This is probably thread drift but video playback is so 20th century. I had an old acquaintance pass through town and we caught up. He's working for a start up that's doing something similar to Google Glass. He had a demo unit to show me. The googles worked with any users phone (or iPod touch) but of course it was the software that was on show.
He first showed me some 3D games, a roller coaster, etc. Very cool, but I'm not into games but even I can see they'll make a $illion. I was much more impressed with the 3D Paul McCartney concert. I could turn around and see the thousands of fans behind me. I could look up at roof of the stadium, I could even watch the show. There were even shots taken from on stage, so again I could look out to the crowd, watch each and any of the musicians or even Sir Paul himself. My choice. My friend then removed the cover over he camera lens and then showed me a demo of Augmented Reality (AR). If you don't know what AR is here's a mediocre demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhTcAvbjwjg So the basic requirement is that screen is filled with whatever the camera is seeing, and then there is some 2D image which triggers something else to be played on top of that 2D image whilst the rest of the screen continues to show the real world. In the demo I was shown, I was handed a 2.5" cube; with the naked eye on each of the six sides was a different, simple black and white line art image. With the phone and the software (the goggles aren't necessary, but when used it becomes immersive) I had a 3D animated miniature horse in my hand. As I rotated the cube I could see the walking horse from any angle; not just the left side, then the right side, then the bottom etc, but as I slowly rotated the cube the horse also very smoothly rotated: 45°, 13°, 76.1345° it was very smooth and very cool and everyone else in the restaurant were still eating their dinner. He said someone was working on a Harry Potter style game of chess. All the pieces would be just basic rectangular prisms of appropriate size and proportion, but every single side would have a unique image, thus every single piece when viewed through AR device/software would be alive and unique. Castles would have archers firing arrows from the battlements, Knights would have individual armour both for them and their horses. Pawns would be individual foot soldiers, uniformed alike, but still unique and with personality. Another $illion there. Now I'm not suggesting that LiveCode needs to be at the forefront of 3D multimedia and AR; there is no way the next 3D Grand Theft Auto will be written in LC; this is the territory of dedicated game houses. Obviously 3D is all the rage, but it doesn't have to be. I've seen some very basic 2D uses of AR, especially in the real estate industry. A prospective buyer notices a for sale sign outside a house, or sees an add in the newspaper/magazine, simply by holding up the mobile device (with appropriate app installed) to the sign/add, a gallery of 2D photos becomes available, of every single room of the house, plus views outside the house from multiple angles. Buttons appear so you can immediately phone or email the agent; no need to actually read it off the sign/add. In the 21st Century I see AR as being huge. I don't know what technology is required to make it work, even on the most basic level, but whatever it is, LC needs to jump aboard. HyperCard bought us Myst, I'm sure there are lot of very bright people out there that have very unique and niche ideas on how AR could be leveraged to bring static objects to life - museums, art galleries and libraries immediately come to mind. It would be nice if LC made that easy to happen. I hope someone is going to tell me, 'oh we could already do that... if only startTime worked' ;-) _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode