“Next up on Apple’s agenda is augmented reality, the act of superimposing digital data and visuals atop a live video feed of your surroundings — something that Google, Microsoft, and many others have been experimenting with for a long time,” Vlad Savov writes for The Verge. “Apple is far from being able to claim it invented AR, but its new ARKit in iOS 11 is already showing signs to suggest that Apple will help bring AR into the mainstream faster and better than anyone else.”
“The chronic problem with augmented reality has always been one of practicality. You could have the most basic forms of AR on your regular phone, as provided by apps like Layar, which has been around since 2009, but those have never been particularly compelling,” Savov writes. “Or you could have more sophisticated and appealing augmentations, as presented by Google’s Tango project, but you’d need a big fat phablet to lug around to make them happen. Apple’s difference is to combine the convenience of your daily phone with the appeal of advanced AR.”
👌 Measure distances with your iPhone. Just because you can. Clever little #ARKit app by @BalestraPatrick 🧙♂️ https://t.co/b2mXe2FS84 pic.twitter.com/pyoHp99Yts
— Made With ARKit (@madewithARKit) June 25, 2017
“Looking at this distance-measuring app, it seems so simple and obvious,” Savov writes. ” At WWDC earlier this month, Craig Federighi described ARKit as ‘the largest AR platform in the world,’ and he was right. Apple’s AR will immediately reach millions of people who already have the requisite hardware.”
🔥 BOOM 🔥 And just like that we have #ARKit measurement app number 2 https://t.co/cjfQMpHmx0 → by @laanlabs 🍒 pic.twitter.com/U8QKFjiMXs
— Made With ARKit (@madewithARKit) June 25, 2017
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: From personal computers to digital media players to tablets, Apple watches and works and then, in an instant, takes the lead and never looks back!
SEE ALSO:
IKEA’s forthcoming Augmented Reality furniture app powered by Apple’s ARKit – June 19, 2017
Apple’s single most important WWDC 2017 announcement: ARKit – June 11, 2017
Apple CEO Cook discusses philosophy behind HomePod, ARKit’s potential market impact – June 6, 2017
Overnight, Apple will own the world’s largest augmented reality platform – June 7, 2017
So should we expect more video games like Pokémon Go…and all exclusively for the iPhone? This I like!
That measuring thing is actually stunning. There’s clearly an awful lot of heavy lifting to end up with something that’s replacing a tape, but that’s the beauty. It’s so simple and actually something practical that people can use.
I guess it depends on how much accuracy you need. Maybe my vid didn’t display properly but that measuring tape ‘demo’ appeared to be off at least 0.25 inches at 47 inches.
Why hasn’t the US moved into the 20th century when practically the entire rest of the world is in the 21st century using metric measurement?
Google Glasses, Waymo, and Chromebook, all smoke and mirrors….
Smoke and mirrors can be quite useful if it excites investors. Point in fact, that a company can use whatever works to make the company valuable. The perception is that Apple is far behind most other companies when it comes to AR/VR, so Apple isn’t quite getting its message across. Apple’s biggest advantage will be on how many devices its ARKit will run on almost immediately. Whether that will help change Apple’s negative perception is anyone’s guess.
Good bye laser measuring devices in building construction?
If that measuring tape demo is as accurate at ARKit will be I’d stay with the laser measuring devices.
What’s an ‘inch’?
25.4 mm. An antiquated measurement unit based on several disparate sources and only fully standardized by the 20th century.
King David of Scotland decreed circa 1150 that an inch was equal to the width of a man’s thumb.
AngloSaxon custom was that one inch equals the length of 3 barleycorns. King Edward II passed a decree formalizing that in 1324.
After hundreds of years of imprecise customs, the British Standards Institution
in 1930 finally defined the inch as exactly 25.4 millimeters.
Thus imperial length measurement is merely an awkward translation from the world standard Metric system.
Yes, it is time to retire stupid antiquated Imperial measures once and for all.
Unfortunately you Brits and Yanks seem more interested in going your own way than in being efficient.
Excellent post on ARKit here:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4083926-augmented-reality-apples-revolutionary-offering
That’s a pretty good article, thanks for posting it. I viewed the generated virtual girl YouTube vid linked in the article and it shows a lot of what’s great about ARKit and some of the limitations. Due to possibly incorrectly judging distances she appears to grow and shrink in proportion. You can see this when the viewer moves around her and a park bench enters the scene. She appears significantly shorter than the start of the video.
Keep in mind this is V.1 of ARKit and published apps. Just wait until the refinements come out.
Also, you could say Pokemon Go was am important step. What if the developer shared all that collected data with Apple? What if you could say that such games are what made all this possible, by getting the tools out out to millions and millions of people in a matter of weeks and months…
I think we should consider, what if AI get’s this as a default feature? What if it’s added to weapon systems, guided bullets in an “AR” Gun?
Lot’s of considerations.
The next few years are gonna be exciting with each company leading in different areas of AR and trying to catch up with each other in the areas they are lagging.