I'm pleased to announce the first public release of DART, the=20
Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit.

We have created DART with the goal of providing a system that allows=20
wide variety of researchers, artists and designers to work with=20
Augmented and Mixed Reality experiences from initial prototyping, to=20
iterative experience testing, and through final deployment. The DART=20
system is built on top of Macromedia Director and consists of a=20
low-level C++ plugin (the DART Xtra) that provides services such as=20
VRPN, marker tracking, and video capture, as well as a suite of=20
behavior scripts written in the Director programming language (Lingo)=20
that represent the components of an AR/MR application such as trackers=20=

and sensors, 3D models, video cameras, and action/event messaging.  One=20=

central design goal was to create a set of AR/MR specific components=20
that could be used by designers and developers following the common=20
Director programming paradigms.

DART is the product of a larger research project, with the aim of=20
understanding the design on AR/MR experiences.  In particular, we hope=20=

to understand how designers "design" mixed physical/virtual experiences=20=

and applications.  Therefore, DART is free (assuming you own Macromedia=20=

Director) and what we want in return is for folks to share their=20
experiences with us; everything from what they are doing with DART,=20
what works and what does not work (in the system, for their=20
applications, the limits of Director, and so on), and how they think=20
about designing these sorts of experiences.  (We are using DART for a=20
variety of applications, from AR manufacturing experiments to AR=20
games/entertainment to MR tours of historic sites.  We are also using=20
DART to teach a class on AR Experience Design.)

The distribution consists of the DART Core (the Xtras and DART lingo=20
scripts), a collection of tutorials and samples (including sample=20
media), and documentation.

Some DART Features:

o Full-featured multimedia programming environment
o Powerful 3D Engine (Shockwave 3D)
o Animated Models can be imported from popular
   programs (e.g. 3D Studio, Maya)
o Live camera for video-mixed AR, supporting cameras via
   Directshow, Pointgrey and Videre Design APIs
o ARToolkit interface for marker tracking
o VRPN interface for trackers, buttons, analog devices,
   and distributed shared memory
o Pre-defined virtual object types (animated 3D
   models, video-based characters, arbitrary scene
   graphs, audio, animatics)
o Spatialized sound via our OpenAL Xtra (included)
o Havok physics engine used to create objects with
   realistic physical properties and behaviors
o Global event system that is easily extensible
o Automatic generation of=A0remote "Wizard of Oz"
   interfaces to be used for prototyping and user
   testing
o Capture and playback of synchronized camera and
   tracker data for debugging, experience testing,
   prototyping, and animation
o Flexible tracker model that allows for easy
   modification of tracking configurations, the
   combination of live and synthetic trackers, and
   the simple fusion of data from multiple trackers
o All behaviors designed as an extensible framework
   to be edited and modified as necessary

Currently, the DART and OpenAL Xtras are only available for Windows,=20
but we are working on a MacOSX port that we hope to have available=20
soon.

IMPORTANT:  Please consider this a "late BETA" release.  We have=20
cleaned up the code and made some significant architectural=20
improvements over the summer and early fall, so things are=20
significantly cleaner and more flexible that our previous limited=20
release.  While there are probably some bugs remaining in the code, we=20=

wanted to get it out to the folks who have been waiting for it.  Our=20
group is traveling a lot over the next month (to the Presence Workshop,=20=

the ACM UIST and the IEEE/ACM ISMAR conferences), so waiting any longer=20=

would have meant delaying the release till mid-November.  We will try=20
to keep in email contact while traveling, to answer questions and fix=20
bugs, but communication may be sporadic at times.

For those concerned about licenses, our license is include in all the=20
DART casts.  The high level summary is that DART is released under a=20
public license with the intent that you are free to use it and create=20
any derivative works you want (which is the point of a toolkit, after=20
all), and do what you want with those derivative works, but that you=20
may not sell DART itself (or small changes to it).  Our goal is to keep=20=

DART free, prevent people from profiting from or restrict the=20
distribution of our work, but not limit what you do with the AR/MR=20
applications that they create with DART.

For more information, including download instructions and pointers to=20
our mailing lists and collaborative web site (the DART Swiki), please=20
visit http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/dart