Augmented Reality demos?

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Augmented Reality demos?

Been reading back into augmented reality the other day because I still think the idea is quite the novelty....the process of overlaying 3d elements in a snapshot/video of the real world.

After watching quite a few YouTube videos, I was wondering, has this technology ever caught on? In terms of video games, I've only heard of the Gizmondo using it, as well as the recent Eye of Judgement card game for the PS3 (which I can't afford to pucker-up the cash to try-out).

So out of boredomness thanks to the forums being down the couple days, I set out on finding any public demos to try them for myself, and all I came across was ARTag which has pretty much the foundations I needed for screwing around.
(just need to find me a lightsaber beam model to add to my paper-tower-tube hilt)

But anyways, anyone here know of any other places to toy around in, or general knowledge/explanations on where the heck people come up with the algorithms to detect scaled shapes in perspective in real-time with a constantly changing video display and what not?

I always figured that there'd be a market for it some year when it becomes more accessible (hardware-wise, needing a good clear webcam, the lighting requirements, room space for whatever the thing needs, etc). I'd figure some genius could come up with something jawdropping with it that couldn't be possible via other means. It's something I'd be willing to pony-up an HMD for so I don't have to rely on my PC screen to see the post-processed results if something spectacular ever came of it.
(I could imagine a game like Spore fitting nicely into this system once someone figures out how to allow you to reach behind a projected 3d object without disrupting it)

general shape detection sounds like a job for neural networks (NN) which are great in detecting basic patterns if you train them well.

"The Eye of Judgement" for PS3 uses this kind of thing in a very basic way.

http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Games/THE_EYE_OF_JUDGMENT

It seems a bit gimmicky, in my opinion.

http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/wowlab.htm doings t at a commercial level. Seems mainly for PR / marketing.

For a time I had been working on an AR project where I got as far as 3D characters walking around a real scene and being correctly occluded by things in the real world. The project was more or less abandoned due to hardware constraints, but that ARTag approach of using special markers is something we didn't consider...