Wikitude, serial winners of the Augmented Planet’s Reader Choice Awards, the only AR awards voted for by you, real AR users, recently added natural feature tracking to their browser.

The natural feature tracking functionality now enables Wikitude users to scan and recognize images to retrieve additional information. The sample World featured in the client provides users with an opportunity to obtain the current exchange rate just by pointing their mobile devices camera at a bank note. Extremely useful if you happen to be traveling and wondering how much you are about to spend.

You can try it out for yourself by loading the Wikitude Browser (get it here) and pointing your phone at the image below.

For developers the recognition engine used by Wikitude is the powerful Vuforia engine from Qualcomm. Vuforia is one of the most powerful AR technologies available and is widely used for everything from simple AR experiences to complex 3D games. And I mean the good stuff, not the turn on camera and call it AR apps we constantly see.

The power of Vuforia however has be off-limits to all but C++ and Unity developers, but thanks to Wikitude and their ultra developer friendly ARchitect Engine, developers are able to write image recognition (and location aware) applications using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS. A huge plus if C++ is not in your skill set.

Check out Wikitude in action below, or catch-up with Wikitude at Augmented Planet 2012 on 30 – 31 October in London.

Wikitude in action

Wikitude was already the leading AR browser and now with the addition of natural feature tracking, they are in strong contention for scooping the Readers Choice Awards for a 4th consecutive year.

 

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5. Create your own World in the Wikitude World Competition