Zugara Launches Online Shopping App Utilizing Augmented Reality And Motion Capture

Via WeAreOrganizedChaos:

Here at Zugara, we’re proud to announce the launch of our newest application, The Webcam Social Shopper. Coupling the functionality of both Augmented Reality and Motion Capture, this application will allow anyone with a webcam to shop online right from within their video feed.

We like to think of it as “Augmented Reality meets Utility”. This app allows you to seemingly hold articles of clothing up in front of yourself to see “how they look”. And the Motion Capture allows the app to track your movements so you can interact with the site (e.g. cycle through a product’s various colors/styles or take a picture of yourself so you can get immediate feedback from friends on Facebook) while standing several feet away from your computer’s controls. No extra downloads, no new plug-in, no consumer headache.

To see the application in action, check out our video below.

(UPDATE: If you’re having trouble accessing the embedded video - here is the direct YouTube URL)

Now that you’ve seen the application in its “Alpha State”, think about the potential an app like this has as we partner with brands to allow their consumers to do things like:

• Livestream their webcam’s feed to friends and loved ones, and get comments and feedback right next to the application in real time.


• Receive “clothing care packages” from loved ones who might be somewhere else in the country and set up times to “shop together”… online.


• Enter their measurements into the app and get a “fitted image”.


• Match entire outfits at the same time, both top and bottom.


• Shop right within a branded Facebook application.

It’s not a secret that friends/family recommendations influence a consumer’s purchase decision and beat any other “consumer touchpoint”. Now, we can help brands empower their consumers to integrate their friends and family into their online shopping process like never before. The thinking is that this application will help bridge the gap between how people like to shop offline and how they are forced to shop online, subsequently providing an enhanced interactive shopping experience for the consumer and increased sales for the brand.

So, what do you think? Please, feel free to share this post with anyone and everyone, or embed the video above in your own blog. And, as always, we’d love to know your thoughts below…

About Zugara

Zugara is an interactive marketing agency with a passion for emerging media and technologies. Unlike most agencies, we don’t claim to do everything: Interactive Video, Social Media, Mobile Marketing, and Website & Application Development are our core competencies. Since our doors opened in 2001, we’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the world’s best brands such as Reebok, Sony Computer Entertainment Of America, Toyota, Activision, Jelly Belly, Casio, The Air Force, and Lexus to create strategic interactive campaigns that focus on accomplishing their business objectives. Based in Los Angeles, we’re currently in the process of expanding, and opening our second office in New York (www.zugara.com) (www.zugarastudios.com).

For more information on The Webcam Social Shopper or ZugMo Technology, please contact ar@zugara.com.

For all other inquiries, please contact info@zugara.com.

Copyright 2009 ZugMo Technology

Copyright 2009 Webcam Social Shopper

Copyright 2009 Zugara Inc.

Patent Pending

FGAR 0.2

FGAR 0.2 is now available! New in this release is Matrix3D result smoothing. For an example of 0.2 in action, print this marker and run this sample application.

Here are the links to the sample app, and the source of FGAR 0.2. Enjoy!

FGAR 0.1 is here!

I'm happy to announce the releaso of FGAR (Flaming Granny Augmented Reality) v0.1. FGAR is an optimized, Flex based version of FLARManager by Eric Socolofsky, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Features of FGAR include:

- 640x480 camera resolution shown to the user by default, without loss of frame rate.
- FGAR handles the camera and pattern vectors for you. Just initialize FGAR with the locations of the camera dat file and patterns xml file, add event listeners, and create your scene.
- Custom events for all manager actions that keep class imports to a minimum.

Print out this marker and check out this sample FGAR Application:

Here's FGAR and the sample application source. Enjoy!


Flaming Granny Augmented Reality by Blake Callens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.flaminggranny.com/fgar/FGAR_0_1.zip.

Source of 3D Carousel

Earlier back I posted an example of a 3D carousel using Papervision3D. In it I said I would post the source when I finished it, but I totally forgot to. So, two months later, here it is. Sorry for the delay.

TitlesDispay3D.zip

All In One Video Component for Flex

I just finished an All In One video component for Flex. You can use this to connect to, display, and control a video stream from either Flash Media Server or a static url.

Here's how to use it:
1) Add the source to your project.
2) Add the directory to your app mxml. In your app header:

xmlns:flaminggranny="com.flaminggranny.video.*"

3) Declare a component with these parameters:

flaminggranny:VideoLayer id="video" width="100%" height="100%"

4) In your script, connect to a server. If you're playing from a static url, don't pass a parameter:

video.connect("rtmp://your.server/app"); // Flash Media Server
OR
video.connect(); //Static URL

5) Play the video, passing the filename:

video.play(yourFilename);

6) Enjoy watching your video!

Get the source here:VideoLayer.zip

3D DVD Carousel

Here's a little something I've been working on:

I'll post the source once I'm comfortable with a final release. Probably going to put in the ability to flip the items around to view the back cover.

Industry Standard Game Development - Preface

I've decided that the first tutorial for this blog will be how to program an industry standard game in Flash (AS3) and Flex. This tutorial will be comprised of multiple parts, over several months. Basically, I'll write about what I'm doing as I build the game.

Now for the exciting part -- I'm going to remake, from top to bottom, the arcade version of Metal Slug. In case you’re not excited about this prospect (I wouldn't know why), here’s a list of reasons why I picked Metal Slug and why I’m doing it in both Flash and Flex:

Why Metal Slug
1. A well known game, like Metal Slug, can’t be faked. I’ll have to really work to match the physics and collision perfectly. There are already some Flash versions available, but none of them play like the original.
2. The platform shooter genre will allow me to go over all major aspects of action game programming (animation sequencing, parallax, physics, collision, sound).
3. All the resources for this game are readily available.
4. Once the first is made, it'll be easy to do the sequels.

Why Flash and Flex Together
1. Flex’s dynamic abilities will allow me to load all the assets remotely (via XML and the SWFLoader class), keeping the main file size down.
2. Flex’s command line compile settings will help tie up any loose ends in the code, keeping frame rate up and total file size down.
3. Creating the art and animations in Flash will give me visual control over design.
4. Flex negates cross-platform compatibility issues.

I’ll be posting all the source code for download, but I suggest building the game along with me. This will give you a better understanding of what’s happening from the ground up. Also, you might find a better way of doing something that I can integrate into my code.

In the next few posts, we’ll begin setting up the character sprites and collision (world and attack collisions), start building the Flex framework of the game, and go over how to import movie clips from a swf into Flex and manipulate them.

Until then, check out metalslugsprites.net. They have almost every Metal Slug sprite broken into pieces like this: