LiveCode 8 and a new video player?

[Kay C Lan]

This is probably thread drift but video playback is so 20th century.

I had an old acquaintance pass through town and we caught up. He's working
for a start up that's doing something similar to Google Glass. He had a
demo unit to show me. The googles worked with any users phone (or iPod
touch) but of course it was the software that was on show.

He first showed me some 3D games, a roller coaster, etc. Very cool, but I'm
not into games but even I can see they'll make a $illion. I was much more
impressed with the 3D Paul McCartney concert. I could turn around and see
the thousands of fans behind me. I could look up at roof of the stadium, I
could even watch the show. There were even shots taken from on stage, so
again I could look out to the crowd, watch each and any of the musicians or
even Sir Paul himself. My choice. My friend then removed the cover over he
camera lens and then showed me a demo of Augmented Reality (AR). If you
don't know what AR is here's a mediocre demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhTcAvbjwjg

So the basic requirement is that screen is filled with whatever the camera
is seeing, and then there is some 2D image which triggers something else to
be played on top of that 2D image whilst the rest of the screen continues
to show the real world. In the demo I was shown, I was handed a 2.5" cube;
with the naked eye on each of the six sides was a different, simple black
and white line art image. With the phone and the software (the goggles
aren't necessary, but when used it becomes immersive) I had a 3D animated
miniature horse in my hand. As I rotated the cube I could see the walking
horse from any angle; not just the left side, then the right side, then the
bottom etc, but as I slowly rotated the cube the horse also very smoothly
rotated: 45°, 13°, 76.1345° it was very smooth and very cool and everyone
else in the restaurant were still eating their dinner.

He said someone was working on a Harry Potter style game of chess. All the
pieces would be just basic rectangular prisms of appropriate size and
proportion, but every single side would have a unique image, thus every
single piece when viewed through AR device/software would be alive and
unique. Castles would have archers firing arrows from the battlements,
Knights would have individual armour both for them and their horses. Pawns
would be individual foot soldiers, uniformed alike, but still unique and
with personality. Another $illion there.

Now I'm not suggesting that LiveCode needs to be at the forefront of 3D
multimedia and AR; there is no way the next 3D Grand Theft Auto will be
written in LC; this is the territory of dedicated game houses. Obviously 3D
is all the rage, but it doesn't have to be. I've seen some very basic 2D
uses of AR, especially in the real estate industry. A prospective buyer
notices a for sale sign outside a house, or sees an add in the
newspaper/magazine, simply by holding up the mobile device (with
appropriate app installed) to the sign/add, a gallery of 2D photos becomes
available, of every single room of the house, plus views outside the house
from multiple angles. Buttons appear so you can immediately phone or email
the agent; no need to actually read it off the sign/add.

In the 21st Century I see AR as being huge. I don't know what technology is
required to make it work, even on the most basic level, but whatever it is,
LC needs to jump aboard. HyperCard bought us Myst, I'm sure there are lot
of very bright people out there that have very unique and niche ideas on
how AR could be leveraged to bring static objects to life - museums, art
galleries and libraries immediately come to mind. It would be nice if LC
made that easy to happen.

I hope someone is going to tell me, 'oh we could already do that... if only
startTime worked' ;-)