Popular Science Magazine’s Augmented Cover

As far as I know this is a first: augmented reality (ar) on sale at the newsstand!

The July issue of Popular Science has a special image on the cover. PopSci readers can visit this website to launch the ar viewer, an Adobe Shockwave app. When you hold the magazine cover up to your webcam it recognises the marker and generates a virtual 3d windfarm. You can interact with the simulation by blowing into your microphone to increase the strength of the wind!

It’s not the world’s most cutting-edge augmented reality app, but being on the cover of Popular Science should bring the technology to a much wider group of people. And I certainly approve of the attitude of Mark Jannot, PopSci’s Editor-in-Chief, who says:

Why did we do this? Because it’s amazing to see – and we thought our readers would appreciate getting a chance to check it out

The Popular Science cover is produced in association with GE.