Augmented Environments Lab

ARf: an Augmented Reality Virtual Pet on the iPhone

ARf is our first experiment with creating an AR game on the iPhone. Play with a virtual puppy on your desk: use the touch screen to tell him where to go, or to poke and pet him! Build up a world with multiple markers so he has room to run. Give him a water bowl or a friend to play with. ARf is currently just an experiment to explore some of what’s possible with such a device, but it clearly has a lot of room to grow. As we make the system more functional, we would like to add more elaborate Pet AI and explore multiplayer interactions, so friends can play with their pets together on the same desk, or in distributed locations while sharing a common virtual space.

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18 comments

18 Comments so far

  1. amir March 9th, 2009 11:31 pm

    i want to try ARf on my iphone , do you have any link to download ? thank you

  2. blair March 9th, 2009 11:44 pm

    Alas, we can’t release it (or any AR app) until Apple allows video capture in apps; you can’t distribute apps that use “undocumented” SDKs. This wasn’t done on a jailbroken phone, but plain old iphones using apple’s SDK.

  3. The Virtual Games May 5th, 2009 3:23 pm

    Virtual pets and toys market is growing. It’ll be even more powerfull in the future.

  4. Andy May 10th, 2009 10:53 pm

    So right now its isn’t possible/ not allowed to use a distributable AR app on the iphone? so if i wrote one apple would let people download it? how did that virtual santa get released? was it just written on the iphone SDK do you think?

  5. blair May 11th, 2009 7:12 am

    @Andy You can’t make a distributable app that access the camera, except through the provided preview and picture taking APIs. The santa app takes a single picture and allows you to put Santa in it, for example. It doesn’t support “real” AR. So, if you do something with still pictures, sure, that will work. But, if you want to overlay 3D graphics on live video, you are out of luck.

  6. Jose May 11th, 2009 10:32 pm

    @blair how did you manage to get access to the iPhone camera? can you share the code of the “hacked” API?
    I guess we’ll have to wait for mass distribution, but at least, with the hacked API, we can experiment with our own AR iPhone apps :)
    Thanks!

  7. WoW!!! June 16th, 2009 1:01 pm

    I just want to say that u guys are amazing!!! Imagine a game like that but instead of pets, some kind of monsters that u grow and have a virtual fight with others… That will sell more then beer!!!

  8. Greg Krohne June 17th, 2009 2:24 pm

    The iPhone?! I insist you port it to Android immediately for my personal entertainment and edification.

  9. blair June 17th, 2009 5:28 pm

    Hi Greg, how’s life? But, you’ll have to do without G1 games from us. Android doesn’t cut the mustard for real AR (as opposed to that ill-registered, wobbly text on top of video junk) since you can’t do native marker tracking, etc. I’ve heard they are adding some methods of doing JNI, which would be nice; perhaps even a JIT?

    When this happens, and someone builds real game engines like Unity3D for the G1, let me know! :)

  10. ARhrrrr! : Augmented Reality Zombie and Helicopter Game | Design Website June 19th, 2009 10:49 am

    [...] game was created by Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab (also known for their virtual iPhone puppy) and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD-Atlanta). As they describe it: By merging [...]

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  12. Vincent July 31st, 2009 10:19 am

    First of all, this is awesome!

    Did you guys use the Artoolkit or the Studierstube tracker?
    Or did you write your own code?
    And if so is it open to other developers under any kind of license to play with?

    Sincerely, Vincent.

  13. bobo September 14th, 2009 10:18 am

    Are you able to release a version now that the 3Gs is out?

  14. Mike Orr September 22nd, 2009 4:22 pm

    Hello,

    Great stuff! Would you ever consider putting this on a social networking site for pets?
    I am a relatively new site, trying to bolster traffic and content.

    Many thanks, Mike

  15. In Depth: 8 awesome augmented reality apps for iPhone | mowbee.com September 30th, 2009 1:28 am

    [...] prototype that’s been around for a while, this augmented reality pet game enables you to hover your iPhone above specific cards and objects to do different things with your [...]

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    [...] ■ARf これは、ちょっと変わり種でARでペットが飼えるアプリ。これはARでもカードから飛び出すタイプで、専用のカードにiPhoneのカメラを向けるとペットが出てくる仕組み。このなかでペットを成長させていく感じでしょうか？ [...]

  17. Taura February 11th, 2010 4:10 pm

    Hello,

    I am wondering if you can tell me how you were able to keep the dog on the screen when the marker was not in view of the camera?
    Thanks!

  18. blair February 11th, 2010 4:49 pm

    Actually, look about 1:15 into the youtube video; all the graphics disappear when no markers are fully visible.

    We could also just assume the camera doesn’t move when the marker is lost, but that tends not to work well.

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