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Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality, Car Finder, HGG, Mobile Phones, gps, iPhone, parking
Use Augmented Reality to find your car
11.03.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: iPhone, App Review

I have to admit, when I park in a big lot, I often forget where old Betsy is. There have been more than a few iPhone apps to help you find your car, but Car Finder [iTunes link] uses augmented reality to get you pointed in the right direction.

Here’s how it works: you get out of your car and mark your position, making sure you have a good GPS fix. If you don’t have one, you’ll be told that and see the accuracy of your fix in plus or minus meters.

You can give your location a name, and if your parking space is numbered, you can add that in. I guess that is helpful if you are parking where there is no GPS signal, but then this app won’t be of much help.

You’re then free to go your merry way, until it’s time to find your car again. When you bring up the app, your iPhone camera is activated, and a red arrow points to your car. Swing the camera around until an icon for your car appears and start walking. You’ll get a constant read-out of your distance.

In my tests, just after sunset, the app worked very well, although when I got right next to the car the arrow was pointing elsewhere. That’s not surprising given the imperfect accuracy of GPS, but by the time I got the error I could see the car less than 25 feet away.

Car Finder is U.S. $0.99, so it’s not over priced, and pretty much in line with other similar apps in terms of cost. The augmented reality is a nice touch, as it floats your car icon over the real world. You do get a legal warning from the app about using due caution, I guess so you won’t step into a manhole or off a cliff while following the camera scene. What a litigious society we live in!

So, Car Finder works, isn’t over priced, uses augmented reality which has a high ‘buzz word quotient,’ and should impress your non-iPhone using friends, if you have any.

You’ll need an iPhone 3GS to make this work, because the compass and GPS do the heavy lifting.
Use Augmented Reality to find your car originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Use Augmented Reality to find your car originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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3gs, Augmented Reality, Iphone3gs, Mobile Phones, gps, iPhone, iphone 3gs, layar, layars, navigation
Augmented Reality to the max with Layars for iPhone 3GS
10.15.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: iPhone, App Review

Every so often an app comes along that you just get excited about. Well, I’m excited about the Layar Reality Browser [iTunes link], and even better: it’s free!

This app has been available on the Android platform, and iPhone users have been eagerly awaiting it. Wait no more.

The Layar app will only run on an iPhone 3GS because it really needs that built-in compass. So what does it do? Quite a lot. The app displays real time information based on your location and the direction you are facing, overlaying the camera with locations and information that you are looking for.

Yes, like other apps with augmented reality, it can find food and shopping, but that’s only the beginning. You can find apartments for rent, Flickr photos taken near your location, mountain peaks, tourist information, and the list goes on and on. The Layar screen shows your live camera view, a radar-like display showing you a 360 degree view of ‘hits’ near you, the accuracy of your GPS fix, and the number of items it has located.

The Layars app is based on an open architecture, so it can interact with an unlimited amount of information set up to talk to the platform. It is globally aware, not just U.S. centric, and lots of 3rd party developers are jumping in.

In operation it generally worked very well. I didn’t see any crashes, but at times some of the many servers supplying information did not seem to be up and running. When I wanted to see some information on the mountains in my area, it worked great one time, and the next time it said there was nothing around, even though I was standing in the foothills of some 5,000-foot peaks.

Generally though, the app was well behaved, and as you explore the riches it contains your mind races with all the possibilities an app like this has. You don’t have to use only the camera view. You can get a list of nearby points of interest or see everything on a 2D Google map. Wikipedia is even available. When I brought it up, it gave me some information on my town, a nearby school, and some info about nearby parks.

I hope this app really grows, because the potential here is limitless. Try it for yourself. There’s no cost, and no risk. You’ll be surprised at all the stuff around you. I’m going on a trip soon, and can’t wait to explore with Layars.

