Augmented reality is a term for a live direct or an indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.
Augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally manipulated. Artificial information about the environment and its objects can be overlaid on the real world. Who knows when augmented applications become mainstream but they are already making their way to the iPhone platform. Augmented reality is the future but thanks to these augmented reality iPhone apps, you can experience the future today. So what’s your favorite augmented reality iPhone App? Feel free to comment below on your picks. Apps are great but don’t miss out on these iPhone 4 Cases. They protect your iPhone and makes it look great!
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1. AR Invaders
Want to fight aliens in your backyard? That’s what this application offers. It has multiple levels of difficulty and can be played in 360 degree mode standing up.
2. Heads Up Navigator
GPS meets augmented reality. This app uses your camera and augmented reality technology to show you what’s all around you.
3. Star Walk
The app, for those who aren’t familiar with it, charts the night sky, showing users names of stars, planets, and constellations.
4. Spyglass
The app is essentially an augmented reality tracker, with loads of other information. For all you outdoorsy types, this navigation tool has a compass, constant bearings, sun, moon, and star locations, rangefinder, angular calculator, inclinometer, maps, and more. And, it lets you track and find GPS locations of your choosing.
5. WIKITUDE
Wikitude World Browser is a fun, innovative and informative augmented reality (AR) platform allowing you to discover what’s around you in a completely new way. By using the camera, simply hold up your smartphone and explore your surroundings. Wikitude will overlay the camera’s display and the objects you look at with additional interactive content and information – really cool!
6. Acrossair
Acrossair combines just about every database you might use for augmented reality purposes, dwarfing previous contenders in the augmented reality game, like Stella Artois’ bar guide (included in Acrossair), Panoramio, and even Layar (more “layers” and a better interface than this competitor). You can also check out Tweets, Flickr uploads, YouTube videos, and a whole lot more of what’s been posted or exists around you.
7. Dishpointer
Point your phone towards the sky and see on the live camera screen where the satellites are, any line of sight (LoS) issues by trees or buildings and the look angles. Couldn’t be easier to install your dish with this augmented reality satellite finder
8. Yelp
Looking for a burrito joint open now? An Irish pub nearby? A gas station you can drive to before your tank hits empty? Yelp for your iPhone is here to help.
9. SketchWiz
Turn your camera into a sketcher. Changes the way you see your world and can be used to create some awesome artwork.
10. Satellite Augmented Reality
Have you ever wanted to look up into the southern sky and see the satellites that orbit over us every day? Now you can.
(For Iphone 3gs and 4 only)
11. Quick Writer
Quick Writer is a text editor to enable you to watch things in front you while typing.
12. ARDefender
ARDefender is a simple yet very innovative game based on a new technology known as Vision Based Augmented Reality.
It uses the camera of the iPhone to blend the game world and the real world for a truly surprising, immersive and fun experience!
13. DanKam for iPhone
An augmented reality application for those who are suffering from color-blindness. It is an experimental application at this point, but it could have huge potential.
14. New York Nearest Places
Forget boring 2D subway maps! Try this amazing new application that tells New Yorkers where their nearest subway station is via their phone’s camera.
15. Golfscape GPS Rangefinder
An augmented reality range finder for Golf lovers. It covers 35K+ courses. It displays the distance from front, center, and back of green.
16. Stella Artois — Le Bar Guide
Le Bar (that’s French for bar, by the way) Guide will assist you in finding the nearest watering hole, give you ratings and then even point you to a taxi within stumbling distance. It’s accurate to 20 feet, which is a coincidence, as that’s about the level of accuracy after three pints of the French stuff.
17. Theodolite
Based on a centuries-old astronomical instrument, Theodolite is a cool new multi-function augmented reality app for the iPhone that serves as a compass, GPS, map, zoom camera, rangefinder, and two-axis inclinometer. Theodolite overlays real time information about position, altitude, bearing, and horizontal/vertical inclination on the iPhone’s live camera image, like an electronic viewfinder.
18. Car Finder
The best Augmented Reality based car finding application on the iPhone. Use it to find your car anywhere you are. Once you load the application you can use the camera viewfinder to see an overlay of where your car is, the direction it is located and how far away it is. Car Finder allows you to add a note when marking the location of your car and also has a built in parking meter timer.
