Augmented reality - liturgical possibilities?

Augmented reality is a kind of technological means of bringing images to life via 

heads-up-display style glasses.

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News Target reports on an interactive book for kids:
“A child can flip through its pages and read it like a conventional book. But with a handheld display and computer vision tracking technology, kids can literally watch the story come to life. ‘You can see animated virtual characters overlaid on the real book pages and hear the voice of Gavin Bishop reading the story,’ says Billinghurst, director of the HIT Lab NZ…”   

I'll be interested to see how user friendly this is, and whether it's a solitary exercise only or has potential for groups, since like all technologies, it's bound to be interesting to those who like messing about in the space where art, technology and liturgy meet.
See also:   

Beyond Tomorrow

Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand

and a hat tip to Matt who sent me all the links

Comments

[andii]

I think there's also the issue of the unease that a lot of us feel at having something on our heads that stops us being able to sense our surroundings properly; tends to make one a bit anxious. It needs to let us switch into the real environment easily just by switching our attention. That vulnerable feeling has a long history.

[Stephen]

Came across AR when I did my initial foray into looking at virtual reality for my BD. Some very clever, and potentially helpful, stuff there.

The HITL (NZ) stuff originates in the "Magic Book" project (HITL project in the US). There used to be some video clips that you could view on the net that showed multiple people using the augmented reality stuff.

See: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/magicbook/description.html

The clips are a bit dated now but might give you the general idea. I like the facility to move between the fully immersive virtual world and an augmented one.

BBC World has a programme "The Virtual World" on a few years back that showed AR technology using, among other things, haptic (touch) feedback - you could "feel" the surface of molecules through an interface hooked up to a scanning electron microscope while working in a normal work environment with others. Might be some clips from that around somewhere.

Andii's comment about the intrusiveness of the tech is true, though people got over that with Walkman headphones/iPod earphones.