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Google Developers Show Impressive Future Of Augmented Reality On Project Tango Tablet

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Last week, at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, Elon Musk may have made a splash at his "fireside chat" with NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, when he commented that autonomous cars will eventually be required and human-driven vehicles outlawed. Although, some of the coolest things you'll see or hear at conferences often don't take place on the big stage, but rather in smaller break-out sessions in behind-the-scenes meeting rooms. This was the case in an early morning session I attended at GTC, where Google and various developer partners from Limbic, NVYVE and Left Field Labs, showcased a few very impressive and entertaining apps on Google's Project Tango developer's tablet.

If you're unfamiliar, Project Tango is currently a development platform tablet powered by NVIDIA's Tegra K1 system-on-a-chip, that's also enabled with a number of cameras and motion sensors, such that it is able to track and map it's surroundings in real-time.  It's specifically capable of area learning, motion tracking and depth perception, again, all on the fly.

And with such tools at their disposal, developers can achieve some amazing affects and address certain use cases that were previously not possible. From virtual, guided tours of buildings for real estate and other applications, to simulation environments that offer a natural user view with panning and control that can be achieved just by moving the tablet in space, the technology has a lot of promise and it's impressive to see live in action. Of course, gaming is one of the most obvious applications where Project Tango's capabilities could be employed and Limbic's adaptation of their Zombie Gunship game, called Zombie Gunship Reality, pegged the geek meter for most of us in the audience.

If you saw Magic Leap's "Just Another Day At The Office" demo over the weekend, you were probably impressed with what AR (Augmented Reality) can achieve. Conversely, Magic Leap's Youtube video seemed to be more of a CGI-rendered showcase of "what's coming" in the future, versus the live demos we were treated to on Project Tango. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first that a 3D mapping tablet with AR capability was going to offer much more than novelty effects. However, after seeing what these talented developers are doing with Project Tango, I'm in - hook, line and sinker. In time, I think the industry may have just found a new "killer app" for tablets and mobile devices in general.