Developers Are Already Making Great AR Experiences Using Apple's ARKit (opens in new tab)

Wow - how does it do that?! Image recognition techniques alone (as far as I know) couldn't do that, right? So how does it know how far away something is?

That's pretty cool. I almost wonder if someone could use this type of tech for a cheap way of mapping the inside of structures/homes. Something like an ARKit -> Sketchup service. That or a good way to monitor job-sites for correctness, remotely.

Maybe point it at a sports game for stats and game data?

Point it down the street to have great restaurants highlighted?

Point it at the sky to get astronomical facts?

Point it at tourist landmarks to find out about them?

Point it anywhere to see where athletes/runners/cyclists have run and in what time?

Visualise all historical car accidents at a given location?

Visualise all hidden infrastructure, underground gas lines etc?

See history overlaid on the present?

Visualise public transport routes?

Show "upcoming events at this venue" as you pass theatres, cinemas, stadiums?

I'm actually expecting this tech to be the "bring contextual information V2" of things.

Example : Visiting a museum. I want context around the displayed works to better grasp the key concept.

How it works today :

- Guided tour : needs time management (when does it starts ?) + plus paying a human being (what language?) + keep with group speed

- Audio guide : Better, but lacks of visual explanation. Input (which track should i play concerning this work ?) requires some visual encoding (title, #, qr)

- Reading explanation next to the actual work : Lots of reading, not suited for different types of visitors

- AR : Could use the actual work as form of encoding to deliver the contextual information. Can adapt to the amount of data, depth that visitor want's to have.

Does that make sense ?

I could see it for some gaming niches, like LARPers (live-action roleplay). See those fireballs tossed out. Show off your new +1 chainmail you looted, etc. Probably free to play with microtransactions for new loot and effects.

One game idea we kicked around was first person AR bomberman. All you need is a sufficiently-sized field for the map (and your AR device of course).

All of this has happened before with 'AR' for television. The eventual niche was just a few election/budget politics shows rather than day-to-day broadcasting. A few things that were hard to do with 'AR' for television - getting feet to stay consistently on the ground in the one place and not float or drift with camera moves. The reality of solving this was to use a close up shot where the feet were not shown or to pan very carefully with a camera on a tripod.

It is these finer technical points that stop the technology getting too far and prevent you doing really cool stuff with 'AR'. This of course does not matter if it is some effect on Snapchat, however, if you really are trying to get someone to appear as if they really are 'walking on the moon' then sliding feet makes the result look like bad chromakeying and not the 'AR' desired.

Vanity- this will allow if for lots of vanity assecoirs only AR can provide. Virtual Pets, Decorations, virtual Cloths- all that is missing is good people tracking.

The emperors cloths might just become a story on a boys defunct glasses.

Look around a car before booking a test drive? https://twitter.com/JelmerVerhoog/status/881237798623293440/...

I sense this is more of a roadtest for technologies that are bound for a new product line.

I have been coding on laptop, it's kind of bad of our back body, AR can help to bring 360 degree display so we won't have to switch/toggle our workflow all the time for hundred times a day.

Yes, the world just changed and you don’t realize it. AR is going to be huge, even with a phone.

X-ray vision anyone?

This only works to add to the environment. The problem with the AR approach for things like "what would this couch look like in my living room" is you can't get rid of the existing couch. That's still a long way away.

Yes , the biggest problem for me and wife has been to visualize how the new furniture we are buying will look inside our house. AR can solve lot of those problems to some extent

Depends on the use application. For observing especially large objects[1][2], I agree, it would be very hard to use for anything beyond a quick demo. But on the other hand, I think the phone is a perfect viewport for on-the-fly smaller applications, like an AR measuring tape[3], adding info about artwork in a museum, displaying a virtual prototype of a dish on a restaurant's menu[4], translating street signs on the fly[5], etc. The phone is perfect for applications where you don't want to plan ahead or be constantly carrying an extra piece of equipment around.

1: https://twitter.com/madewithARKit/status/880815805281300480 2: https://twitter.com/madewithARKit/status/880056901987254272 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7DYC_zbZCM 4: https://twitter.com/madewithARKit/status/880744158423658497 5: http://newatlas.com/google-translate-update/35605/

Basic monocular SLAM has been solved for a while on mobile devices. ARKit, Facebook, and Magic Leap are just very careful to show only demos where the SLAM works well for that case.

Detailed monocular SLAM needs a lot of CPU, but that is changing...

SLAM?

Looks like someone has already made a Unity ARKIT plugin

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/92515

Just go through the official sample app and documentation https://developer.apple.com/arkit/, if you have worked on Unity, then working with ARKit will be an easy transition for you