Augmented reality (wikipedia) has, for the most part, been relegated to the world of academics and researchers, resulting in interesting (but dubiously practical) demos like this or this funny video of a dog playing augmented reality soccer. Wee!
This week Google made 2 separate announcements that, when looked at together, lay out an almost too obvious path to realizing augmented reality at a consumer (and dare I say, practical) level.
The consensus showstopper at Google’s Android event this week was the built-in compass functionality that enables the phone to act as a lens on Google’s street view. Be sure to check out the story and the video here to see what I mean. It’s one of those things you have to see in action, spatially, to really get it.
Also this week, Google added an admittedly tantalizing (for those that have a soft spot for all things geo-locative) “More…” button to Google Maps with two choices: Photos and Wikipedia entries. Toggling these on and off will overlay user-uploaded photos and wikipedia entries that are tagged with location data on the map you’re looking at. Also, these two choices are clearly only the beginning.
So… after you see both of these in action, it’s really easy to imagine how Android will allow you to orient yourself with the compass on a street view of a map and give you those same toggles to look at buildings/spaces/etc. around you and see photos that people have taken in that place or historical information about the neighborhood.
Really, really cool, eh?
ps: On a side note, I’m not at all enthused by the fact that, for the photos, Google’s asking you to use yet another piece of software, Panoramio (I already don’t think I know anyone who uses Picasa), so I don’t feel compelled to contribute until they open it up a bit.
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