You may have noticed that the Layar blog has gone a bit quiet lately. Don’t worry, we’re still alive, but we’ve been hard at work these days on some new ideas that we think you’re really going to like. In the mean time, we thought we’d take a moment to pass on a few items that have come across our radar in the past week or so.

Personally, I’m a history buff so I would encourage you to check out the WW2Museums.com layer. It takes advantage of a huge database of locations related to World War 2, including museums, monuments, cemeteries and general points of interest from all over Europe and the United States. You can browse the database on their website as well - it may surprise you what you might find right around the corner!

We have a bit of company news to share as well, as we bid farewell to one of our earliest employees, Nanda! You maybe remember our “Meet Layar” profile of Nanda back in February, but in case you need a refresher, she has been Layar’s Office/HR/Management Assistant since nearly the very start. Nanda made sure everything around the office ran smoothly, and we will miss her dearly.

And finally, to leave you with a bit of entertainment and wonderment as we head into another summer weekend, have a look at this impressive AR demo. It’s another in a long line of intriguing hacks of the Xbox Kinect system, and it’s pretty amazing how well the 3D model sticks to the tracker used. And to top it all off, the model features live animation mimicking the motion of the person standing infront of the Kinect.

Enjoy that for now, and don’t worry, we’ll have plenty to share with you in the coming weeks. Just you wait.

We’re all a aflutter today over “Peeling Layers of Space Out of Thin Air,” an awesome new multi-layer project on the Layar platform from a group of talented architects at Architecture OMI in Ghent, NY. 

The project uses beautiful interactive 3D models and animation, as well as other Layar 5.0 features to create a truly immersive AR experience! If you can make it to Ghent, NY for the opening this Saturday, July 9, we’d love to see your screenshots and videos!

In the meantime, check out this impressive video of Kol/Mac‘s “What is Space?” layer.

 

OPENING SATURDAY JULY 9 2011 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM Architecture Omi presents Augmented Reality: Peeling Layers of Space Out of Thin Air AUGMENTED REALITY BY ARCHITECTS @ OMI http://www.cleater.com/peeling/ 

Architects: Acconci Studio, Asymptote, Cleater Studio, Kol/Mac, Metaxy, Leeser Architecture, Studio Daniel Libeskind, SHoP, and SITE 

Curator: John Cleater / Program Director: Peter Franck Adviser and Documentation: Mark Skwarek and Will Pappenheimer THE FIELDS SCULPTURE PARK at OMI 1405 County Route 22 Ghent, New York 12075 Bring your smart phone for an evening of architecture in the landscape. 

By pointing your iPhone or Android at the sky, you will see virtual pieces of architecture installed in the physical landscape at Omi. For more information email architecture@artomi.org, visit www.artomi.org or call 518-392-4740.

Update: This project was also featured in the Wall Street Journal on August 31. Check it out!

A 1963 photo of 4625 Springfield Ave. in Philadelphia overlaid onto the present location.

With each cool new history layer, we are reminded that Augmented Reality is a great way to display historical photos and information previously hidden away in government archives.

Currently on the Layar platform, you can see San Francisco’s historic Market Street before and after the massive earthquake in 1906 that forever changed the landscape, view the Berlin Wall as it stood between 1961 and 1989, uncover Civil War history and more.

The newest historical addition to the Layar platform, PhillyHistory, uses Augmented Reality to merge Philadelphia’s past with present.

Using content from the Philadelphia Department of Records’ online database (PhillyHistory.org), you can access nearly 90,000 historic images of the city, 500 of which are pinned to the current landscape in virtually their exact location in AR. Of those 500 images, 20 also contain additional information about the places in the photos created by the editors of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia as well as local scholars.

This massive project was made possible by a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The organization rewarded this grant to the City of Philadelphia Department of Records (DOR) in order to fund a research project that would investigate the use of Augmented Reality in displaying historic photographs as overlays on a view of the current landscape.

The DOR partnered with Philadelphia-based company Azavea to conduct the research on Augmented Reality and build the mobile phone applications. The two organizations published the results of this research in a free white paper available for download here. The paper also serves as a valuable resource for anyone interested in building on the Layar platform.

The PhillyHistory app is available in the iTunes Store as well as the Android Market, but you can also access it from inside Layar via the PhillyHistory AR layer.

Three phases in the evolution of the PhillyHistory layer

The multitalented Celine Mornet (known professionally as LutinCapuche) may be a Flash developer by trade, but she also has a creative outlet that allows her to step away from the computer monitor: designing and sewing stuffed animals (or “plushes,” to be exact).

Celine started making these plushes purely or fun; she displayed her little handmade creatures online but didn’t intend to sell any until people started asking to buy them from her. She then decided to make purchases easier by creating an online store, and has recently made the experience more fun by also selling them in Augmented Reality.

We’ve talked about HPSC‘s Herve Pellarin and his virtual commerce (aka v-commerce) layers before, but these AR shops seem to be getting cooler with each new implementation. The LCPlush Anywhere layer, for example, has intricate character designs on the walls, 3D renderings of the plushes and images of the actual products.

Introducing LCPlush: the latest in V-commerce on the Layar platform.

Celine and Herve worked together in France, and it was Herve who gave her the idea for an AR shop. The two joined forces on this project and created the AR shop in only two weeks!

“This guy is amazing because he always has some innovative ideas,” Celine says. “Everytime time I talk to him I learn something new. He made me discover Layar, how it works and how I can use it to sell my plushes.”

The LCPlush Shop layer has geo-located stores in her own city of Montreal, Canada, as well as in Paris, Geneva and Annecy, France that you can literally walk into.

For everyone outside of Canada and France, there’s the LCPlush Anywhere layer that places you in the center of the store where you can view various stuffed curiosities like the Real Monsters-esque Croc Cochmar and the cuddly yet carnivorous CrockNFish.

You also can share your favorite plushes on Facebook or Twitter, access the item in the online store (where you can purchase it via PayPal), or call the company from inside the layer.

The adorable Crock Cochmar in the LCPlush AR shop.

Even with her online store and AR shop capabilities, Celine doesn’t want to increase the number of plush orders much beyond her current 10 or so per week (hand-sewing plushes can get very time-consuming). She is, however, interested in expanding her use of AR, which she believes is an exciting new way to diffuse a brand.

In the near future, Celine would like to add more elements to her LCPlush AR shop. For example, she wants to allow users to customize their own plushes in 3D and place them around the world.

“At the end of the day, the goal is to build a kind of huge LCPlush exhibition and organize some contests with plushes as prizes,” she says.

Celine plans to do more projects with Herve, but also plans to develop new, complex layers on her own using her newly-acquired Layar development skills.

Back in February we told you about the 3D Augmented Office layer - a virtual representation of the Layar office in which you can walk around and explore. We featured the layer at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and attendees at our daily meetups learned about Layar through augmented reality.

If you weren’t at MWC and haven’t had a chance to check out the layer, here’s a look at what it’s all about. Just watch the quick video below to be introduced to the 3D Augmented Office.