Paradox D&D

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Although they were very busy with their new product launches, the members of the Paradox D&D team have managed to take the time and answer the questions for this month's interview.

 

Q: First of all, thank you a lot for taking the time to answer these questions. Please tell us a few things about your company, its members and products.

A: Paradox D&D is a new technologies company based in Valencia, España. Almost all the technology we work with has been developed by the PARADOX D&D team. Moreover, we own computer vision libraries that are unique in the world. One example is our

Augmenetd Reality ShARk technology, Which allows for deviceless interactivity via virtual buttons and is characterized by its thin markers. (Find videos in www.pdxstudio.com/showcase AUGMENTED REALITY section)

 

Another highlight is our Natural Interfaces technology which detects whether an user has the hands open or closed, thus allowing for clicking events. Our product Natural Bussines is a robust interactive image viewer which features image transformation (Rotation, zoom and translation) and gestural controlling. The package includes an application for presentations management and slide sorting. (Find videos in www.pdxstudio.com/showcase NATURAL INTERFACES section)

 

Although we have professionals on very different areas as Sound Design, Fine Arts, Computer Vision and Programming, the whole team is able to work together in the same direction in order to achieve a common objective. The main advantage of this approach is, not only that we are able to cover the whole production from the idea till the final art, but also that we can face problems from very different points of view and thus getting imaginative solutions.

 

Nowadays we are working to bring the Augmented reality technology to the private education in Spain as well as to the publishing sector. Moreover, we are interested on Application Development for tablets and smart-phones and how our technologies could fit in such platforms. We think that technology is nothing but the way we interact with a content, so we spend much of the time thinking about the applications utility. Another aspect that characterizes our work is the attention to detail. We are always looking forward, trying to transform what we see into useful applications for people.

 

Q: Why did you choose to use the Gamestudio engine for your 3D projects?

A: Game Studio is a fast programming tool and a comfortable wrapper of DirectX. Moreover, development of plugins for this engine is quite easy.

 

Q: The H2O / Education Spot demo is fantastic! How do you check the distance between the markers, in order to combine the hydrogen and the oxygen atoms?

A: The AR plugin provides spatial position of the markers, so the only you have to do is to obtain the distance between two vectors as you would do between two Gamestudio objects.

 

Q: How can we create our own, custom markers?

A: Answer is easy, you only have to study computer vision and C++ programing.

 

Q: Can we use Gamestudio and your great plug-in to create marker-less augmented reality applications? If the answer is affirmative, how can we do that?

A: This plugin is intended for marker detection. Markerless tracking involve very different process. It is worth saying that we have developed also a Natural Feature Augmented Reality library, but nowadays is only for commercial purposes.

 

Q: What would you recommend us to have / do in order to get the best results with our AR applications?

A: The plugin supports HD, so a high quality webcam will make the tracking more stable. Concerning to the marker, the bigger the better. Moreover, there are two things we highly recommend. First, it is important to print the marker in a hard surface, since surface deformations will cause the marker not match the searching pattern. Second, the surface finish should be matte avoiding highlight reflections.

 

Q: How does your natural user interface work?

A: If I tell you, I should have to kill you. Just kidding. Uses the popular depth camera technology in order to read the user gestures, as well as the position of his hands. The trick is on the details, making an “smart interface” will help creating a comfortable user experience.

 

Q: Can you share a simple Gamestudio demo that we can study and learn from, like the one with the Audi car?

A: Yes of course. Clicking on the following links you can download two AR Demos: AR Chemistry and AR Audi.

 

http://pdxstudio.com/descargas/AR_Chemistry_Pdx.exe

http://pdxstudio.com/descargas/AR_Audi_R8_Pdx.exe

 

Thank you a lot, Oscar!