19. Cyclopedia
Cyclopedia uses the iPhone camera, compass (so it only works on the 3GS I’m afraid) and GPS together to create an augmented reality of the world by overlaying Wikipedia information over the viewfinder. By moving the iPhone around you will see articles pop up according to the direction you are pointing.
20. Robotvision
An augmented reality application for iPhone that lets you explore your surroundings more effectively.
21. Firefighter 360
Firefighter 360 is a new firefighting game specifically developed for the iPhone 3GS using a unique Augmented Reality engine.
22. Panoramascope
Panoramascope: Augmented Reality uses worldwide terrain data from NASA to compute the skyline as seen from anywhere on the planet. This is superimposed on the view from the iPhone’s camera, oriented using the compass, with labels to identify mountain peaks and other features.
23. Virtual Graffiti
Snap an image, add your witticism, embellishment or “tag”, then, once uploaded, your artistic addition to the world can be browsed on a location basis thanks to the Google Maps integration. All the fun of tagging, none of the embarrassment of getting caught with a spray can in your hot little old-enough-to-know-better hand.
24. WorkSnug
This app for iPhone helps you to find the best place in the city for you to sit and work; the place may be a small coffee shop or library with good internet connection and decent working area. When you search your surroundings with iPhone, WorkSnug superimposes comments on screen like ‘café is warm with inviting atmosphere’, etc.
25. London Tube
This interesting app allows you to identify location of tube stations, train timings and destinations in London city
26. SnapShop Showroom
Visualize furniture in your own home using augmented reality. SnapShop gives you confidence that a sofa or chair looks great in your living room before you buy. Whether you’re looking for a new couch, or just having fun coming up with ideas for a future remodel, SnapShop is the perfect tool to imagine how it might look and get feedback from friends.
27. Layar Reality Browser
With this app you can view things around your neighborhood. The browser displays real time digital information on the camera screen of your mobile phone. Pick up a layer on the screen, you can see houses for sale, bars & shops, subway stations and tourist spots.
28. Star Chart
Using state of the art GPS technology, an accurate 3D universe, and all of the latest high tech functionality, Star Chart calculates – in real time – the current location of every star and planet visible from Earth and shows you precisely where they are; even in broad daylight!
29. NearestWiki
With this app you get to know your surroundings with the phone camera. Simultaneously it brings in content from Wikipedia superimposed on places for identification. This is best suited for beginners as it does not mess around with extra features. The edit option to Wikipedia enables you to add and update contents.
30. See Breeze
Useful app for wind watchers like cyclist, wind mill operators and surfers. Direction of wind in your locality including weather report will be helpful for the right action.
31. Localscope
Search & discover places around you with information from multiple geo search engines & social networks: Google, Bing, Foursquare, Twitter, Wikimapia.
32. buUuk
Great free augmented reality app if you are planning to go to Australia, New Zealand, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, or maybe Dubai, buUuk is the app you need. Uses your GPS to find locations all around you.
33. Sky Siege
A fun augmented reality game for iPhone that is quite addictive and provides you with a unique 3D gaming experience on your device.
34. lodestone AR Compass
With lodestone AR Compass it is easy to find out. lodestone puts a detailed compass over your view of the world to help you navigate. lodestone also includes detailed Google Maps to assist in your travels.
35. Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy
Have you ever looked up at the night sky, and wondered what exactly you were looking at? Pocket Universe is an easy-to-use app that will help you learn constellations, bright stars and planets. You can literally hold up your iPhone 3GS/4 or iPad in front of you, and the app will use the built-in compass to display the same view of the sky you see – but one that’s complete with names and information. If you want your kids to learn the constellations, or to impress a date with the names of the stars, this is the only app you need.
36. Peaks
Great application for those into climbing mountains. Or maybe you are just interested in geography. Shows you information on mountains right on your phone. Top notch app.
37. Firepower
Firepower is the world’s first and finest chaingun simulator designed to turn your iPhone’s camera into a fume-spit & fire chaingun fully loaded with infinite ammo.
38. ARBasketball
Turns your reality into a mini basketball court. All you need to play basketball is a piece of paper and your iPhone. This game’s augmented reality feature takes care of the rest.
39. Sun Seeker
SunSeeker is one cool iPhone app that shows you everything you need about the sun, its path in the sky, and other interesting information about the sun.
40. ARSoccer
This is soccer meets augmented reality. Gives you a virtual ball to play with at all times.
