Gorillaz Augmented Reality App (As Promised)

This is an Augmented Reality Marker, also known as an AR marker. This particular symbol was found in the back of a passport that was given free in an NME magazine (12/05/10) that also gave an interesting story to the making of the third Gorillaz album and other interesting stuff. Anyway, by using either your iPhone or webcam, you could take a photo of this symbol which would allow for a 3D image to appear over it that you can navigate using your finger or mouse. For the iPhone, the AR reader was integrated in to a free app called Plastic Beach that can still be found on the App Store.

Testing it out today, it has added more stuff to the app that i'll get to later, but here is a quick screenshot of what comes up on the iPhone app:

The 3D content constantly gets updated, when I tested it earlier, it was a submarine promoting their last single. The text that floats around the island is regarding texting a number to win tickets to their show but as that finished last year, I don't think it has been updated in a while. 

Anyway, the stuff that HAS been updated since I last played with it, is a viewfinder section of the app. This isn't best demonstrated on my phone as the GPS function isn't great but the idea is what I believe i've mentioned in a previous post. You move the camera around and it gives you information about things that are near to you. All I got as I moved the camera around was videos of their singles in different areas of my room. This photo I took as I moved round in my room and shows the icon to access the video for their single Stylo. 

I can't rotate it unfortunately but it is in a horizontal orientation. All this sort of stuff is still open for proper exploitation and fits nicely under the cross platform umbrella along with QR codes. 

There is one more example regarding cross platform experiences that i've had and it's one I was involved in and was a global event and spawned not as successful sequels but still thoroughly entertaining. I can see myself babbling on and on about it as I thought it was phenomenal what they achieved and brought together people from all over the world and allowed them to work together to solve a mystery that somehow tied in to the TV show. Yeah, save that for another post, I think....

Oh, by the way, the show was LOST :)