Let us know how it works for you.
Augmented Reality to the max with Layars for iPhone 3GS originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Augmented Reality to the max with Layars for iPhone 3GS originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple, Augmented Reality, AugmentedReality, Iphone3gs, IphoneApp, Mobile Phones, app, ar, iPhone, iphone 3gs, iphone app, itunes, layer
Layar now adding layers of augmented reality to iPhone
10.14.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: Handsets, Apple, iPhone OS

Since your Android handset-owning friends and colleagues can’t have all the phone, Layar has finally made the leap to iPhone. It’s now available in the iTunes app store for the enticing price of nada, with its own third-party ecosystem to boot — only iPhone 3GS customers need apply, though, since without the magnetometer this is kind of a wash. We’ve only spent a few minutes with the new version, but it seems like much of our initial impressions from August seem to hold true, for better and for worse. But don’t take our word for it, download away! [Warning: iTunes link]

[Via Wired]

Layar now adding layers of augmented reality to iPhone originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AppReview, Augmented Reality, AugmentedReality, Flickr, Mobile Phones, Twitter, Wikipedia, app review, bing, robotvision
Robotvision: A decent early stab at augmented reality
10.10.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: Video, iPhone, App Review

Ever since I first saw heads-up-displays in science fiction movies like The Terminator, I knew that I had to get my hands on one. How neat it would be to get instant information on anything about anything in my field of vision?

Well, just as the iTablet won’t be the Knowledge Navigator, the new buzz-phrase of the year, augmented reality, won’t give me Terminator eyes. Such is life.

I tested out a pretty decent augmented reality app called Robotvision [iTunes Link], and for US $0.99 what you get, if you have an iPhone 3GS running OS 3.1 or better, is quite cool. Will it solve your problems, cure the common cold, or tell you anything that more established apps won’t? Not really. But tossing a buck on a neat novelty is not unheard of in the iPhone 3GS world.

This one does more than most. First you tell it how widely to search and then, if you’re in a highly populated area, you can set up a category ranging from ATMs to Travel Destinations. For the most part, I didn’t fool with this since being in the suburbs, I can’t be too picky.

Run it and the camera shutter opens. Moving the iPhone around, I found Cousin’s Pizza, only 8432.1 miles away. Hmmm. The setting was for 5 miles. Wait, I guess it needed to be calibrated by doing the calibration figure eight wave of the phone. It seems that a lot of GPS apps require this.

OK, much better. It found a bunch of places but they were all stacked on top of one another. No big deal, since when you touch one, you get a screen like the one in the picture. The closest place is displayed first and the right and left arrows take you back and forth through the stack. While an item is in the front pane, you can call them, see them on a map (by cleverly pointing the iPhone to the floor, which invokes Google Maps, but all the stick pins aren’t really any clearer than the AR view… maybe less so). You can also hit the Bing button where there might be a review or more information.

The problem is that the direction it puts you in is not quite accurate. It might get you to a nearby corner, but not to the butcher shop itself. I don’t think we can slight Robotvision on this, since the not quite pin-point accuracy of the iPhone 3GS GPS has already been talked to death.

What else can this bad-boy do? You can see who is sending tweets in the area you specified, read the tweets and see how far the tweeter is from you. Not enough? Wait, there’s more. You can find people in your area who use Flickr, and view their gallery. This doesn’t work too well. I set the default for 50 miles and found no one. Then I set it for 25 miles and found one person with a gallery of 10 pictures. I live 30 miles from NYC, so I can’t blame it on the boonies. You still want Ginsu knives? Okay, hit the Wikipedia button and see if anything in your range is listed. If so you’ll get a bit of text and the option to go to Wikipedia to read more.

I don’t know if AR will change the world, or be as successful as either New Coke or the iPod. But I’d suggest tossing a buck at this one. You are guaranteed 20 minutes of awe and then maybe some time to reflect on what you have, once the novelty wears off.

Check out this video for a tour and let us know what you think about this or the idea of augmented reality in general.

Robotvision: A decent early stab at augmented reality originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Robotvision: A decent early stab at augmented reality originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Augmented Reality, Bionic Eye, BionicEye, Mobile Phones, iPhone, navigation
Bionic Eye: Clever idea, flawed execution
09.25.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App Review

Bionic Eye [iTunes link] is an augmented reality app for the iPhone that displays businesses around you superimposed over a live camera picture.

