Layar’s favorite science fiction author and “Guardian Seer of Augmented Reality” Bruce Sterling has just crossed over into the Layar developer realm.

As “Visionary in Residence” at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, Bruce felt the best way to inspire his students to create immersive AR experiences was to create one himself because, as he said, “Sometimes it’s easiest to teach by doing.”

Obviously an Augmented Reality visionary like Bruce Sterling wasn’t going to make a layer to find ATMs or restaurants, but little did we know his finished project would augment an underground, offline media network perfectly aligned with the tenets of AR!

Last week Bruce revealed the Dead Drops layer to the world through his blog, which enabled a new wave of discovery for Berlin-based media artist Aram Bartholl‘s Dead Drops project.

Dead drops are USB flash drives embedded into walls, buildings and curbs that are accessible to everyone and located in public space. Anyone can add to and take from a dead drop, or create their own and add its location to the website. The result of this project is an anonymous, offline peer-to-peer file sharing network.

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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!

There’s already an Alien threat in your city, on your street, and in your home.

Resistance is futile; the best you can hope for is survival.

These menacing extraterrestrials are highly-intelligent and have made their presence invisible to the naked eye. In order to view the threat, you must engage the Battle: Los Angeles layer through your mobile phone.

Once you launch the layer, you’ll see alien commanders and battle drones, but there are also alien command centers attacking US capitols and landmarks. If you see one, take a screenshot and share it on Twitter or Facebook to warn others.

… Ok, so there isn’t really a threat in “physical reality,” but there is a very serious alien invasion happening on Layar as a fun and interactive way to promote the film Battle: Los Angeles‘s Blu-ray/DVD/iTunes release on June 14.

The Battle: Los Angeles layer was a creative collaboration between Sony Pictures and Layar Partner Zehnder Communications, and it’s a great example of how to integrate Augmented Reality into a multi-platform digital marketing campaign.

The layer includes several multimedia options in the actions menu, allowing users to launch movie trailers and sneak previews, enter a sweepstakes to win a PS3, and purchase/pre-order the movie on Amazon.

It also highlights some Layar 5.0 features, including social sharing of screenshots, high-quality 3D models and both locative and dynamically generated POIs (aliens and droids appear near you no matter where you are, but command centers are only visible at specific locations, like over the White House, for example).

Check out this ultra cool promo video highlighting the Layar integration:

For more ways to survive the alien invasion (and possibly win prizes in the process), visit the Battle: Los Angeles website, “like” its Facebook page or follow @BattleLA on Twitter.

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

If you’ve ever found yourself in an unfamiliar part of town needing that one item (be it a water bottle, allergy medicine or cigarette) so desperately that you feel like screaming it at the top of your lungs in hopes that someone will point you in the right direction, then the “Where Can I Buy?” layer is for you.

Let’s say you’re in Phoenix, AZ and you want to buy some Advil for your pounding hangover headache. Just type “Advil” into the search field and the “Where Can I Buy?” layer finds stores in your vicinity that carry the item.

Hover over the icon closest to you (which will also be the largest) and you see that it’s $7.99 at a Walgreen’s drugstore .25 miles away. Tap the icon and you can call the store, see a full listing and photo of the item, or view the location on a map. If you tap through to the full listing you can even see that the 80-count liquid gels are $2.00 off.

“Where Can I Buy?” is available in the United States, and was created by Howard Ogden, founder of AugmentReality.co.uk and Mobilistar. Ogden is an Amsterdam-based developer and top-tier member of the Layar Partner Network. His Layar portfolio runneth over with some of our most popular layers including the AR Beatles Tour, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Your Street, and Funda. You can contact him at info@mobilistar.com.