Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

Yep, there is even a language API from google.

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

Good find!
For those too lazy to click the link, it's a blog post about wordsnap OCR, a character recognition software for android.
Quote from the link:
The source is available here and there is a project log with among other things two youtube clips of it in action.

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

Is it possible to create an app like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EA8x...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpaJB...eature=related

for the n900 or is it impossible because the N900 has no digital compass?

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

this is a link showing an idea for navigation with the same principal.
You can take a snapshot of an address and then the software recognizes the text, sending this to the navigation system. Sounds like a good application for the ability to use OCR on your smart phone.

http://www.infuse.be/v2/user-system-...avigation.html

"NOOO... iPhone has already done it!!" :rolleyes:

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

a few great resources for AR:
http://gamesalfresco.com/

and ISMAR conference (which is coming):
http://www.ismar09.org/

N900 is actually a perfect device for AR so far. Although many concepts has been developed on iPhone, they are never actually being able to put it on apps store yet. N900 will not have such hassle. It's all by community itself.

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

As far as I understand this is not possible without a compass, no. This is one of the reasons a lot of people where disappointed that it was not included in the specs.

There is a whole thread dedicated to how to hook up an external compass to the N900:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=31861

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

There is an open-source OCR enginge called Tesseract which seems relatively well accepted and documented. Might be a good place to start for someone interested in playing with text recognition in maemo..

It's been used in various licence plate recognition experiments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vzR_H-jjHk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTpIpn7w1lg

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

you do know about the augmented reality subway app/poi app for iphone, right? it's very impressive
called: Bionic Eye

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

It is cool, but again one of those that need digital compass right?

Re: Maemo & augmented reality
 

sadly yes... hey Nokia, why ??? :(