Moire visual toy for iOS

Talking Dog Studios recently published a playful, visual toy for iOS called Moire.

"In mathematics, physics, and art, a moiré pattern (/mwɑrˈeɪ/; French: [mwaˈʁe]) is a secondary and visually evident superimposed pattern created, for example, when two identical (usually transparent) patterns on a flat or curved surface (such as closely spaced straight lines drawn radiating from a point or taking the form of a grid) are overlaid while displaced or rotated a small amount from one another."
wikipedia

Get Moire on iTunes

 

Check out our lead developers music video he made using Moire & some editing.



Get Moire on iTunes

Moire website

Also, check out cool sounds of Guidewire

Happy Hallowe'en!

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeDNdBl6PV4

Here's a little augmented reality gag for your iPhone or Android phone from the fun-loving gang here at Talking Dog. Go to www.talkingdogstudios.com/ar/halloween and use your phone to scan the QR tag there to get started. Happy Hallowe'en!

Welcome 2011!

Well it's a new year here at Talking Dog Studios and it looks like our devious developers aren't slowing down. It's all guns blazing for 2011 and we're excited to create some really cool AR experiences, not to mention seeing what other wacky stuff developers are coming up with. 2011 is going to be a big year for AR folks...BIG YEAR!!

Speaking of cool AR experiences, we've just launched a project with the Telly Awards. In an awesome partnership with these cool cats, we created mytellyaward.com. Wanna know what it could feel like to win a Telly Award? Go check it out!

In the wonderful world of ScavengAR Hunt, we now have over 10,000 players! What? Pardon me, but did you say over 10,000? Yeah, you heard me. Over 10,000 players world wide baby! Are we excited? Uhhh, yeah we are! This is great news and we hope to keep the numbers growing with new objects to find and extra twists to the game.

Thanks for playing y'all and keep up the Scavenging! Oh, by the way, did you notice what is happening on the leader board! It's a battle for World Domination!! Muahahahahahaha

Haven't checked out our game yet? What are you waiting for? We're currently being featured on the Layar downloads page, click here to check us out for iPhone or here if you only have love for Android! And while you're there, check our some of the other great apps that are available on Layar. There is some cool stuff out there people, so have a look around!

As always, we'd like to thank all the people playing our game and we look forward to bringing you lots of more cool AR stuff in 2011!

The Talking Dog AR Team

ScavengAR Christmas

The holidays are all about giving and here at Talking Dog we couldn't agree more. So we're giving our little ScavengARs a Christmas present. For a limited time, until the end of 2010 to be specific, there will be Shiny Ballz waiting to be collected for mucho points in ScavengAR Hunt!

Shiny Ballz sound familiar? Well it should, since it was the super awesome AR decorating project we developed to have a little holiday fun. We were so inspired by our magical Shiny Ballz that we decided to let you search for them in ScavengAR Hunt. Tis the season of sharing and we are more than happy to share our Shiny Ballz with you!

And it seems that you are enjoying playing our little game. We are pleased to see that our numbers are continuing to increase. The last few weeks have shown a burst of gaming in the US, UK, Australia, and France, which has got us tickled pink! So we'd like to take a moment and thank all the ScavengARs out there. Whether you are just trying it out or you've been playing since the start, we appreciate you checking out our game and we are striving to bring you new objects and tricky twists to make the hunt more fun.

On that note, thanks for the love ScavengARs and we hope you enjoy hunting for our Shiny Ballz this Christmas!

It seems like this year has brought some really awesome AR projects and apps. We'd like to give a shout out to all AR developers out there who continue to raise the bar and delve deep into the endless possibilities of AR. Some of our favourites from the year are: Star Wars Tie-Fighters, AR.Drone and most definitely Word Lens! Truly awesome and really showing the world what AR can do!

What else happened this year?

