This afternoon Peter Gould of PDP mobile and Brian Selzer of Ogmento hosted a discussion about the meshing of the physical and digital worlds that touched on app-enabled accessories and augmented reality location-aware games among other topics.
One interesting experiment mentioned by Mr. Selzer was a game where instead of keying off of a pre-printed visual cue for AR, players could draw a symbol with a pencil, and then the app would recognize it and animate it. He also discussed a Dos Equis campaign where players could play ring toss with a bottle of beer. So instead of just showing some kind of branded content, the thing being recognized by the app becomes an object within the game. The app even included the audible clinks to call out the interaction between the physical object and the virtual ones.
An audience member demoed an app that lets you determine what sized wall hanging you might want. You print out a specially coded page, and hang it on the wall. Within the app, you pick a piece of art and then that art is shown via augmented reality on the wall, keying off of the printout. But then you can resize the art so it will fit your desired space, and then take note of the desired size that works with your decor. Once you know with a fair degree of fidelity what size artwork you would like, you can go ahead and order it.
