In this poster, we present the idea of “virtual transparency” for video see-through AR. In fully synthetic 3D graphics, head-tracked motion parallax has been shown to be a powerful depth cue for understanding the structure of the virtual world. To leverage head-tracked motion parallax in video see-through AR, the view of the virtual and physical world must change together in response to head motion. We present a system for accomplishing this, and discuss the benefits and limitations of our approach.

A common vision of Augmented Reality (AR) is that of a person immersed in a diverse collection of virtual information, superimposed on their view of the world around them. If such a vision is to become reality, an ecosystem for AR must be created that satisfies at least these properties: multiple sources (or channels of interactive information) must be able to be simultaneously displayed and interacted with, channels must be isolated from each other (for security and stability), channel authors must have the flexibility to design the content and interactivity of their channel, and the application must fluidly integrate with the ever-growing cloud of systems and services that define our digital lives. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the Argon AR Web Browser and describe our vision of an AR application environment that leverages the WWW ecosystem. We also describe KARML, our extension to KML (the spatial markup language for Google Earth and Maps), that supports the functionality required for mobile AR. We combine KARML with the full range of standard web technologies to create a standards-based web browser for mobile AR. KARML lets users develop 2D and 3D content using existing web technologies and facilitates easy deployment from standard web servers. We highlight a number of projects that have used Argon and point out the ways in which our web-based architecture has made previously impractical AR concepts possible.

This paper discusses an experiment carried out in an AR test bed called “the pit”. Inspired by the well-known VR acrophobia study of Meehan et al. [18], the experimental goals were to explore whether VR presence instruments were useful in AR (and to modify them where appropriate), to compare additional measures to these well-researched techniques, and to determine if findings from VR evaluations can be transferred to AR. An experimental protocol appropriate for AR was developed. The initial experimental findings concern varying immersion factors (frame rate) and their effect on feelings of presence, user performance and behavior. Unlike the VR study, which found differing frame rates to affect presence measures, there were few differences in the five frame rate modes in our study as measured by the qualitative and quantitative instruments, which included physiological responses, a custom presence questionnaire, task performance, and user behavior. The AR presence questionnaire indicated users experienced a high feeling of presence in all frame rate modes. Behavior, performance, and interview results indicated the participants felt anxiety in the pit environment. However, the physiological data did not reflect this anxiety due to factors of user experience and experiment design. Efforts to develop a useful AR test bed and to identify results from a large data set has produced a body of knowledge related to AR evaluation that can inform others seeking to create AR experiments.

Widespread future adoption of augmented reality technology will rely on a broadly accessible standard for authoring and distributing content with, at a minimum, the flexibility and interactivity provided by current web authoring technologies. We introduce KHARMA, an open architecture based on KML for geospatial and relative referencing combined with HTML, JavaScript and CSS technologies for content development and delivery. This architecture uses lightweight representations that decouple infrastructure and tracking sources from authoring and content delivery. Our main contribution is a re-conceptualization of KML that turns HTML content formerly confined to balloons into first-class elements in the scene. We introduce the KARML extension that gives authors increase control over the presentation of HTML content and its spatial relationship to other content.