Thursday, April 14, 2011

Silverlight 5 3D + SLARToolkit Augmented Reality = Win!

It's almost been a year since I wrote a sample for my open source Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit - SLARToolkit. The release of the new Silverlight 5 hardware accelerated 3D API was a nice occasion to finally make a new one.

In my last blog post I wrote a summary of all the Silverlight 5 beta features and some notes about the new low-level, XNA 3D API.

This post provides the new demo for SLARToolkit which leverages this fast GPU-based rendering to draw some nice effects with 60 frames per second. You can try the live sample if you have the Silverlight 5 beta installed or watch a video instead.

The SLARToolkit project description from the CodePlex site:
SLARToolkit is a flexible Augmented Reality library for Silverlight with the aim to make real time Augmented Reality applications with Silverlight as easy and fast as possible. It can be used with Silverlight's Webcam API or with any other CaptureSource or a WriteableBitmap. SLARTookit is based on the established NyARToolkit and ARToolkit.

Live
A webcam and at least the Silverlight 5 beta runtime must be installed to run the sample. It's available here. Alternatively there is also a video of the new sample embedded below.
If you want to try it yourself you need do download the SLAR and / or L marker, print them and hold them in front of the camera. The marker(s) should be printed non-scaled at the original size (80 x 80 mm) and centered for a small white border. As an alternative it's also possible to open a marker file on a mobile device and to use the device's screen as marker. Also make sure the camera is set up properly and the scene is illuminated well without hard shadows. See the SLARToolkit Markers documentation for more details.

Read more: KODIERER [CODER]
Read more: Codeplex