Gizmodo and Engadget recently blogged about Layar, one of the world’s first augmented reality browsers for cellphones. Developed by the Dutch company SPRXmobile, Layar is available for Android phones and will be available for iPhone 3GS as well.
Launching in the Netherlands this month, happy G1 users will be able to browse houses for sale, find bars, jobs, ATMs and healthcare centers with a simple flip of their phone and a quick spin to locate which direction they should be heading.
The GPS and compass (magnemometer) included within some 3G phones is starting to make all of this possible. I can’t wait until this kind of browsing becomes common place and large web services such as Amazon, Craigslist and Yelp are integrated as well. The combination of geolocation and relevant data display is so incredibly powerful.
Tags: Augmented Reality
I’m afraid that your statement about the “compass included in most 3G phones” is completely incorrect. To date there are several. Both available Android handset have one. The iPhone 3GS has one at well. The iPhone 3G does not. Therefore the Layar browser will NOT be making it’s way to the iPhone 3G unless somebody releases a third-party compass module for it. This is possible, given Apple’s opening of the accessory device API in the iPhone 3.0 SDK. That said, given the cost to upgrade to the 3Gs, and the degree to which Apple has made the magnetometer data easily accessible to third-party developers, I think that this would be a waste of an accessory manufacturer’s time. It is also unfair to call Layar the first AR browser, or even the first mainstream AR browser. That title arguably belongs to Wikitude, which has been available for Android for some time (and will presumably be ported to the iPhone platform given the presence of the compass in the iPhone 3GS… but again: ONLY the 3GS). Now, it depends on what you’re talking about browsing, of course, but I doubt that Wikitude is technically limited to geotagged Wikipedia entries, but Google, who funded it’s development, may have stipulated it not interface with any othe Google Earth layers, as Google is probably looking to deploy its own multi-purpose AR browser along the lines of Google Space or Google Reality or something. Whatever the case may be on the software side of things, it is a total misstatement (as of yet) to say that most 3G cellphones contain a magnetometer (compass).
Thanks for the info, I should have clarified 3GS. Corrections made above- thanks!