I will briefly talk about Apple’s ARKit, considered the latest phase of virtual reality.
Apple introduced the augmented reality program they worked on for some time at the WWDC. Craig Federighi, Apple’s VP of Software Engineering at the conference, declared with the augmented reality developer kit (ARKit), developers can do many things from simple calculators to more complex visual shows on the iPhone and iPad. As an example, developers can “put coffee cups on the table” — these applications were already available — but now you can add the shadow of the cup and a book next to the cup. Voila!
We all know the Pokemon Go phenomenon. You can encounter a Pokemon while walking in your way and catch it by throwing a Pokeball. The tricky part is, now Pokemon may appear bigger or smaller, depending on your actual distance from its spawn point. This has never been applied to the previous version of the technology available. You can actually walk around, or towards, or away from Pokemon fundamentally changing the entire encounter mechanic. A player now can approach from a different angle and distance to throw the poke-ball the Pokemon. Sounds cool!
IKEA is another example. Before you decide to buy furniture, you can actually see its exact size and shape in your room. And questions of how much place it covers in your home/office or whether it fits will be a dilemma of the past!
Last but not the least example is real-time car catalogs (Audi and Mercedes are rumored to have plans already). Imagine looking at your car’s dashboard from your phone screen and you will instantly get information about that magic button. Or you are looking inside the hood to see which part and how to intervene when you want to add some oil — or some basics like how to open the hood if you’re a car rookie. In addition, when you want an extra feature for your car (sunroof, seat, steering wheel cover, navigation device, etc.) you can see how this fits. Are you also thinking of real-time ordering?
It is possible to say ARKit as the latest phase of virtual reality and Apple trusts on developers’ imagination. ARKit is free and generated great interest. Competition with ARKit through the new applications is now open and I think we will see them on the market soon.
One technical note: ARKit also supports Unity, Unreal Engine, and SceneKit, as well as Xcode application templates.
We look forward to working on your augmented reality idea. 🙂
