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AR
The video of the new Word Lens app has been being linked to furiously since it came out this week. In case you haven't seen it:
So, yeah, awesome. We downloaded it Thursday night and played with it some. And while it's not as good as the official video implies, it's still surprisingly good. It's obviously processing each from independently, resulting in a lot of flickering between frames if a word is on the border of being recognizable. It can't handle large amounts of text very well, so stick to simple signs like in the demo. And the translation isn't particularly great. It's all done on the local device, and seems to be mostly word-by-word. Again, stick to simple signs. But with all that said, it's still awesome. This is the first generation of a product like this. And with the interest people are showing in it, I expect we'll see a lot more very soon.
Google Goggles already would translate foreign text, just not in an online, augmented reality kind of way. There is a good argument for not requiring network access on an app like this, but I'd sure like the option to use the far superior Google engine for that. Which would require better tracking so you could stick the translation into the right place once it came back, far too slow for realtime use. All details that will get resolved in the next couple months, I expect.
More excitingly, this is the first AR application that really seems to fire up people's imaginations. The consensus that this is "the future" seems fairly solid. Like most big breakthrough products, there isn't actually anything new here, just a bunch of fairly new stuff all put together in a new way. This is certainly the first AR app that I can imagine most people using. Even better, it's the first one that I can imagine driving a real demand for full eyeglass mounted AR hardware. I've been waiting for that for a long time. Amongst other things, this means I bet I'll be able to finally fulfill my trans-continental voyage of exploration within 5 years. I want to drive across the country, armed only with a compass, with no specific idea of where I am or where I'm headed beyond "east". This is, of course, impossible if you can read English. Too many signs, even if you don't use a map. Unless you have a magic AR tool removing all text from your field of view. That will be so cool!
So, yeah, awesome. We downloaded it Thursday night and played with it some. And while it's not as good as the official video implies, it's still surprisingly good. It's obviously processing each from independently, resulting in a lot of flickering between frames if a word is on the border of being recognizable. It can't handle large amounts of text very well, so stick to simple signs like in the demo. And the translation isn't particularly great. It's all done on the local device, and seems to be mostly word-by-word. Again, stick to simple signs. But with all that said, it's still awesome. This is the first generation of a product like this. And with the interest people are showing in it, I expect we'll see a lot more very soon.
Google Goggles already would translate foreign text, just not in an online, augmented reality kind of way. There is a good argument for not requiring network access on an app like this, but I'd sure like the option to use the far superior Google engine for that. Which would require better tracking so you could stick the translation into the right place once it came back, far too slow for realtime use. All details that will get resolved in the next couple months, I expect.
More excitingly, this is the first AR application that really seems to fire up people's imaginations. The consensus that this is "the future" seems fairly solid. Like most big breakthrough products, there isn't actually anything new here, just a bunch of fairly new stuff all put together in a new way. This is certainly the first AR app that I can imagine most people using. Even better, it's the first one that I can imagine driving a real demand for full eyeglass mounted AR hardware. I've been waiting for that for a long time. Amongst other things, this means I bet I'll be able to finally fulfill my trans-continental voyage of exploration within 5 years. I want to drive across the country, armed only with a compass, with no specific idea of where I am or where I'm headed beyond "east". This is, of course, impossible if you can read English. Too many signs, even if you don't use a map. Unless you have a magic AR tool removing all text from your field of view. That will be so cool!