Another awesome Augmented Reality from Sensei and friend-of-the-blog Alan Craig (famous for, among other things, this): a detailed augmented reality “visual cow” for veterinary students. The project is a collaboration with the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine.
While not a substitute for studying real animals, the detailed graphics are a potentially useful bridge between 2D images and the (possibly messy) 3D reality.
The AR works at both desktop scale, as a 3D textbook illustration, and at full scale, as a virtual “visible cow”.
The full scale version is registered so that the internal structures and organs are visible “inside” a full size fiberglass cow! (Who is apparently knwn as Dr. Moolittle.) I really love this particular effect, because it is a sort of magic xray, looking inside the cow. You have to see it to really grok how compelling this illusion really is.
So cool!
Right now the 3D imagery is an idealized fixed display (a la the diagrams in a textbook), but it is easy to imagine driving the display with computation and data. So, you could illustrate what you might see if the cow is pregnant or sick or something. And, with some work, you could link this to realtime imaging, to project the actual imagery of an animal onto the animal itself.
OK, I know the realtime stuff is actually quite difficult, so I don’t expect it next year. But it’s possible, and certainly seems like a mountain we have to climb, no?
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