Archive for the ‘iPhone’ Category
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
The first gesture-controlled 3D airplane game has finally landed in the App Store. The objective is simple: Board the plane and collect the portals in the magical forest!
You can tilt your device like a steering wheel or, on devices with a front-facing camera (such as the iPhone 4/4S or iPad 2), even use gestures to manoeuvre the plane.
Gesture control works by tracking two objects and their respective position. Object recognition is based on color, so ensure the objects tracked have a distinct color from everything else in the picture (face, background, etc.) and you are in an evenly lit environment. For this purpose, colored gloves seem to work particularly well.
The game, originated from two University projects, brings camera-driven interaction to mobile devices in the form of an addictive arcade game for people of all ages. An early preview of this still very young technology was shown in Frankfurt am Main at Macoun 2011, the biggest iOS and Mac developers’ conference in the German-speaking world.
Meteora+ ($3.99) is now available on the iTunes App Store.
(more…)
Posted in Gaming, NCCA, Programming, VFX & 3D, iPhone | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Macoun 2011 is over and I just arrived back in London. It was my first time and I was impressed with the quality of speakers and talks, people’s incredible openness and how brilliantly it was all organised. Also, thanks everyone for their lovely feedback on Twitter. I tried my best to retweet the most relevant tweets regarding gesture recognition, many more can be found using the #macoun hashtag.
The whole session was also recorded on video and will be posted soon. Meanwhile, here are some first pictures and the slides of my talk to download:
Norbert M. Doerner, @cdfinder
photo by @toastedtoast
photo by @kopf_marcus
photo by @kopf_marcus
photo by @futuretap
Last but not least, the video recorded on stage. Thanks Chris, Thomas et al. for this wonderful thing you created!
Posted in Mac, Programming, VFX & 3D, iPhone | No Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
Less than a week left till the biggest iOS and OS X developer conference in the german-speaking world starts. Macoun 2011 will take place on the first weekend of October in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I’m proud to be one of the speakers in such an amazing line-up. My session is going to be on Sunday, 11 am (Grosser Saal). So for those developers who still want to sign up and attend, today is the last day!
The talk is going to be about the Gesture Library on the iPad 2 and is going to focus on the concepts and technology behind it. We will also look at some code samples. Here an abstract of the talk (Source: www.macoun.de):
Visuelle Gestenerkennung
Gestengesteuerte Interaktion mit einer virtuellen Umgebung — ganz im Stile von Minority Report — ist dank Front-Kamera auch auf dem iPad 2 möglich. Anhand einer Beispiel-App werden die spannenden Möglichkeiten solcher Anwendungen gezeigt und einige dahinterliegende Technologien und Konzepte erläutert.
I still have a lot to prepare, only so much: People who were waiting for Meteora might really like it 
Posted in Mac, Programming, iPhone | No Comments »
Monday, April 25th, 2011
For the module Animation Software Development, I recently developed a 3D game for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It is fully data-driven and uses Lua and irrlicht. There is also a full report available for download below. It contains the initial design, concept drawings, explanation of algorithms and technologies used.
The game currently features 5 levels, each 45 s long. They all differ in the speed of the airplane and the amount of obstacles (so far mainly trees). I plan on releasing this to the App Store at some point in time. However, I still need to add more level packs and add things like Game Center integration so players can submit highscores.
Screenshot of gameplay on an iPad.
Download Report (PDF, 9.2 MB)
Posted in Gaming, NCCA, iPhone | No Comments »
Monday, April 18th, 2011
I’ve spent a couple of days porting my gesture library to iOS to do some tests with the iPad 2’s front-facing camera. I also added head tracking with OpenCV for Head-Coupled Perspective (HCP) and a sort of 3D effect. It’s an early prototype for an ongoing project at the NCCA, still a lot to do, but I thought I’d give you a short preview. Stay tuned! The system is implemented in C++ and some Objective-C (for iOS glue code), powered by openFrameworks.
Update: New video showing an updated version with some new functions like the feature in the end that could be used for some sort of AR shooter game.
Update 2: Thanks to Renato Mitra for featuring this video on his site, one of the most popular blogs in Switzerland. Salü Äpflblog-Bsüecher
Posted in NCCA, Programming, iPhone | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
After being a busy with studies and, to be honest, a lazy blogger, I want to start catching up and share some projects and new numbers with you. As you know, “Roll it!” has been on Apple’s AppStore Since the end of 2009. I’m happy to let you know that so far it has made it’s journey to over 6000 iPhones, iPod touches and iPads in more than 30 countries.
Another great thing is that since the introduction of Game Center support, hundreds of players are competing online, every day.
Thanks to everyone for their support. Of course, you can still get it in case you haven’t tried it out already. Have fun and as always – keep on rollin’!
Posted in Roll it!, iPhone | No Comments »
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
A lot has changed in the past months. First of all, “Roll it!” for iPhone still selling well all over the world, with over 2400 people having downloaded it (since the launch in December). I receive a lot of positive feedback and the game currently ranks in the top 20 of dice games in 5 countries. Additionally, with the upcoming iPhone 4.0 and features like Game Center, stay tuned for exciting new features.
Also, “Roll it!” for iPad made its way into the AppStore and was available since the iPad US-launch on April 3rd. New high-resolution graphics, a 3D splash screen and a landscape mode make the game even more fun to play.
Posted in Mac, Programming, Roll it!, iPhone | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
I just wanted to post a little update on how the game is doing. It’s is very popular and since December 2nd, over 1100 copies have been sold. There is also a new update coming out in the next days – it’s already been submitted to Apple. It contains localisation for the Czech and Swedish language and addresses a bug in the random generator and the auto-resume function.
Posted in Mac, Programming, Roll it!, iPhone | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Since “Roll it!” made its way into the AppStore last week, the number of daily downloads keeps increasing. It’s great to see how it gains popularity. According to appfigures.com, it’s already Top 50 (44) in the category Games/Dice in the US store. The feedback is amazing and I’m really happy the app finds such an echo. In the meantime, version 1.0.1 got released, fixing a problem with the vibrate setting and correcting a word in the german localisation.
Posted in Mac, Programming, Roll it!, iPhone | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
I’m proud to announce that Roll it! (aka Yahtzee), the classic Yahtzee game for the iPhone, has finally made its way into the App Store. Enjoy!
Posted in Mac, iPhone | No Comments »