It sorta works, but doesn’t solve any problem I have. It’s cool to rotate around and see a Burger King logo or a Hilton Hotel logo pop up when the actual locations are nearby. The problem is, I can get that kind of information from Google Maps and hundreds of other free or paid apps that can give me the same info, although not in such a sexy way.

Even worse, the app is very, very slow. It takes Bionic Eye anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to fully launch. If I go to the settings menu to change something, it takes another minute to absorb that change and bring me to a usable screen.

If you turn your iPhone horizontally, you can see all the nearby locations in a list, and when you select one a blue arrow points you to the actual location. Whee!

I had a couple of lockups when I went to the setting screen to make a change, which only added to my frustration. The points of interest you are searching for are limited to about a 2 mile range, so it will only guide you to places that are really close. Usually I could look up and see the destination, so I really didn’t need the app in the first place. It has a limited list of locations, and they’re all brand names, so if you are looking for a restaurant that is not a franchise or a hotel that is not part of a chain, it’s tough luck for you.

For an additional fee, you can get guidance to subway stations in New York, Washington and Chicago. There are also versions of the app for the U.K., France and Tokyo.

Bionic Eye is only US$0.99, but it doesn’t answer the first question you should ask of any app — does it solve any real world problems I have. An app should be a novel solution to a problem or great entertainment. Bionic Eye is neither, but it has potential if it can be given a larger database, much faster load times, and crash a lot less frequently. To be fully functional, Bionic Eye requires an iPhone 3GS.

Bionic Eye: Clever idea, flawed execution originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Bionic Eye: Clever idea, flawed execution originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android, Augmented Reality, AugmentedReality, LayerRealityBrowser, Mobile Phones, RealityBrowser, layar, layer reality browser, reality browser
Layar goes 3D, reality now more augmented than ever
09.23.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: Software, Android

The Layar Reality Browser for Android has already managed to stir up quite a bit of interest in its current state, but it looks like the mad geniuses behind it aren’t about to rest on their slightly augmented laurels just yet, and they’ve now announced that they’re adding full 3D capabilities to the app. That, of course, doesn’t mean you’ll have to start wearing goofy glasses every time you walk outside, but you will soon be able to tag real-life objects with 3D text, or place 3D objects in a real-world space (like the Pac-Man fever dream above, for instance). Of course, the potential uses for the upgrade are limited only by the developers working with it, and they’ll have a bit of time to toy around with things before the 3D-enabled version of Layer launches to the public in November. Head on past the break for a quick video, and hit up the link below for a closer look at what’s in store.
Continue reading Layar goes 3D, reality now more augmented than ever

Layar goes 3D, reality now more augmented than ever originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AppStore, Augmented Reality, AugmentedReality, Iphone3gs, Mobile Phones, Yelp, app store, iPhone, iphone 3gs
Yelp for iPhone’s hidden augmented reality feature
08.27.09 | Permalink | Comments Off
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, iPhone

Earlier today I was reading about Metro Paris Subway [iTunes link], the first augmented reality (AR) app to hit the App Store and lamenting the fact that there wasn’t an AR app for me to play with. Then we noticed this tip from Robert Scoble: It seems that Yelp for the iPhone has a hidden augmented reality feature. I downloaded the app and tried it out. I’m glad to say it works, but only on iPhone 3GS. Here’s how to activate it (again, note that a 3GS iPhone is required):
1. Grab the app here
2. Launch it and shake your phone. Robert says you need to shake it 3 times. I got it working with one good shake, while other TUAW bloggers needed more than 3.
3. A message appears indicating that you’ve activated “Monocle.” That’s what they call the AR feature.
4. A monocle button appears on the top right of the app. Press it.
From there, the camera activates. Simply point your iPhone 3GS in any direction and take a look! I live out here in the middle of nowhere and was certain that I’d get a blank screen. Instead, Yelp found a number of restaurants, bars and other shops right away.

The screen is a bit jumpy and you’ve got to hold the phone REALLY still to get a good look. Plus, unlike Metro Paris Subway, the graphics depicting the different business aren’t distinguishable (restaurant vs. bar, or example). Still, it’s a lot of fun and a free way to play with augmented reality. Check out the gallery below for screenshots.

