Augmented Reality Layar at AAS

An interesting new twist for the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society will be the "Augmented Reality" poster - an instantiation of the very rapidly growing augmented reality features appearing everywhere through smartphone apps or google glass.

V838 Mon poster by Vogt et al

will have a layar augmentation:

[caption id="attachment_3642" align="aligncenter" width="200"] Vogt et al poster viewed through layar app on an iPhone
(click to embiggen)[/caption]

using layar creator, tags are added to the poster which pop up when viewed through the app providing links to sources, videos, 3D visualizations etc.

It works.
It is cool.
I like it.

And we are all going to be doing it Real Soon Now,
so get one of your (younger) students playing with layar creator...

I spent much longer than I planned playing with the options at Howard Bond's office door, where an A4 (but functional) copy of the poster was hanging to demo.

The possibilities are interesting, and looking much like those foreseen in various Brin, Gibson and Sterling SF novels (cf Existence by Brin).

The iPhone app is good enough for this to work right now,
something like google glass 2.1 will take this sort of layaring to a new level and soon.

Expect some totally surreal "Human vs Zombie" layared games to appear at campuses near you as harbringers of the tech going totally functional.
In the meantime astro meetings are about to go back to the future with hordes of mesmerized scientists peering at the latest 3D animated results layared on ye olde posters in mid-range convention centers around the world over the next few months.

Looking forward to this next phase, it will be interesting.