The Dutch Architecture Institute (NAi) launched their Urban Augmented Reality platform called UAR (pronounced “you are”). UAR is a state of the art application of Augmented Reality - not only providing information on the buildings you’re standing in front of, but also shows you in 3D how it will be, how it was or how it could have been - if the alternative design would have been chosen. A truly immersive experience. A great example to show what AR is all about!

First in Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the first city in the world that is available in UAR. Open the UAR layer in Layar and experience what an alternative design for the Euromast would have looked like - in its real environment. Or get a sneak preview of the new Rotterdam central railway station. Rotterdam is the first city, to be followed later this year by Amsterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. The rest of the Netherlands will follow in 2011.

More information can be found on the website of the NAi: http://www.nai.nl/uar

This latest video shows scenarios of how Layar is used in everyday life: to find a place to eat, to get to know the city through history, to play games and to see which bands are playing around you. This video also premiers Floaticons, the cool 3D objects which we all can use to express ourselves in this new world of Augmented Reality.

Feel free to use this video. Here is the downloadable version for offline viewing (its around 300 mb, use ‘right click’ - ‘save as …’).

A project at the MediaLAB for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam resulted in some amazing art work in Augmented Reality. We said it before and we’ll say it again: you can create ANYTHING in Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality is the biggest canvas you can work with. These artists know this already.

Because of all the fuss of last week’s NEXT event we saved the layer of last week for this week’s post. Marc Rene Gardeya from Hoppala shared with us what it’s like to work with a big brand for the Gelbe Seiten layer, Germany’s number one Yellow Pages. Next to that, this week’s recommendation is the ConquAR layer, an Augmented Reality strategy game through which you can conquer world cities, made by C2K.

Gelbe Seiten, Germany’s number one yellow pages, launched a layer with its service in Augmented Reality. The layer was developed by Hoppala from Germany, and integrates all data of Germany’s yellow pages service. We talked to Marc René Gardeya, founder and CEO of Hoppala, about the Gelbe Seiten layer and his experience with working with a big brand and a huge thirdparty data source.

What’s different when creating a layer for a big brand? Marc: “When you work closely with a brand like Gelbe Seiten, you really need to pay attention to every detail. Therefore we pulled together all the requirements first and created a layer concept in very close cooperation with Gelbe Seiten. Having experience with layer development for quite some time now helped us a lot to foresee potential pitfalls and to suggest options.” Can you tell us something about the requirements of Gelbe Seiten? Marc: “Gelbe Seiten ordered a complete layer package: setup and design, linking the layer to the existing Gelbe Seiten database and creating additional mobile web pages for every Gelbe Seiten item to show detailed information like opening times, ratings or foto’s.” What were the main challenges when developing the layer? Marc: “There were basically two major challenges: one was to design the layer as close to the Gelbe Seiten corporate identity as possible. And secondly we needed to hook up the Gelbe Seiten layer with the existing Gelbe Seiten database, which is a huge system. Together we pulled it off, it was great to work for Gelbe Seiten Deutschland!”

The layer of this week is ‘ConquAR’, a Risk-inspired strategy game in Layar’s Augmented Reality created by C2K. The layer makes your surroundings part of the game: The world is your game board, virtually to conquer. For the individual gameplay, you conquer cities instead of whole countries as in the original game of Risk. As for now, ConquAR has about 160 active players. On the ConquAR website you can keep track of all cities that are conquered and the scores of the conquering teams. We talked to Fred van Rijswijk and Pascal van Gemert from C2K about their game.

What inspired you to create this AR strategy game?
Pascal: “We wanted to relight the fire of old fashion board games by combining their gameplay with augmented reality.  We started to think about different board games and landed on the strategic game of Risk. We figured that the original goal of Risk, conquering countries and continents, would be too big of a goal for individual play. So we used cities instead of countries, which works great.”


How can users conquer a city? And which cities can or should be conquered?
Pascal: “When you’re in the layer, you can see the cities around you and get some information about them. If you want to conquer and defend cities, you have to create an account first. Then you will be placed in a team (red, blue, black, yellow or green). Then and are able to attack cities of the other teams by clicking on the army icons, or strengthen cities with the color of your own team. Right now we already have over 2500 cities that you can conquer in the following countries: The Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, France, Sweden, Japan and South Korea.”
Fred: “We are still adding countries to our database and are planning to add other types of locations like airports, sightseeing spots and other interesting places.”

What about the gameplay of the layer?
Fred: “The game is already turning out to be addictive fun for some players and we are noticing that big cities are very popular places to conquer. The only thing we’re struggling with is the active period of the game. Currently, when you’ve lost or fortified all your armies the game ends, and you have to wait until the next reinforcement moment to be able to play again.”
Pascal: “We will add new features to expand the game play within the next month or two, including:

• Solving the active period issue of the game


• More team building effort, by giving the players of the leading team an extra army


• Adding more location types like airports, sights and famous places


• Adding the sight of other players in the Augmented Reality View

Other suggestions to enhance the gameplay are very welcome!”