Marco Tempest's Augmented Reality card trick makes David Copperfield look positively ludditic

Illusionist and augmented reality artiste Marco Tempest has put together a video preview of his newest act, called (aptly enough) "Augmented Reality Magic 1.0," and has been kind enough to share it with us. In the video, Tempest uses AR to demonstrate what's going on in his fertile imagination as he performs a card trick -- cards levitate, Jokers dance, and the birthday cake? Well, you'll just have to see for yourself. The most impressive part is that the whole thing goes down in real time, and utilizes C++ with OpenFrameworks, OpenCV, ARToolkitPlus, MacCam, "and other Open Source goodies." Nothing's done in post-production. Are you prepared to have your mind blown? Video after the break.

[Via Make]

[Adam @ Apr 30th 2009 12:28PM]

Craaaaazy

[Adam @ Apr 30th 2009 12:29PM]

I for one welcome our card detecting overlords.

[Adam @ Apr 30th 2009 12:30PM]

But does it blend?

[Adam @ Apr 30th 2009 12:31PM]

But can it play Crysis?

[Adam @ Apr 30th 2009 12:31PM]

But can it play Doom?

[EmDiz @ Apr 30th 2009 1:31PM]

I for one am just flabbergasted ---- ^o^ how'd he do that?!

[Thomas @ Apr 30th 2009 11:14PM]

I didn't find that particularly amazing :/ it was kind of clear how alot of the tricks were done:

e.g. when he does the changing color card he takes two cards held as one shows the bottom which is red and then places the two cards
back on top of the deck and only takes the top one which is black.

He then does uses the bluescreen to 'magically' disappear the black card on top so that its not that obvious when he discards the red card.

[youngf0x @ Apr 30th 2009 12:29PM]

ahh feels good to be n. 1

[Adam @ Apr 30th 2009 12:30PM]

How would you know?

[betopark @ Apr 30th 2009 12:30PM]

wow not bad.

[aaron @ Apr 30th 2009 12:30PM]

Wish I could see it at work....

[paezbak @ Apr 30th 2009 12:32PM]

Probably the same way how nasa got to the moon.

[J @ May 1st 2009 5:59AM]

probably not ... NASA was all about slide rules back when they were sending people to the moon. I'd hate to see AR done with slide rule in real time, that would just take forever to do all of the calculations for the rendering.

[pete @ Apr 30th 2009 12:35PM]

love it. felt like a kid again

[John @ Apr 30th 2009 12:38PM]

Very, very cool!

[jgalvez @ Apr 30th 2009 12:51PM]

Awesome card trick, without the camera and effects and everything the trick by itself is pretty good, and when he adds all those "real-time" effects, it becomes something totally mind blowing!

[Ryan Boone @ Apr 30th 2009 12:53PM]

Too bad you can see him hold back the top card at the beginning.

[Curtis @ Apr 30th 2009 1:06PM]

Even so, it is a mastery of controlling the cards that makes this trick possible... and the real time effects only enhance the impact. I've been doing card tricks for years, and couldn't pull this one off.

[Byran Newell @ Apr 30th 2009 7:21PM]

@Curtis

If you can't pull that trick off (sans FX), then you have no knowledge of card sleights. It's a Bill Malone, Sam the Bellhop-esque trick, and it's not even performed very well. Sorry to call you out, but seriously? You don't have to be Harry Potter to do it, nor (if you are in fact a magician) have the intellect of Albert Einstein to figure it out.

Check out Bill Malone doing Sam the Bellhop for a real master at work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GErpOl3KG_w

[oli @ Apr 30th 2009 1:14PM]

Brilliant - a great magician and great trick and use of technology - shame those big Vegas show's can't utilise this style of performing without having perms.

[SOOPERGOOMAN @ Apr 30th 2009 1:23PM]

Wow great job, he should do all the promo work for Augmented Reality. I must show my Magician Friends.

[Jon Acheson @ Apr 30th 2009 1:27PM]

Ludditic: neither a real word, nor a good idea.

[Mike @ Apr 30th 2009 1:27PM]

OMG how does he do that?!! its magic!!

[loocas @ Apr 30th 2009 2:06PM]

YES! Like your avatar! :)

[StickMaker @ Apr 30th 2009 1:28PM]

Very well done! This guy is GOOD!

[donrivella @ Apr 30th 2009 1:30PM]

I like magic tricks and I like technical gadgets. But I feel that combining the two takes away the magic and it feels sterile. I always found Tempest's performances to be obvious and uninvolving. Some people obviously feel differently, as Macro has been doing his shtick for at least 15 years now.

