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Monday, July 04, 2011

Layar vs. Junaio

I'm trying Augmented Reality services and I really think that these are good stuff tools.
This is the new approach to web and content usage.
Two that I'm looking at are Layar and Junaio.
They almost do the same things, with some peculiar differences around.

Both have 3D object placement, but Layar offers better tools to do the job, with the java application offered you can place the object precisely on the map.
Junaio helps more on getting a precise GPS reading using LLA markers a feature much needed indoor.
Junaio also has a image tracker functionality that is incredible: you can process an image and using it as a placeholder to anchor to it content (video, audio, 3D) this goes well beyond simple GPS and opens up to many more use cases.
Unfortunately the amount of images usable is restricted to 7 (more if you are part of the certified developer program) mainly because (I believe) the tracking stuff can be a bit taxying on the device.
I believe that with the smart phone and tablet market rise these sort of applications will be the most used.

I think that both are good options: I think I'll use Layar for outdoor and Junaio for indoor.

Junaio Tutorial - description

I'm working on Augmented Reality in these days and I'm trying a new channel using Junaio.

The goal is to create a couple of channels to help people inside my company to understand AR potential and demo it within the company walls.

Since Junaio has two way of working I used the second option:
  1. using GPS points and locations
  2. using image detection

I made few explorations and I think that a good way is to create the channel without the online tool: at least for the first time I prefer to control everithing, there are really good examples in the tutorials in Junaio site so ...

Goal: creating some "painting" to distribute around the company with content tied on: some 3D, a video, a changing image graph, audio.
My choice was to create a GLUE Channel, setting it to refresh 30 seconds (but it doesn't still work the way I like) and than linking to it some color images to create the "paintings" that will become the anchor for content.
In following post I'll describe how I've done.