Augmented Reality with large and complex markers

Question

does anyone have any experience with using large and complex images as markers (e.g. magazine layout, photo, text-layout) for a.r.?

i am not sure which way to go:

flash, papervision and flar would be nice for distribution but i suspect them to be too bad in terms of performance for a more complex marker than the usual 9x9 or 12x12 blocks. i had difficulties achieving both a good 3d performance and a smooth and solid detection.

i can also do java or objective-c with opengl/opencv and this is definitely also an option for this project.

i just would like to know before if anyone has had experiences in this field and could give me a few hints or warnings. i know it has been done already so there is a way to do it smoothly.

thanks, anton

Answer 1

It sounds like you might want to start investigating natural feature tracking libraries. In general the tracking is smoother and more robust than with markers, and any feature-full natural image can be used as the marker. The downside is, I'm not aware of any non-proprietary solutions.

Metaio Unifeye works in a web-browser via flash if I recall correctly, something like that might be what you're looking for.

Answer 2

You should look at MOPED. MOPED is a real-time Object Recognition and Pose Estimation system. It recognizes objects from point-based features (e.g. SIFT, SURF) and their geometric relationships extracted from rigid 3D models of objects.
See this video for a demonstration.