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Augmented Reality Apps to Arrive with iPhone 3.1 Update

shaunymac said:
Uh, wow. I sure wish I had that for my trip to the city back in sept.

Pretty soon, when cell service is interrupted, people are going to freak out because they will not know where to go. Back in the day, you just went and found your way. Nowadays, the tom-tom takes you close to your destination, drives you in a circle or to then you arrive at your destination.
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totally agree, we're rearing a generation of technology-dependent plebs that wouldn't be able to function in a power outage.

I dunno bout you, but i'd feel like a total **** holding up my iphone on a street in London or New York to show me the way to the nearest Starbucks, this is not even considering the threat of theft.

having said that, this is a pretty cool shape of things to come
 
Not only is it cool, but you get to look like the biggest tool in the subway having your iPhone tell you where to go...!
 
This looks fun and stuff, but I think we're gonna have to check back in a year or two before any of this stuff becomes useful/practical. But, right now, I really don't see the advantage of using this App over just looking at Maps.
 
weezer160 said:
I hope they have the option to put stuff in meters, and these retarded feet.
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Comparing it to the London version they've also uploaded a video of to youtube, it looks like they've specifically disabled display in metres for the US version.
 
calvy said:
How the hell would you get a GPS signal in the subway? I bet it's a struggle to get a GPS fix even on the streets of Manhattan.

And I would think there would be a hell of a magnetic field coming from that subway to through the compass off.
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All I have to say is that I WISH I had this when I was grad. student in New York. BUT your point about the GPS signal blocking makes sense. I would attribute this to the possibility of New York actually installing WiFi or Mobile repeaters in a lot of the subway tunnels. The biggest problem with this is the increase of theft as a result of the "Haves" flashing their iphones/iPod touches in front of many "Have Nots" publicly. This was a problem in New York when iPod sales started exploding around the 3G ipod release and I wouldn't anticipate that changing.
 
anubis said:
The focusing box that constantly pops up is really annoying
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I agree it is pretty cool, but I don't see what value the 'augmented reality' adds to it functionally.

This would work just as well without the camera feature, just giving the information on the screen. Laying the info over the camera image in this case is just a gimmick to me.

Really, how does it help to see the info coming up over the lift ... or was that just a nod to the Mac rumor community :)
 
Yay! Another awesome app that I won't be able to use because its not available for Canadians! I guess I'll go MMS on my iPhone to make myself feel better.

As for the focusing box, I assume that if Apple allows these types of apps, the box will be removed unless the developer specifically codes it in.
 
still even tho apple's sales seem to show no signs of stopping at the rate they are rising, i really doubt that current 2g users and maybe 1g users will upgrade unless apple drops the pricepoint again. in the best case scenario, 50% will own 3g ipod touches. and a lot more people own ipod touches than iphones. Frankly, the Ar reality is cool and all but tillwe get those awesome silver zinc batteries in our ipods/iphones, the Ar stuff is going eat up battery life like crazy because of GPS use, camera etc all at once.
 
I don't think augmented reality will really become anything more than a gimmick until we have screens and cameras embedded into glasses, or some kind of head hardware. It just seems too impractical to have to hold the phone up and use that as navigation. Sure, it's a really cool concept, but I wouldn't count on anything extremely useful using this with the current technology.
 
What I'm most interested is with the supposed api additions in 3.1 and giving developers access to the video display, it will be possible to stream video live. Hello qik, ustream, etc. Although I'm sure at&t would freak out over that, block it, and then charge for a "streaming video" package. sigh...
 
Lumeswell said:
I agree it is pretty cool, but I don't see what value the 'augmented reality' adds to it functionally.

This would work just as well without the camera feature, just giving the information on the screen. Laying the info over the camera image in this case is just a gimmick to me.

Really, how does it help to see the info coming up over the lift ... or was that just a nod to the Mac rumor community :)
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yeah I noticed that too. This isn't really "augmented reality" like some of the other demos we've seen. The video could have just as easily been a plain grid. It just takes in account gps (which gives elevation) and compass so as you turn the phone around the display acts accordingly. There's no interaction with the video display though.

Actual augmented reality are the demos you see where you put down an item with a special mark on it and something appears above it. moving the real world item around will cause the digital item to move as well. The demo in this article is just an illusion.

That said, like someone else said this would be awesome if I vacation to japan again although a standard google-like map would work just as well, which I think the 'maps' app actually has
 
oh my god... can you imagine when apple fits a pico projector onto the iphone and fire up this app with it?

Do not display the camera contents but just the floating arrows/bubbles from the app onto the wall / surface?
 
vrillusions said:
Actual augmented reality are the demos you see where you put down an item with a special mark on it and something appears above it. moving the real world item around will cause the digital item to move as well. The demo in this article is just an illusion.
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You're wrong about that. A Google for "define:augmented reality" returns:

  • Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality
  • The use of transparent HMDs to overlay computer generated images onto the physical environment. Precisely calibrated, rapid head tracking is required to sustain the illusion.
  • refers to a display in which simulated imagery, graphics, or symbology is superimposed on a view of the surrounding environment

Augmented reality is exactly what the words say it is — anything that superimposes relevant extra bits over reality. The term doesn't impute any sort of image processing. Further from the Wikipedia article:
ommonly known examples of AR are the yellow "first down" line seen in television broadcasts of American football games
[...]
Another type of AR application uses projectors and screens to insert objects into the real environment, enhancing museum exhibitions for example.
[...]
Many first-person shooter video games simulate the viewpoint of someone using AR systems ... This is also called the head-up display.

In some current applications like in cars or airplanes, this is usually a head-up display integrated into the windshield.
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This demo explicitly is augmented reality. Image processing explicitly isn't required.
 
Thomas Harte said:
This demo explicitly is augmented reality. Image processing explicitly isn't required.
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It probably meets the definition, but I still don't see its value in this demo.

It's not giving me information about the reality around me now, such as details about where the lift goes, or where the stairs go that I can see in shot. Its giving me info about stations that are hundreds of meters, if not kilometres away from where I am.

Thats very cool, and I don't want to take away from how useful that part of it is, but it doesn't relate to my current reality or the environment it is overlaying the information on.

To be honest, if I was using this, I would most likely use it like a compass, so the information will be over a shot of the footpath I am standing on.

So, for me, as a demo of augmented reality, meh, as demo of a cool and useful interaction of GPS location data and location data for points of interest, excellent.

If it was used so in a museum for example, where I could find and navigate to objects of interest, and as I hold the phone up to them have more information about that artifact show up etc - then brilliant. Thats both giving the navigation/location info, and augmenting my current reality. Maybe theres a market for museums to offer augmented reality tour guides?
 
Lumeswell said:
If it was used so in a museum for example, where I could find and navigate to objects of interest, and as I hold the phone up to them have more information about that artifact show up etc - then brilliant. Thats both giving the navigation/location info, and augmenting my current reality. Maybe theres a market for museums to offer augmented reality tour guides?
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That'd be pretty cool. I guess they'd need to install wifi and pipe out some sort of GPS assistance though — even when outdoors it's only accurate to within a few metres. Which is fine for navigation, but I guess makes a major*difference when you're trying to identify exhibits that are less than a few metres across in size.
 
kas23 said:
This looks fun and stuff, but I think we're gonna have to check back in a year or two before any of this stuff becomes useful/practical. But, right now, I really don't see the advantage of using this App over just looking at Maps.
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I agree with this. It looks kind of cool so far, but once developers get a chance to play with the technology a little more, I think we'll see some pretty amazing stuff that we can't really imagine yet. I mean, when they first announced the App Store, who could have envisioned something like Shazam?
 
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