Grab Yelp [iTunes link] while you can and give it a try. Of course, we’d love to hear about your experiences.

Gallery: Yelp’s Augmented Reality Feature

Yelp for iPhone’s hidden augmented reality feature originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yelp for iPhone’s hidden augmented reality feature originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Augmented Reality, app, archive
Augmented traffic app for Android surfaces
08.26.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

One of the new buzzwords in applications for mobile phones floating around is augmented reality. This type of app takes an image seen live form the phones camera and overlays it with directions or other data as an example.

A slick new augmented reality app for the Android platform has surfaced called Augmented Traffic Views. The [...]
Android, Augmented Reality, AugmentedReality, RealityBrowser, layar, reality browser
Layar augmented reality app now available globally, lets you hunt down tweeps with cold, calculated precision
08.18.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: Software, Android

Following a Netherlands-exclusive release back in June, SPRXmobile has now taken its so-called Layar “Reality Browser” for Android to the global stage and advanced it to version 2.0 in the process. Perhaps the first commercial augmented reality app to launch on a large scale, Layar’s got a good amount of momentum behind it — the company claims that 100 developers are already hard at work developing reality layers that users can toggle, and an additional 500 developers are being added into the mix with the latest release. Version 2.0 adds favorite layers (because we’re sure you’ll be stalking friends and foes all too often using the Tweetmondo layer), map and list views, and enhanced search capabilities, but the real secret to Layar’s power might ultimately lie in the third-party ecosystem if they can get enough content providers on board.

We grabbed Layar off the Market and took it for a quick spin; we’re having trouble getting it to aim correctly, though Google Sky Map is having the same issues, so we’re fairly certain that we’re dealing with a phone or location problem rather than a Layar one. The key thing with an app like this is going to be speed and fluidity, and even on our Magic’s relatively lightweight 528MHz core, it’s plenty usable. The Google-powered Layar local search — arguably the most important reality layer bundled with the software — is a little annoying to use, primarily because the search box has no history or suggestion capability which means you’ve got to type out a full search every time you want to use it. Ultimately, though, the app’s very young (as is this whole category of technology, for that matter) and we’re stoked to see where this goes over the coming months.
Layar augmented reality app now available globally, lets you hunt down tweeps with cold, calculated precision originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Augmented Reality, compass, iPhone, ipod touch, star maps
Distant Suns for iPhone update: Sky no longer the limit
08.06.09 | Permalink | Comments Off

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

In this International Year of Astronomy we’re seeing a small explosion of astronomy apps updated both for the Mac and the iPhone.

One of my favorites, Distant Suns [App Store] has updated the build that runs on the 3GS iPhone to include some augmented reality features. This means that if you point the phone up to the sky, the program figures out the direction you are pointing and your elevation and slews to the proper view of the star map, giving you a view that should match what you are seeing in the sky.

This greatly enhances the usefulness of this program, especially for novices who want to get outside under the summer stars and quickly figure out ‘what’s up?’.

This new version is only for 3GS iPhones, and an update with some additional features for all the earlier models is on the way. Of course older phones won’t have the compass feature. Other changes include some UI tweaks, and setting the sound effects default to ‘off.’

Pocket Universe [App Store], which I reviewed last month, has a similar feature and also works very well. Pocket Universe sells for US$2.99 and Distant Suns is $5.99. Check reader reactions to both and go into details on the features to decide which one is right for you.

Distant Suns has a long pedigree in the star mapping world. It first ran on the Commodore Amiga in 1987, then was ported to the PC, the Mac, and now your favorite cell phone.

When you look up at the moon this summer to celebrate the Apollo 11 landing 40 years ago, be sure to investigate the thousands of other points of light with a software app that will literally point you in the right direction.

Note: Distant Suns runs on the iPod touch as well, but the software will not have the augmentation/orientation feature because the magnetometer isn’t present in the iPod touch hardware.

Distant Suns for iPhone update: Sky no longer the limit originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Distant Suns for iPhone update: Sky no longer the limit originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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