Augmented Reality has arrived
Have you ever imagined yourself sitting in a cricket stadium wondering how many of your friends or acquaintances were also in the stadium? I've often thought about the day that I could slip on a set of Augmented Reality (AR) sunglasses, scan the stadium, and have an LED illuminator light up in the top right corner of my periphery - indicating that three friends were sitting in the stand opposite me. Alternatively, a quick scan of the playing field and getting batting and fielding statistics on each player as I scan from left to right. Well, the good news is that we are pretty much there.
Presselite development studio has recently released an application for the iPhone that makes use of the compass capabilities of the iPhone 3GS, as well as some pretty cool augmented reality functionality that works with the phone's camera.
The application allows you to scan your surroundings and discover various Points of Interest (POI's) including Restaurants, Wi-fi hotspots, Subway stations, Coffee shops and Hotels and other forms of accommodation. The database currently supports over 100,000 POI's in the US. Sadly, it is probably some time before a South African database is created.
This really is the start of something completely new and exciting, given the capabilities of this application and the vast number of opportunities that AR presents.
Augmented Reality, iPhone in Mobile, Technology