Augmented Planet » layar

Layar Vision Webinar and Win $$$

lester — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:59:33 +0000

You may have seen that Layar recently released Layar Vision as a beta for Android. What’s more, if you’re the creative type then you have the opportunity to win a share of $55,000. Layar if you don’t already know is one of the top augmented reality browsers that enables you to discover content around you by using your smartphones camera. Layar Vision takes the Layar AR client to the next level and adds image recognition in to the mix.

Layar have taken a different approach to image recognition, in addition to recognising images content creators are able to build experiences that enable users to interact with the 3D. For example, by scanning a restaurant menu you could create a solution that identified the restaurant and allowed the user to rate the food by clicking on the virtual buttons that appear in the camera view.

While Layar Vision is in beta they are offering content creators the opportunity to share in a prize fund of $55k, all you need to do is create content for the Layar client to enter the competition.

Don’t worry if your not a hard core developer, creating content for Layar is relatively easy. To help you get started, Layar are running a webinar tomorrow to talk about Layar Vision in more detail and how you can take part in the competition. The webinar takes place at 5pm CET (4 PM UK time) 1^st September.

You can sign up for the webinar by visiting here and get the Android beta from here.

Layar Vision in action
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsD0DuPT1GI

How Layar Vision works

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KFjlpnMhmw

Skaloop Layar, layer the easy way

lester — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 19:35:25 +0000

One of the amazing things about Layar is how the developer community have embraced the platform. It’s not the fact that they have over 1500 layers available, which is an achievement in itself, but what I find really amazing is the fact that developers are building a range of Layar enabled tools and services to make development even easier.

One of the latest tools is the Skaloop layer from Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Skaloop enables non developers to easily add content to Layar just by visiting the Skaloop.com website and adding your location via a simple web Google Maps interface. Once added, your POI can be found by using the equivalent Skaloop in the client. Simple, painless layer creation.

The layer is in Spanish, but it’s easy enough to figure out.

Attention developers
If you have developed an interesting Layar layer, Wikitude World or junaio Channel, be sure to let us know.

Audi A1 Layer Marketing Campaign

lester — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:35:16 +0000

It’s interesting how advertisers are using augmented reality as a marketing vehicle to promote their products and build engaging content for consumers. One of the latest examples is the Audi layer developed by AR Door and Russian advertising agency, Rodnaya Rech.

The campaign takes the form of a layer for the Layer augmented reality browser available for Android and iPhone owners. Users of the browser are encouraged to travel to special points around 5 Russian cities where they can take a picture of the new Audi A1 car and post their picture to Facebook. To encourage users to take the time to interact with the campaign, users are entered into a competition when they upload their picture to the Facebook group.

I think few people would be interested in travelling to see a billboard but augmented reality is a unique technology that creates the desire for users to want to travel to see an advertisement. Neat stuff, our Russian readers can join the Facebook group here.

Audi A1 Layer Campaign

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV-euU8hZGM

Real-time tracking and Layar 4?

lester — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:23:17 +0000

Yesterday I went to watch Brazil play in the world cup, on the train I was listening to a couple of guys trying to explain the offside rule which was amusing to listen to.

Interestingly I came across an augmented reality demo a few weeks back that showed real-time tracking of players in a football game to show when they strayed offside. I’m not sure how much of the video below is smoke and mirrors as the dates don’t quite make sense. The video was uploaded in December but there was no camera API or OS beta back then.

Assuming it is real, the most interesting bit is that the description says ‘based on Layar technology’. Is this a first look at features in Layar 4.0?

Real-time offside concept

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnmxT6x85p8

Layar 3 Back To The iPhone – worth the wait?

lester — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:19:23 +0000

Layer 3 makes a welcomed return to the iPhone, I was interested to see if the new version would be just a bug fix to fix the crashes or a update with the new 3D features. If you are a Layar fan you may want to go and get yourself a cup of coffee and skip today’s blog.

Firstly, the good news, it is the update with the 3D functionality rather than just a bug fix. There are some nice new 3D layers. Screenshots 3D is a fun layer where you can include a 3D image into a picture, if you have used Junaio then the idea is very similar. The problem is however is you can’t place the 3D object where you want it so you’ll have to arrange your subject around what Layar dictates. You’ll get four instances of the 3D image appear (north, south, east and west) in your compass and it’s up to you to position the subject to those points. I tried to take a picture of the Sphinx in my garden but the best I could get was the Sphinx hovering 20 feet above a car park. When you do have your subject lined up the next problem is tying to figure out how you take the picture, so far the only way I have found is to take a screenshot which means you’ll get the Layar UI obscuring your picture, probably not what you wanted.

On several tests with the Catch Of The Day layer all the fish appeared clumped together (see screenshot) rather than in separate locations. I also had giant fish appear that were so huge only part of them appeared on the screen. I’m pretty sure neither of these things were meant to happen.

