I recently bought a book that appears to have quite a bit of Augmented Reality© content. Is there any way to access this content from my computer? I really don’t feel like buying an android phone.
Typically augmented reality (at lease going by my Sony Vita which does it) requires the device to be portable, as you hold the camera in your hand while looking at the screen. The screen displays the output from the camera (the “reality”) and also draws objects on top of it (the “augment”) which can move realistically as the camera moves around.
There might be some software to do with with a PC using a webcam, but I doubt it frankly and I’ve never seen anything like that.
BTW if you have a Nintendo portable console around, a DS or 3DS, that should be able to do it also… if the software is available. Or a Sony Vita.
The one AR book I’ve seen relies on a dedicated app that you download to your mobile device. The app has the 3D models that are to be displayed as well as the tracking software to register the model with the AR tag on the page. I don’t believe there are any “general purpose” AR programs that will work with any AR tag – there wouldn’t be any way for them to get access to the models they needed to display. And it’s unlikely that an AR app would be ported to a non-mobile device.