Wouldn't it be cool if you see pictures or play games in 3-dimension like the real thing? Wouldn't it be cooler if you can walk through the streets of New York, Paris, or London without even going there? Or wouldn't it be much cooler if you can see what you or your friends would look otherwise, like in the future?
That "would-be" will now become a "soon-be" with the use of your iPhone and iPad gadgets as Apple has joined the bandwagon of adopting augmented reality with its recent acquisition of Metaio, a German augmented-reality software company. Patently Apple says that the software company is credited for producing the Thermal Touch, the augmented reality interface for wearables.
Augmented reality allows people to visualize digital images in 3 dimensional real life models or scenes in their actual size and environment in one's phone or tablet. This helps to immerse us more into virtual reality.
Metaio is primarily tasked to create the necessary trappings in Apple products for other app developers to fabricate these augmented reality experiences within their own apps.
To give you a glimpse of how augmented reality can level up your apple experience, one can, for instance, explore a place like New York, a landmark like the Eiffel tower, or a building like a museum and allow one to move around that area as if one is actually in that place. Another potential application of augmented reality is it can allow a person to create a would-be image of a place if for instance some circumstantial changes have been made like changing the colours of the wall or rearranging the furniture among others. Imedicalapps reports that it can also be used to teach medicine. Augmented reality can be used for visualizing a range of "what ifs" of alternate scenarios so to speak, that's why its potential use is immense.
While augmented reality may not be new to Google, Facebook, or Microsoft, this move of Apple to make it available to mobile devices is nevertheless revolutionary because it will in turn encourage more augmented reality software developments that are more accessible to more people.
