You’ve seen the demos. You like the idea of tracking tags in the real world to create visuals. And now you want to try augmented reality for yourself - and, incidentally, you’re a Flash developer.

Reader Eric Socolofsky writes to share a framework he’s created that makes it much easier to work with the Flash-based, open source FLARToolkit, called FLARManager. Version 0.4 is just released:

http://words.transmote.com/wp/20090618/flarmanager-v04/

FLARManager has a number of features that improve upon the existing work done by FLARToolkit:

• Building the apps themselves is easier. Fire up the framework with Flex Builder (or Flash, or Eclipse, or FlashDevelop), and you have access to all the libraries you need, so you can start playing more or less out of the box. Hello, world, indeed.
• You don’t have to rely on Papervision if you don’t want to. Papervision, the faux-3D library for Flash, is included with the distribution. But marker tracking is decoupled from Papervision, so you don’t have to use it if you don’t need it.
• Better event management. Marker adding, updating, and removal, multiple pattern detection and management, and the like are all extended in FLARManager.
• Great documentation. Eric has taken the time to read some fantastic getting started tutorials, all accessible from the site above so you can go play.

Now, you wouldn’t pick Flash for speed - that’s not the idea.

Via Nat Lecude, here’s what the Fingertapps application platform looks like on Dell’s obscenely-affordable Studio One 19 desktop. (Try a whole computer with a multi-touch screen for US$849 and up.)

There are a few concerns here:

• I’m not quite sure why there appears to be so much latency in the demo. That could have any number of sources - latency is a complex issue - or could simply be intentional interpolation on the part of the software.
• I’d love to be able to take off the Dell’s stand and use this at a more humane 30-45-degree viewing angle — which, if you think about it, is what we should be doing anyway, for the sake of our backs and necks!
• Of course, open source frameworks are preferred.

All of that said, though, there are some really compelling ideas here. And imagine having physical hardware controllers combined with touch manipulation in your visual rig. Okay, at least, I’m drooling here. Heck, if you need more horsepower than the Studio One, you could connect it to a rack with more muscle. (The Studio One itself ain’t bad, with up to a quad-core CPU and standard 7200 rpm drives even on the cheaper multi-touch models. Now, if you only weren’t limited to just the 9400M for graphics, it’d almost be a must-buy.)

You can bet we’ll be watching this evolution. Anyone who doubts it, multitouch is coming fast, after a long wait.

Another video for you of Fingertapps:

When it comes to controlling software, let’s put it bluntly: OSC good, MIDI bad. With OSC, it’s possible to control the array of things software might do, with easy use of high-resolution data, descriptive names in plain English (or your language of choice), a path hierarchy that makes it easier to structure messages in modular software, and smart networking features that makes assignment and communication a breeze. With MIDI, um… well, prepare for lots of mucking around.

Happily, visual software developers proprietary and open source alike have done what music developers generally haven’t - embrace OSC. Thanks to the fact that this community is unburdened by tradition and commercial development tends to involve small, responsive teams, change hasn’t been so tough.

So, visualists, it’s time to reap the fruit of that development work, and make the live performance rig work the way you’ve always dreamt it should work. Our friend Gian Pablo (check out his fantastic blog) clues us in to some recent developments with Resolume 3 “Avenue.”

You know the types - I’d say I had a music video made in MS Paint, and you’d watch it and it’d turn out to be made by some hypergenius insomniac who made some intricate animated film using only the spraycan tool. Happily, that is not the case here. “jono” writes to tell us about his Microsoft Paint music video, which he made while he had the flu. And you may feel a wave of nostalgia for MS Paint or the Bill Atkinson-created MacPaint that Microsoft cloned, because the illustrations look like the illustrations you did while bored in computer class. (I may be projecting here.)

And then there’s a flying copy machine. It’s sublime.

klerical team - by New Zealand’s EFT
Electronic Masters of Tapestry [MySpace]

I am also really feeling the lyrics - seriously. I have so, so much to do … so much follow-up to do. Off to Gmail.

Also, they’re from New Zealand, so expect an HBO show next week.

ToonLoop Remix from Society for Arts and Technology on Vimeo.

Yes, you read that right: realtime stop motion. While stop motion is, by definition, associated with a painstaking process of creating animation frame by frame, a free and open source tool takes a different approach. ToonLoop provides the usual stop motion tools for creating loops, but takes a live performance approach to the recording and playback process, so you can turn your stop motion into a performance. The creator brought up the tool Saturday at the Open Video Conference in New York and got just the reaction you’d expect - a few confused (if delighted) chuckles, and someone asking, “That must be … slow.”

Now, if the framerate is low, you have no one to blame but yourself.

For fans of animation and live visualism, though, this is a dream. The first build was in Processing for Mac and Windows, but a new version for Linux (which should also work on Mac) is built on Python (with PyOpenGL, PyGame, Video4Linux and — oddly — Pure Data for MIDI).

http://toonloop.com/
Developers: Alexandre Quessy and Tristan Matthews
Toonloop Download
Source on Google Code
More documentation of the project at Montreal’s SAT [in French]

In fact, I’m not sure whether I should tell you to download the thing or just run with the idea itself. (There’s no reason Java/Processing shouldn’t still work, by the way, if you use the excellent GSVideo library - and OpenFrameworks and others could be likely candidates, too.)

The idea is brilliant - and yet more evidence that being a visualist can be a much broader category than simply being a “VJ,” with the two-channel mix paradigm the more conventional term suggests.

And performances evidently look like what you might expect. Below, Joy Penroz uses Toonloop in Mérida, Yucatán, México, via the ToonLoop site.

Bonus video: as I was looking for more work done with ToonLoop (there’s not much out there just yet), I came across another creation by Joy Penroz. It’s not a stop motion performance, but it runs with parallel ideas, looping to manipulate time in a modern pop take on the work of Dutch master painter Jan Vermeer. The contemporary “Milkmaid”:

THEMILKMAID from Joy Penroz on Vimeo.

Extra thanks to Michela Ledwidge and Austin Gambles on Twitter.