Well, "write once, debug everywhere" was the dismissive slogan by Java haters to argue against the virtues of a VM approach. Over the years things have evolved and got probably better. I am not a big Java developer but I know my way around and that is enough for getting quickly demos cobbled together. Now with Android getting more and more adopted and figuratively into the pockets of a lot of users we are back with the mess that is constituted by the abstraction between the developer and the hardware.
Please everybody in the AR scene subscribe to the bug described below to get some more attention of the Android Developers in regard to this bug or better call it an ill-designed API call:
As of today 19 April 2010, the University of Canterbury, my current employer has reassign the IP around SSTT back to me. This means I am free to provide consultancy and licensing around SSTT in the near future. This does not mean that this will be an immediate action, however the future for SSTT is bright. I would like to acknowledge the people in R&I of the University of Canterbury and first and foremost the HIT Lab NZ for taking action and making it happen.
About SSTT: SSTT is an Augmented Reality platform for desktop and mobile devices. It provides realtime video capture and tracking on a range of hosts including:
Windows (XP, Vista, 7)
Mac OS X (>= 10.5), iPhone OS (>= 3.1)
Linux (including Maemo5)
Android
Symbian S60
It has been proven highly effective, small in footprint and is ubiquitous to embed in a vast range of target applications and libraries.
Sorry, but I can not get any enthusiasm out of the iPad. Maybe it was overhyped. Boring. Just plain boring. Maybe I'm to AR centric, hence a device with no camera can not be interesting. But even as a Jon Everage user I would not read a newspaper on a XGA screen - my eyes are still fine and the 1400x900 on the MacBook Pro already is unacceptable. To top it off, on saturday I like to sit outside and have my newspaper review - my wild guess is that the display will be barely readable - not only because its LED but its glossy again. And USD500?
Just in case you see a strange looking page here. Nothing to worry about, technotecture and the osgART website are moving to a newer and beefier server. And while I am at it, there will be also a small update for the page :)
Update - done with technotecture - osgART needs to wait until end of next week.
So, a few hundred people already downloaded the new version and I need to dive deep in the code to iron out some of the most obvious bugs. Here the current known bugs shortlist:
flipping the image on OSX creates flicker
with some web cams on Windows the screen stays black
selecting a non-default camera doesn't work
touch input is flaky on OSX
force reloading on Windows crashes
If you encountered another bug, please let me know - either as a comment here or send me a mail hartmut (at) technotecture (dot) com
Today at part of my ISMAR poster demonstration I am releasing the new SSTT visualizer. It looks quite tame but I can tell you there is more to it than just the looks. It will take a while to document all features. A quick rundown:
Just as I mentioned before leaving PPC behind and cutting a few corners here and there I would like to confirm SSTT Visualizer is fully capable of running on Snow Leopard
Unfortunately, due to unresolvable issues with a new and very important feature I had to remove support for PPC. Thus, SSTT Visualizer 1.x will be first and the only Universal Binary build. I think this is more than reasonable with Snow Leopard shipping tomorrow and almost everybody has upgraded to an Intel Mac in one way or the other.
Update - and while I am at it, there is another feature that also makes it impossible to run SSTT Visualizer on OS X 10.4 aka Tiger. To sum up: 2.x will be Intel only and run on Leopard 10.5 and higher - no Tiger and no PPC.
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