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Charizard will look life-size with the 'Pokémon Go' AR+ update
The latest update for Pokémon Go doesn't add new monsters. Instead, it takes advantage of iOS 11's advanced augmented reality tech to give you a better look at them. "The new AR+ feature builds on the core AR gameplay in Pokémon Go and leverages Apple's ARKit framework to enhance the visuals and dynamics of catching Pokémon in the real world," a blog post says. Meaning, Pikachu and pals will now be the proper size based on where you find them. Getting closer or backing up will cause them to change in size and perspective from here on out assuming you have an iPhone 6s or newer.
Lego AR-Studio puts virtual dragons in your physical sets
After the costly failure of its toy-to-life video game Lego Dimensions, Lego is turning to augmented reality to mix real sets with virtual elements. The new Lego AR-Studio app for iOS taps into Apple's ARKit platform to add animations and audio-visuals to the company's physical toys. Hold your smartphone over select Lego City and Ninjago sets and you'll be able to summon fire-breathing dragons, trains, and firetrucks dousing flames with hoses. Plus, any special escapades can be captured using the app's built-in camera. Whereas it may not awaken your inner-child (leave that to Nintendo), Lego-mad tikes should get a real kick out of it.
'Dance with flARmingos' in a mixed reality mating ritual
Flamingos rule everything around her. Her clothes are covered in them. Her workspace is littered with representations of their spindly legs and hot-pink plumes. She's spent hours studying their migratory patterns, mating rituals and native environments. She's traveled the world speaking to conservationists and ornithologists to better understand them. She even adopted 20 of the winged icons to aid in her research and their preservation.
Apple may be working on an AR headset for 2020
Apple has been talking a lot about AR lately. ARKit allows developers to create augmented reality apps for iOS devices, and it's already resulted in some pretty interesting stuff. This is apparently just the first step, though. Bloomberg reports that Apple is developing an AR headset that will be ready by 2019 and ship to customers in 2020. The company is looking to create a device that will change the game as much as the iPhone did back in 2007.
AR navigation app promises better accuracy than GPS alone
You may have seen augmented reality navigation before, but the arrival of AR-native frameworks is making it considerable slicker and more accessible. Case in point: Blippar. Its just-launched AR City app for iOS uses Apple's ARKit to clearly outline where you have to walk, and highlights nearby points of interest based on what you can actually see. And more importantly, it promises to be more accurate than GPS alone. The app uses visual inertial odometry (that is, interpreting movement seen through the camera) to minimize distance errors and prevent you from turning on to a side street by mistake.
Amazon's AR shopping feature previews products in your home
Augmented reality shopping tends to be limited to furniture or other large objects, and that's a shame. Wouldn't you like to know how that slow cooker or speaker system looks in your house? Amazon thinks you do. It's launching an AR View feature inside its iOS shopping app that previews "thousands" of products in 3D, ranging from kitchen appliances to toys to electronics (naturally, this includes Amazon's devices). It's clearly something of a party trick, but it could come in handy if you're wondering whether or not that vase matches your decor.
NBA's first AR game lets you pop-a-shot with your iPhone
The NBA's already cranked up its virtual reality output, and now it's taking baby steps into augmented reality too. The league's new iPhone game lets you play virtual pop-a-shot outdoors, which is as straightforward as it sounds. Just download the "NBA AR" app, point your phone at a chosen spot, and start shooting hoops on a virtual backboard and court. You'll have to frantically flick your iPhone, though, as there's a 30-second time limit on each round. When you're done, you can share your high score on social media, iMessage, and email -- and check how you stack up on the in-game leaderboard. NBA AR is available for free right now on the App Store.
Augmented reality teddy bear teaches kids about being a doctor
Kids frequently don't need much more than their imagination to bring a teddy bear to life, but what if they had a little boost? That's what Seedling hopes to do with Parker. The teddy by itself is the same sort of fluffy companion you likely had as a child, but an augmented reality app for iOS turns the bear into something much more. If you want to play doctor, you can look at Parker's insides to cure a stomach bug or ease a sore throat. You can create magic forests and sea gardens using the AR camera. And importantly you're rewarded for being kind: the more you take care of Parker, the more the bear uses AR to 'transform' the world around you.
Edmunds uses AR to show how a new car will fit in your garage
As tempting as it may be to buy a massive SUV, there is such a thing as too big. The last thing you want is to find out that a car won't fit in your garage, or that you'll have no room to open the door when you park at work. But how do you gauge that fit without busting out the tape measure? Edmunds thinks it has the answer: it just added an augmented reality "Can it Fit?" feature to its car shopping app for iOS. If you're running iOS 11, you can use your iPhone or iPad to map your parking space and gauge whether or not your dream ride is small enough. You only get a rough outline of the car in question, but that's enough to tell whether you can spring for a minivan or have to 'settle' for a sedan.
View Strava workout maps in 3D thanks to Apple's ARKit
Strava has long been a popular choice for running and cycling enthusiasts to track and share their workouts. The service and app can be found on quite a few devices, including Apple Watch, Garmin fitness trackers and Peloton's stationary bikes for cycling classes. You can now view Strava data in augmented reality (AR), thanks to Fitness AR, an app by Adam Debreczeni and Eric Florenzano that takes your running, cycling and hiking workout data and puts it onto a 3D map that you can view with an iOS device.