• We had the pleasure of meeting Robert Rice at the 2010 Saskatchewan Interactive Summit.
• Microsoft Kinect came out and the hacker community went to strange new lands of augmented hackery.
• Our Godzilla AR t-shirt created some blogger buzz at comic-con.
• Apple introduced more access to the iPhone camera for exciting new possibilities of augmentation.
• Google introduced us to Google Goggles and whole new way to search the web
• We got into mobile AR with Layar and our ScavengAR Hunt game

We have also frequently tweeted our many numerous other findings over on our Twitter.

As always we are excited to see where this technology goes.

The gang here at Talking Dog wishes you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Happy Holiday Scavenging!

The Talking Dog AR Team

ScavengAR Hunt Halloween!

Zombies are everywhere! Run for your lives! RUN!!!! Or better yet, get them before they get you!

OK, well maybe they aren't everywhere, but they certainly are in Augmented Reality! As an added treat to trick out your Halloween, our Franken-developers have created a Zombie Head for you ScavengARs to collect for MEGA points when you play our fun mobile game.

Thanks to the major points you get when you find this rotting braincase, you'll be able to mount your attack of the leader board and potentially RULE THE WORLD! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...ahem...well you'll be the top scorer anyway.

This undead cranium will only be floating around until midnight on Halloween. After that, it's dead and gone...for real this time. So get out there and hunt some Zombies!

Happy Halloween!!

The Talking Dog AR Team

New Objects in ScavengAR Hunt!

In order to keep things interesting for our ScavengARs out there, the brainiacs at Talking Dog have developed some new objects to find. We wouldn't want you guys to get bored now, would we?

To keep track of all those random pickles floating around your neighbourhood, we've created the Pickle Jar! Genuis, I know! However remember ScavengARs, not all pickles are created equal. Have you heard of the expression, "one bad egg rots the whole barrel"? Swap out the egg for a pickle and I think you know where we're going with this.

Also to satisfy the alien head that seems to be hanging around the produce section at the grocery store, we've made a Moon! Oooooh ahhhhhh! ET go home! Now maybe it'll stop trying to invade our planet...or at the very least stop reading our thoughts (adjusts tinfoil helmet)!

We hope you enjoy these objects and stay tuned for more coming soon...like a Cannon! Those pirates don't stand a chance!

Happy Scavenging!

The Talking Dog AR Team

AR and Historical Re-creations

The above picture comes from the wikipedia article on Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The picture is entitled "young man poses with huge pile of buffalo bones ready to be shipped".

Here at Talking Dog Studios in our on-going exploration of augmented reality, we've started investigating the world of mobile AR. The Layar app for iPhone and Google Android phones seemed to be the most obvious place to start. We have been thinking about AR, tourism and places of historical interest ever since we made our AR project for Saskatchewan Tourism so it seemed logical to take that a little further.

We started out by trying to put simple "Points of Interest" (POI) in our parking lot here at Talking Dog. We thought it would also be interesting to explore Saskatchewan's history of buffalo herds: the original name for the city we live in was "Pile of Bones", and it got its name from the huge piles of bones that were left behind by the buffalo hunters in the area.

So, through a little tinkering we built ourselves a herd of buffalo taking up all of our parking spots. This picture is of 100 virtual buffalo as seen from google maps (currently this is not publicly visible).

(Incidentally, bison is the more correct term for these animals, but buffalo still tends to be what people around here say in conversation).

At Talking Dog we understand the importance of sound to create a believable experience. To add to the realism we also allowed for the sound of a herd to be triggered when you get within a certain distance.

Next, we placed our herd of 3d buffalo models we had created in a field adjacent to Regina's Royal Saskatchewan Museum.


We're very excited by the possibilities of historical re-creations using mobile devices, and this seems like a good start. At present our herd of buffalo can only be seen if you come to the open space south east of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum here in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

This project should be published relatively soon, and we'll be sure to spread the word when we have it up. As always, follow us on twitter for more up to the minute updates on what's going on in AR.

Here's to our augmented future!

The Talking Dog AR team.