Checking in on augmented reality

I’m a big fan of Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ work (and those he works with) :) .  Blaise is part of Microsoft’s Live Labs team, and I first saw him speak when he introduced Photosynth at TED a couple years back.  In addition to the stitching and navigation of images in Photosynth, the zooming known as Deep Zoom in Silverlight (aka Sea Dragon) was first shown off as part of Photosynth, too.  As Blaise hinted it could be in his Ted talk a couple years ago, this technology is used in Bing Maps today.  And actually photosynth is used in Bing Maps today, too. 

At his recent 2010 TED talk, Blaise showed off how Bing is evolving as an application platform in its own right, and showed some very cool augmented reality.  More than just street level pics, the street side images are supported by a full 3D model that is aware of the surfaces in the image. This contributes to an intelligent, natural experience.  For example, you can “walk” into buildings and under covered structures and see ceilings.

Most interesting to me was seeing how Blaise and his team are incorporating live, real-time video into the experience.  I was also excited to see World Wide Telescope make an appearance as part of Bing Maps in Blaise’s talk.  Check out Blaise’s TED talk below. 

Technorati Tags: technology innovation,photosynth,augmented reality,TED