Qualcomm and Big PlayAR release augmented reality basketball game for Dallas Mavericks

Thanks to the widespread adoption of high end camera and gyro technologies in smartphones and devices such as the Nintendo 3DS, 2011 could be the year that augmented reality finally breaks into the mainstream.

Certainly, there's been a big push from US tech company Qualcomm since it launched its Android AR toolkit and Developer Challenge at the end of 2010.

Now it's hooked up with US studio Big PlayAR and the Dallas Mavericks NBA team to demonstrate something of AR's potential.

The free application ion - for Android phones and tablets - is called Mavs AR and is available for people attending the Mavericks' playoff series starting April 16 as it uses the game ticket to import Mavericks players into a virtual basketball shooting game.

As part of the launch, various AR Phone Zones have also been set up at the American Airlines Center with large-scale game ticket replicas and experts to explain how it all works.

Mavs AR, which is the first commercial AR application release based on Qualcomm's vision-based technology, will eventually be rolled out more widely on other mobile platforms.

You can get Mavs AR from the Android Market here, and you can see what it plays like below.

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