[teej @ Apr 30th 2009 2:06PM]

i used to be a performing magician as well, and i agree, combining technology and magic just doesn't sit well with me. obviously, magic consists of illusions, but people still enjoy the raw WYSIWYG with traditional magic. technology such as this just makes the magician look lazy. sure, he's controlling the deck with false shuffles and lifts, but the zing from the trick is totally removed.

[Jordan @ Apr 30th 2009 1:45PM]

you could see him reach under the table to grab the ball for the moon "trick" lame

[Dave @ Apr 30th 2009 2:16PM]

It really doesn't matter. Most people won't notice that because he's drawing their attention elsewhere. That's one of the biggest and one of the hardest tricks to pull off. We're so ADD now I thought he did a nice job of drawing focus to what he wanted.

[Phil @ Apr 30th 2009 1:47PM]

This would be cool to make an augmented reality version of normal card games, like WAR, UNO or Go Fish.

It could play like Eye of Judgment.

Sweet.

[J. Kuo @ May 1st 2009 6:28AM]

...or you can just play eye of judgment. on second thought, someone actually plays eye of judgment?

[ssoltero @ Apr 30th 2009 1:52PM]

Cool story that goes along with the trick. I mean, that's pretty common to have a story for your card trick, but I really liked this one. Gotta wonder if that was actually done in real time with software or just some huge post production undertaking.

[Gipionocheiyort @ Apr 30th 2009 1:52PM]

Cool demonstration of the technology. Also I always like these kinds of card tricks so that helps.

[Espignila @ Apr 30th 2009 1:54PM]

Who says Copperfield didn't use the same tech? Hint "Portal" hint...

[Asaj @ Apr 30th 2009 2:47PM]

Nice, I'm imagining a monitor free world. All we'll need are gogs and an open space to get stuff done. Imagine if you could manipulate your windows and programs that fast. It'll be like that screen on minority report.

[Kier @ Apr 30th 2009 3:10PM]

Very unimpressed. Simple story deck trick which only requires you know simple false cuts, false shuffles, and card control. Every discrepancy is clearly visible as they usually are. Combine that with some rather cheese video effects, and you have this video. Not Engadget worthy in the slightest.

[MaxSMoke @ May 2nd 2009 4:24AM]

Yah, I'm not really impressed either. Card tricks are nice, but his "off screen shuffling" is most likely him just grabbing another staged deck of cards, so this is actually one of the least impressive card tricks, minus all of the AR stuff.

As for the Augmented Reality, he's only done stuff I've seen other people do on YouTube for several years now. Don't believe me? Search for Augmented Reality, AG, and ARToolkit. He "borrowed" alot of other people's ideas.

I suppose some people might be impressed with his computer appearing to read what he's doing and trigger actions, but that too is easy to do through a keyboard controlled off screen with his foot. He just presses the spacebar with his toe to trigger the animations. So the computer isn't doing anything more fancy then what you've seen in the PS3 game, Eye of Judgment. He's just triggering those animations off screen as his act progresses, like somebody triggering a slideshow in Power Point.

About the only thing that was impressive was his idea to hide the cards with polygons painted like his green background, so he could make cards disappear and replace them with digital cards for his hovering cards trick. That was a brillent idea. Not amazing, but very clever. I've never seen anyone do that before.

Outside of that, I've seen other things just like it on YouTube for quite some time. I've even messed with it myself. It's not hard to setup, and it's cool to play with for a few minutes, but not terribly useful or fun.

[dj-kenpo @ Apr 30th 2009 4:20PM]

saw this at the FITC conference last sunday by some of the team that worked on it before they released it later that day. absolutly amazing.

[Skullivan @ Apr 30th 2009 4:25PM]

"Nothing's done in post-production."

Magic just isn't impressive when technology is involved and you're well aware of it. The trappings of magic actually make the tech seem less impressive.

[Badabing @ Apr 30th 2009 5:04PM]

I enjoyed the added visuals. That was a pretty clever idea and well done. The card trick itself is pretty easy though. There's really nothing special about it. He appears to be continuously shuffling the cards although he isn't actually shuffleing them at all, they actually stay in the same order.

[Billy G @ Apr 30th 2009 9:30PM]

I guess that was kinda nifty. A good example of some cool AR stuff, which is relevant to my degree program. Obviously it won't impress everyone... but they don't realize how much hard work goes into all the open source tools he uses!

Still... AR is pretty cheesy looking most of the time :P

[superhobo @ May 1st 2009 7:55AM]

Very slick, but not hard to figure out if you know how.