the reaction has not been too positive in the majority. Will Sony's patience with the release of their competing handheld be their ultimate reward? Instinct tells us yes.