A belated mention of Doug and Rory Futz

Last fall, Doug Futz, a doctoral student in landscape architecture at the University of Colorado, made a major side trip (of several hundred miles) to drive to Fort Vancouver with his son, Rory, and check out the Fort Vancouver Mobile project. Doug was working on the development of augmented material within his program, and within his field, and wanted to talk to us about what we were doing. We had a great conversation and spent the day together, including lunch with Chief Ranger Greg Shine. Doug even made a short cameo in one of our video clips as the boom mic operator. Rory also helped with an off-screen prompt during filming of another piece. I just realized today that I hadn't written any of this down on the blog, and Doug had sent me a note a while ago saying that he was changing direction on his dissertation, because of the difficulties in fitting this kind of work into his field (not his interest in it). I suspect that augmented reality eventually will be welcomed into landscape architecture and many other fields that today might be hesitant to open arms to it. I hope Doug eventually gets his chance to study AR in this context, because the ideas he shared with us were thoughtful and compelling and certainly would interest a lot of people, if published.