A team from the Artist and Polytechnic Institute of New York University has created 3D digital masks.
Although Halloween costumes are already quite fun and creative, a team from New York University’s Artist and Polytechnic Institute (NYU-Poly) made up of grad students under augmented reality researcher Mark Skwarek has come together to create three dimensional digital masks this year.
The virtual masks are a part of an AR tech based game that turns the world into a futuristic reality experience.
The NYU-Poly instructor of integrated digital media, Skwarek, and a computer science grad student named Animesh Anad, have worked together to create virtual masks that come with the launch of an augmented reality game that converts the entire world into a futuristic reality game which allows people and their real world locations to be combined with the fantastical.
To make the augmented reality masks work, players must print out and wear “markers”.
These augmented reality markers are a kind of colored barcode. Each one is about four square inches. They can be tied or clipped onto a hat or into the person’s hair. Then, when a mobile device using the app is used to view that individual, it will suddenly appear that he or she is wearing a digital mask. It could be anything from a monster to a kitten. The device user can use the screen to view anyone with these “masks” and would be able to see the person’s true identity only by looking away from the screen and directly at the individual.
These masks are one portion of a broader augmented reality set that has been labeled “wearables”. Approximately 4,000 children wore these virtual costumes for the Brooklyn Art Fair so that they could be viewed through the screens of smartphones and tablets in real time as they made their way through Prospect Park.
According to Skwarek, augmented reality tech is right on the cusp of a considerable boom, as the next evolutions of Google Glass and other AR glasses begin to emerge and provide competition within the marketplace. They will mean that the images will be displayed before the eyes of the wearer, so that they will not need to hold up the device to be able to view them.