Apple bans misleading apps on iOS
As soon as you get your shiny new iPhone 8, you'll probably want to download some apps. So Apple took the opportunity to update its developer app review guidelines to make sure the App Store is in tip top shape. According to 9to5 Mac, it's now officially cracking down on misleading apps. The App Store has already had policies against such apps already, but the recent update makes it more explicit. The ban is against apps "including content or services that it does not actually offer." As those fake antivirus apps don't actually work, they're definitely on this list. Apple has already removed a number of these apps from the App Store, but this new guideline makes the ban explicit so that they can't get on in the first place. In addition, the new guidelines also include clauses for ARKit and Face ID. Apple wants the ARKit apps you see in the App Store to be more than just one-note apps with single objects, adding that it needs to offer "rich and integrated augmented reality experiences." As for Face ID, Apple added that it must offer an alternate unlocking method for children under the age of 13. It'll also now be possible for apps to offer 100 percent of funds to be gifted from one person to another without using In-App Purchases, thus bypassing the need to give 30 percent of it to Apple. The caveat is that giving said money must be an optional choice. Last but not least, there is also a new clause that explicitly prohibits apps that "facilitate human trafficking and/or the exploitation of children." They've always been illegal anyway, but Apple is simply adding language to make it more explicit that it will take legal action if it finds such apps.
Apple's AR efforts will only work if the battery can keep up
All of Apple's new iPhones are ready for augmented reality. The iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X are designed with AR capabilities built-in, a lot like ASUS's ZenFone AR and other Google Tango-powered devices. AR is being billed as the medium of the future, allowing users to seamlessly blend the real world with fantastical creatures, sprawling battlefields and cosmic adventures -- or to just see if that Ikea Billy bookcase will actually work in their living rooms. The promises of AR are vast. On-stage today during its 10th anniversary iPhone event, Apple showed off a competitive multiplayer game called The Machines that superimposed a gritty sci-fi war zone over a blank table. On the iPhone 8, tanks and soldiers blasted lasers into buildings and enemies, and a spaceship was eventually engulfed by a massive explosion. It looked like the future of gaming. And it might be -- for 30 minutes at a time, at least.
Apple's new iPhones are designed for augmented reality
At WWDC earlier this year, Apple introduced ARKit, its take on an augmented reality platform. Since then, a whole slew of ARKit projects have cropped up, including exploded camera art, an A-ha style video, an IKEA furniture app and many more. Google followed up with its own ARKit competitor, ARCore, just a few weeks ago, thus lending credence to the burgeoning popularity of augmented reality apps on the phone. Now, at Apple iPhone's event, the company said that all of the new iPhones were designed from the ground up to be AR-ready as well.
IKEA's Place app for iOS previews furniture in your home
Now that Apple's augmented reality platform is nearly here, developers are ready to show off what it can do... and one of the first examples will be particularly handy if you're updating your living room. IKEA has unveiled IKEA Place, an iOS app that uses ARKit to preview how furniture will look at home. As hinted at back in June, the software is smart enough to not only show off furniture at the proper scale (98 percent accuracy, IKEA says), but with the right kind of lighting and shadows. You'll know if that couch is too large for your apartment, or whether or not that reading chair would be too gauche for the room. Naturally, you can share images to ask for your friends' advice and jump straight to the IKEA website to buy your selections.
ARKit artist transforms the world into a Cubist nightmare
Every new form of technology gets re-purposed for art and nobody is doing that better with augmented reality right now than educator and "code poetry" researcher Zach Lieberman. In a recent experiment called "exploded camera," he used Apple's augmented reality framework ARKit to map objects and textures in a room. "I kept thinking about ways of pushing it in different directions," he told Engadget. "The idea was that the image would look fine from one vantage point, but as you rotate the camera, you'd see the pieces floating in space."
Google unveils ARCore, its answer to Apple’s ARKit
A few months ago at WWDC, Apple unveiled ARKit, the company's first-ever attempt at an augmented reality platform. With it, developers could weave AR apps with relative ease, especially since any iOS 11 device would be compatible with it. Examples so far include a "Take On Me" style music video, a virtual pet game, a restaurant app that can display virtual food on a plate and many, many more. If that sounds pretty impressive to you, well, Google must've thought so too. That's because it's coming out with its very own augmented reality platform, and it's called ARCore.
Epic Games gives developers a taste of ARKit ahead of iOS 11
ARKit on iOS may blow up perhaps sooner than expected. That's because Epic Games have added experimental support for it to the latest version of Unreal Engine. The idea is to give developers an early look at the features before iOS 11 goes live later this fall.
'Take On Me' app turns your home into an '80s music video
A-ha's classic video for "Take On Me" was the result of painstaking effort -- it took 16 weeks to rotoscope the frames, creating that signature blend between the real and hand-drawn worlds. Now, however, you only need an iPhone to recreate the look yourself. Trixi Studios has shown off an augmented reality iOS app that produces the "Take On Me" look in your own home. The proof-of-concept software makes do with virtual versions of A-ha's Morten Harket and the pipe-wielding thugs, but its effect is more convincing than you might think.
Apple buys a company making eye-tracking glasses
Apple wasn't shy about its augmented reality plans at WWDC this year, and it's backing up those goals with yet another acquisition. MacRumors has learned that Apple recently bought SensoMotoric Instruments, a German company that makes eye-tracking glasses and platforms for both augmented and virtual reality. It's not discussing the terms of the deal or long-term plans (it only offered a stock confirmation to Axios), but the nature of SensoMotoric's tech could hint at what Apple wants.
ARKit is Apple's new reality-bending developer platform
Apple is diving into the world of augmented reality. ARKit is Apple's new developer platform, allowing programmers to build apps that blend the real world with digital objects. It's due out later this year in iOS 11. ARKit supports Unity, Unreal and SceneKit -- opening up the worlds of AR game development and moviemaking -- and it offers motion tracking, plus plane, lighting and scale estimations. Since ARKit will be available on iPads and iPhones, Apple CEO Tim Cook claims it will represent the world's largest AR platform. Compare it to Google Tango, for example: Google doesn't automatically include Tango on every Android device; instead, manufacturers must choose to include it.
