UPDATE: We’re be remiss not to also point you to Eric’s excellent FLARManager class. He took some of the stuff we’ve covered here and put a far more delicious topping on it.

One of the big things we’ve been wrasslin’ with recently here at Squidder is how to handle multiple instances of multiple markers using FLARToolKit. Well we haven’t totally nailed it — close, but there are still a few niggling issues. So we’re looking to you, dear Squiddite, to help us out.

Before reading on, you can get our source code here.

It contains all the libraries (FLARToolKit, Papervision, even some of our own) you need to get going, even if this your first FLAR project. It’s as simple as extending a single class, creating an array of the markers you want to load in, and rocking and rolling. It also works great even if you’re only dealing with a single symbol.

Read on for more thrilling details!

Anyway, what we’ve done is created our own version of FLARMultiMakerDetector that tries to maintain a consistent array of all the markers on the screen. So when a new marker is added, FLARSquidderMarkerDetector fires off a MARKER_ADDED event, which contains the id your marker (the order in which was loaded in — so the first marker has an id of 0) and the index (first marker on the screen, second, etc).  Conversely, when an object is removed, a MARKER_REMOVED event is fired. So this brings things a bit more in line with the type of event driven actionscript that we’re used to writing.

The problem that we haven’t quite gotten our brains around is how to make sure that we always have the correct index when multiple instances of the same marker is added. Here’s an example: You have three instances of Marker A on the screen. How do you know which one specifically is the one removed?

Currently, this isn’t a visible issue, since the other two markers will just “snap” instantly into place. But try tweening an object to its next location and you’ll see things start to flip flop between symbols.

Once again, feel free to grab our source code and let us know what you think!

This actually came about as a happy little accident while trying to bend FLARToolkit to our will (tracking multiple instances of multiple symbols – a total pain in the ass. But that’s a story for another time). It just so happened that we were rocking out to Kiss’ “God Gave Rock & Roll To You” and it suddenly occurred to us that “Hey, it wouldn’t be so hard to make these things make sounds when they disappear.” So we did. And it was awesome.

We’ve (for once) posted a usable demo, so you too can rock out at your desk. Below is a quick video demo of all four sounds and after the break, you can see the demo of using multiple instances of the same drum.

We couldn’t help it. The XBOX Controller wasn’t enough. Had to hook it up to a wiimote too (big nod to the guys over at the WiiFlash project).

It’s no secret that we’re obsessed with augmented reality. Using this fantastic car demo whipped up by John Lindquist over at pv3d.org, we added in some FLARToolkit love to create a cool experience of driving the car around on a table.

But we didn’t stop there. Using the mind blowing-ly good ControllerMate and some simple keyboard mapping classes, we hooked the car up to a wired xbox 360 controller for maximum nerd. Next step, get some shaders going on that sweet Ford Focus. Ah, we couldn’t resist, so we added a shader.

UPDATE: YouTube was being unhappy with our videos for some reason (we suspect it doesn’t get along with Snapz, but who knows), so we’re moving over to Vimeo. We’ve also updated our demo video here, too, to include a slight shadow under the car, as well as part where the car does it’s business without the flar symbol present. Enjoy!

So we here at squidder have been playing around with the FLARToolKit a lot recently. Pretty amazing stuff really. And while fooling around with it, something (perhaps obvious) occurred to us: We love flash. And we also love t-shirts. And Papervision. And Twitter.

And, suddenly, we had a way to combine them all together.

Below is an early technical demo, in which a barcode, containing a twitter username, is embedded within our FLAR pattern. This is important because you don’t need to create a new pattern for each username. Instead, the flash reads the person’s username (up to 8 characters, encoded in 6 bit chunks) and then pulls that person’s latest post from twitter. 

The source code is a mess, but we’ll be posting some more how-to details soon. In the meantime, enjoy the video demo below!

Update: YouTube drools, Vimeo rules.