What happens when you mash up a bunch of buzzword technologies together in one video? Look no further than the below presentation, titled "Augmented Reality 3d Video on iPad with Kinect."
iOS developer Laan Labs yesterday demonstrated a concept app (created with the String AR SDK) that can use video captured from Microsoft's Kinect as augmented-reality content when viewed through an iPad 2 camera. This means that one day you could possibly record a video of yourself on a Kinect camera, transfer the data to an AR card, and send a virtual 3D movie greeting of yourself to someone. This could really unleash creative possibilities for your mother-in-law's next birthday card.
The small software company behind the project is run by two brothers, Christopher and Jason Laan, who have electrical and chemical engineering backgrounds, respectively. They describe the homebrew effort as a "just for fun experiment," but even in their test video it's easy to spot the limitless potential for creating amusing personal 3D AR content. For example, during the demo video, a test filter is shown that makes the person displayed on the AR card look similar to Princess Leia being projected from R2-D2 in "Star Wars."
Watching the demo, it becomes apparent that the 3D capture from the Kinect is slightly limited, as video playback of a recorded character is a bit jagged and awkward looking during certain movements. Regardless, one has to wonder if the Hallmark store of the future will enable us to create augmented-reality greeting cards.