41. myNav: Park, Tag & Go
All you do is park your vehicle, tag the location with the app, and then use the app to trace back to your vehicle. The app even records how long you have been parked, and how far away you are from it.
42. Iron HUD
Iron HUD gives you the feeling of being like Iron Man!
43. Travel Guide with AR
SpotCrime is the iPhone application from SpotCrime.com, and is the first crime application to use Augmented Reality technology to give you a visual sense of where crime is happening around you!
44. SpotCrime
SpotCrime is the iPhone application from SpotCrime.com, and is the first crime application to use Augmented Reality technology to give you a visual sense of where crime is happening around you.
45. Nulaz AR
Hold your device and point in any direction. Do you want to know something about this strange monument? Where are your friends now? Are those guys Nulaz people? Point your device at them! A lot of knowledge and fun is encapsulated in Nulaz AR. And It works wherever you are, any place around the world.
There is no doubt. We just love our electronic gadgets and it’s always a good idea to use covers and cases to protect you precious HTC, Kindle, Ipod, Iphone etc.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere?
A theme like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make
my blog jump out. Please let me know where you got your theme.
Appreciate it
Thank you for the question, the theme used on tripwire magazine is “Thesis”. We use the 1.8.5 version and not the new 2.0 as it is very different and in my opinion not as mature and easy to use. You can read more about the theme here: http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2010/06/review-of-thesis-1-7-a-unique-and-flexible-premium-wordpress-theme.html
Best regards,
Sofie
An AR car locator for parking lots: wtfdip.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wtfdipfree/id531495746?mt=8
Gaming with Augmented Reality been a relatively unexplored territory, and at the moment, most of it is limited to interacting with virtual items on your mobile device. We came up with a game that lets you interact with virtual objects with your fingers. SoccAR is a simple game that’s based on the popular sport, soccer. You need to print out a playing field which you position the phone/tablet’s camera over, and on the display you’ll be able to see a virtual ball on screen. You then move your fingers around the field, trying to manipulate the ball and score goals.
The game works for two or more players.
See it in action here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P7UNjl6dl8
You can download it here:
http://itunes.apple.com/de/app/soccar/id504178476?mt=8
We just released a new AR app for iOS, called MoonWalking, which brings Tranquility Base (site of the first Apollo moon landing) down to Earth. Watch history unfold in front of you as an immersive virtual world! http://www.moon-walking.com
Here’s another AR app: Creepy Crawlies
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/creepy-crawlies/id465049412?mt=8
The problem with Car finder is I usually lose mine in an underground car park after shopping!
Thanks for compiling this list. Maybe you could take a look at my augmented-reality ruler app hiRise? You can use it to measure the height of buildings through your camera. The web-page is http://hirise.oblomov.com and it’s available on the App Store at http://itunes.apple.com/app/hirise/id411509671?mt=8
About video playing in AR try Viseo, that plays video using the augmented reality built on image recognition, http://www.viseo-app.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MyRoirw4cY
Hi – I would be grateful if you would add my game, Pocket Jets AR, to this list? thanks!
Very cool list. I totally want to get me some aliens in the back yard!
So the world’s going to become this disconnected place full of ‘connected’ individuals walking about holding their phones in front of them?
Already is, has been for awhile.
You may try tis freeApp CultureClic, a journey into time on iPhone.
Thanks to the Réunion des musées nationaux (national museums grouping) catalogue and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (national library) Gallica archives, you can take a journey through time. With augmented reality mode, you will see the place where you are located as it was several centuries ago: the Louvre in the olden days, the first photos of Notre Dame Cathedral, Pont Neuf or the Eiffel Tower under construction – and many more treasures.
Enjoy!
Hi Trak,
Thanks for the info about junaio, I overlooked it and I will feature it the next time around.
Hi Dustin,
Nice article! A lot of very cool AR use cases and apps out there and you seem to have done your research. I was curious however why you hadn’t come across metaio GmbH or its mobile AR browser, junaio, in your research. junaio is the world’s first mobile AR browser that incorporates both GPS overlays and natural feature tracking in the same app. And it’s free- and free to develop!
It also seems to me like some of your examples are “old”, as in examples from more than a year ago. junaio has had regular updates for the past two years, with many more to come. Please check out http://www.junaio.com for more information, and consider adding junaio the next time you feature AR apps.
Thanks!
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