Leading on to the UI, it’s very inconsistent. There is a 2 degrees icon which sometimes when pressed appears to tilt the screen by a few degrees, other times it doesn’t really do anything. I can’t really get my head around that feature. There is also (I’m assuming) a hide POI icon which sometimes causes the POIs drop off the screen and hide and other time just drop a few degrees but stay on the screen. I think the idea is to show distance and scale but the idea doesn’t quite work.

I didn’t test all the layers but, Pubs Galore found my local pub which was good, but the UK Post Box Finder which I thought would be useful failed to find anything despite the fact that I can see a post box from my window. I have said before that Layar are doing a great job getting developers to build layers, some of them however will leave you scratching your head as to why. Take Urban Farm for example, load it and you’ll see icons of animals which do not represent the locations of where they can been seen, selecting the icon give you useful information like ‘Cow’, ‘Turkey’ or ‘Chicken’. Layers like that make me question the quality of the other layers, I think when time permits I will look though the list to see what the quality is like for all 370 layers. On the subject of useful, the Tube Stations layer has been extended to show you the live departure board which is really cool. The integration with the live departure board could have been better than just taking you to TFL’s website, but any ray of sunshine will do.

I was surprised that since the previous Layar was pulled from the appstore due to crashes, I suffered 4 random crashes when testing the application this morning, nothing reproducible just click an icon and boom, app gone. Sadly I still have to complain about the fact that Layar still haven’t caught on to the fact that not everyone in uses KMs.

Having written this I feel like I am too negative, perhaps I got out of bed the wrong side this morning, but Layar and Wikitude are like the Microsoft and Apple of the augmented reality browser world and as such everything they do you expect to be ground breaking. I had such high hopes for Layar 3 but I don’t feel that it’s a step forward from the previous version. The 3D functionality is still buggy and the UI confusing.

Download Layar from here:

It will be it be interesting to hear what you guys think. Love it or hate it?

Layar The First Augmented Reality AppStore

lester — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:38:18 +0000

I’m working with several companies who have augmented reality platforms and are looking to make money by allowing 3rd party developers to build content using their tools and services. Layar however have struck the first blow in becoming the first augmented reality appstore.

At Mobile World Congress yesterday, Layar announced that from mid March developers will have the option to produce either free or paid layers. These layers will be will be distributed via the Layar application so developers will be able to take advantage of Layar’s existing user base (around 1 million users) rather than having to market a new application to new users.

Make money building layers

Consider you want to build a World Cup augmented reality application and charge $.99 for it, do you :

A) – hire a developer, spend a few months building something, go through the Apple approval process, then spend months trying to market you application
b) - develop it as a Layer, have access to all of Layar’s customers

Unless you are looking for a complete bespoke solution I think most people will be in B-land. As a side effect, allowing developers to make money from their work should bring about a whole new generation of quality content as users will demand more than find me a bar type apps.

It’s an ambitious project, having personal experience of putting together an application store, dealing with tax issue, customer complaints, refunds and payments it is a messy business.

Layar Now In 3D

lester — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:05:02 +0000

Layar 3.0 was released yesterday to the Android Marketplace. I don’t have a Google Android device so my blog is based on the information I have pieced together rather than a physical test. The good news however is Augmented Planet is expanding and we’ll soon be joined by a former colleague of mine, Nitin Samani who is going to be our Android correspondent.

The big change with 3.0 is the 3D engine. Developers can now build rich 3D content to make your augmented reality viewing even better. Lets’ imagine you are on holiday in London and you are a Beatles fan. If you already use an augmented reality browser, chances are there is a tourist attraction database where you’d be able to find out find where The Beatles played. As you walk around London you could use your augmented reality browser to find Beatles related POI’s and you’ll get useful information like directions and a link to a website where you can read more, or using Layar 3.0 you could take The Beatles Tour.

The Beatles Tour developed by a London based company and fellow augmented reality blogger is one of the most exciting launch layers available. Start the tour, and you are guided to the first location where you have a unique picture opportunity with Ringo, Paul, John and George on the famous zebra crossing in Abbey Road. As soon as you’re done, the tour guide directs you to the next location and photo opportunity. All in all the tour has 42 locations for you to visit.

Tours sound like a great way to engage users, thinking out loud you could create a tour and generate revenue by having restaurants sign up to be part of the tour. If you were taking The Jack The Ripper Tour, after 28 stops you could be directed to stop off for a bite to eat. How much would a restaurant pay to be included?

At the moment there are 6 layer’s available (list here) but there are lots more planned. I’m looking forward to the iPhone version so I can run a proper test.

Layar v3.0 can now be downloaded free of charge from the Android Market and is available for all Android 1.5 and 1.6 devices. Layar will release a compatible version for the Droid as soon as possible. Layar have almost finished testing for Android 2.0, and good news for iPhone owners, a version for the iPhone 3GS is to follow as soon as Apples approves

AR Browsers Head To Head – Test 2

lester — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:44:57 +0000

Whereas part 1 of the head to head challenge focused on finding food, part 2 of the augmented reality browser head to head challenge focuses on using the browsers to find more information about your surroundings.

