A look at the newly released iPhone SDK for iPhone OS 4 shows some very interesting new features for people building computer vision and augmented reality applications.
Video playback & Capture
"You now have full programmatic control over video playback and capture, using new APIs in the AV Foundation framework." This is the one AR people have been waiting for. No more hacks to get the video feed. Should give more video based apps in the open and better video performance.
Photo Library Access
"Applications now have direct access to user photos and videos with the Media Library APIs." Also very useful. Build auto-tagging tools or photo browsers for your on-phone photos! (Cooliris, are you watching this? You finally have access.)
And finally...
Accelerate
"Accelerate provides hundreds of mathematical functions optimized for iPhone and iPod touch, including signal-processing routines, fast Fourier transforms, basic vector and matrix operations, and industry-standard functions for factoring matrices and solving systems of linear equations." Will need to try it to find out how well it works but this is potentially extremely useful. Some basic optimized linear algebra will take computer vision or AR far on this device! Is it using OpenCL? I don't know. Do you?
Video playback & Capture
"You now have full programmatic control over video playback and capture, using new APIs in the AV Foundation framework." This is the one AR people have been waiting for. No more hacks to get the video feed. Should give more video based apps in the open and better video performance.
Photo Library Access
"Applications now have direct access to user photos and videos with the Media Library APIs." Also very useful. Build auto-tagging tools or photo browsers for your on-phone photos! (Cooliris, are you watching this? You finally have access.)
And finally...
Accelerate
"Accelerate provides hundreds of mathematical functions optimized for iPhone and iPod touch, including signal-processing routines, fast Fourier transforms, basic vector and matrix operations, and industry-standard functions for factoring matrices and solving systems of linear equations." Will need to try it to find out how well it works but this is potentially extremely useful. Some basic optimized linear algebra will take computer vision or AR far on this device! Is it using OpenCL? I don't know. Do you?