Augmented reality

When I first heard of the term ‘augmented reality’ we thought it was just another terminology for the geeks at Microsoft’s research labs or used in some science fiction film but in truth AR is becoming more and more popular. The latest attempts at AR has been by South Korean electronics manufacturer LG with their promotion of the Avatar film whereby you could have seen a 3D clip of the movie literally using your web cam and a Decembers copy of T3 magazine showing a specially designed LG logo.

What is AR?

AR which is short for augmented reality is the bridge between information and our current reality whereby live information is available to us depending on what we are looking at. Imagine being on a tour in a new City and instead of using the written tour guides you can now currently use your mobile phone to gather information about landmarks and the area as a whole simply by pointing and panning around your location. This will make exploring and even education more fun but that’s not all as the gaming market is best posed to take advantage of this type of technology.

Simply put AR is layers of different types of information which is available to you however the important thing is that the information needs to be there and accessible otherwise AR is pointless.

According to a recent article in T3 Australia’s Wearable Computing Lab have developed an AR version of Quake using a 3D render of their University to allow them to hide behind corners in their University shooting the enemies in the game. This is just the beginning as not only the military are finding uses for AR but Doctors could use it for layering x rays whilst working on a patient for more accurate operation procedures.

AR today?

There are plenty of applications making a simple and basic use of AR technology for both the Android and iPhone devices whereby you’ll be able to read live reviews about Café’s and restaurants or even search for a live WiFi hotspot.

We’ll be keeping our eyes wide open for more AR news and bring them straight to you.

Andrew