The scenario is you are travelling and you see something of interest, can an augmented reality browser tell you what it is?

About the test
The test took place in London along the River Thames. I tested 3 augmented reality applications:

Wikitude’s Qype and Wikipedia search
Layar’s Wikipedia and the Unlike Global Guide layer from Unlike Media Limited
Robotvision’s default Wikipedia search

With each test I switched to the relevant map mode to double check my results.

The test begins at London bridge, looking along the river I can see HMS Belfast (an ex-Royal Navy Town-class cruiser) and just behind it Tower Bridge.

Layar gets off to a bad start as neither of the layers find any of the two reference landmarks, switching to the map view confirms that neither of the landmarks are found. Using the Wikitude Wikipedia search we draw a blank on both the landmarks, but the Wikitude Qype search does find HMS Belfast. Robotvision uses the Wikipedia database and it fails to find any of the landmarks.

HMS Belfast is a well known London landmark visited by thousands of tourists each year and Tower Bridge is a symbol of London so I was really surprised that it wasn’t found. The browsers had no problem with the other bridges along the Thames even the insignificant ones.

From left to right, Layar, Robotvision, Wikitude, Layar mapview

As I worked my way down the Thames I came across the London Dungeons so thought I would stop and do a quick test. Both the Layar layers along with the Wikitude Wikipedia search found the dungeon. But both Wikitude Qype and Robotvision missed the landmark.

Left to right, the Layar (Wikitude) Layar (Unlike) Wikitude, Robotvision

Not far past the dungeons is the Golden Hinde, a ship captained by Sir Frances Drake. It wasn’t going to be part of my test but since I was standing in front of it, just like a tourist I thought I would take the chance to find out more. The problem here is there is not a lot of space so you are literally on top of the ship. GPS is accurate to something like 50 meters so being so close to the subject actually didn’t help. My initial tests showed that none of the browsers found the Golden Hinde but to be sure I switched to map mode and looked at the POIs on the map.

Once in map mode only Layar and the Wikipedia layer found the object. In the photo you’ll see that the accuracy Layar is reporting is 1.5km (about a mile to the rest of us), so the marker appears on the extreme left, almost with the ship out of view. I put this down to the fact that it’s a really closed in area with lots of buildings.

Left to right. Wikitude, Layar (Unlike). Layar (Wikipedia) look how far to the right we had to move the camera

There are several other tourist attractions here, Southwark Cathedral (the oldest cathedral in London) and Clink Prison which dates back to the 12th century. Only Robotvision and Layar (Wikipedia) found these landmarks.

A short walk from the Golden Hinde you can see St Paul’s Cathedral on the other side of the Thames. Layar and both the Wikipedia and Unlike layers failed to find the cathedral (confirmed via the map view) as did Wikitude (Wikipedia) but Wikitude Qype and Robotvision had no problem finding the landmark.

Robotvision and Wikitude hit the target. Layar and map view no result

The London Eye is probably London best know tourist attraction, so it was a good sign that all the browsers had no problem finding the landmark. What helped here was I was on the other side of the river with a good distance between me and the target so GPS accuracy wasn’t so much of an issue. Actually this was one of the best tests because it really was a case of point the camera and the visual marker would come into view very near the object.

Full house all the browsers find the mark

The last test was the Houses of Parliament. Layar (Wikipedia) had no problem with finding the target as did Robotvision. Wikitude (Wikipedia) failed to find the target, but after refusing to give up with Wikitude (Qype) I did manage to find it. The location is slightly wrong so it didn’t appear when I pointed in the correct location. The only interesting thing Unlike found was Indigo02 and I have no idea what that is.

Robot and Layar, maps show the 2 different locations for the POI

Before we move on to the results here are some of my experiences with the various apps.

Both Layar and Wikitude drove me crazy with having to work in Kilometres, I know I mentioned it before but it is really annoying not to be able to switch into a localised unit of measurement particularly when trying to judge objects over large distances.

Every time you open Wikitude you have to reset the distance or it defaults to a range of 67.69 km for Wikipedia and 11.41 km for Qype. Wikitude also crashed every time I changed the POI database so I would have to restart the app and then reset the distance. That got annoying pretty quickly with all the tests I was doing.

I like the fact that in Wikitude you can select multiple databases, in real life you are probably going to have your defaults selected so will be less likely to fiddle like I did. With Layar you can only use one POI at a time and given the differences between the Unlike and Wikipedia databases you are never really sure if you are missing anything.

Robotvision was kind of a surprise, it used miles which was good but again every time you opened the app the distance reset to 3 miles (I guess the distance is somewhat reasonable). Robotvision was easy to use as there was no switching between databases, you have the choice of Twitter, Bing, Flickr and Wikipedia. Robotvision is actually a pretty good augmented reality application and deserves far more recognition that it receives. It easily competes with the big boys so well done to the developers.

What’s interesting however is the differences between the Wikipedia searches. For Layar the database that performs the best is the Wikipedia search, for Wikitude it’s the Qype search. I think it’s an interesting difference and deserves further investigation.

The scores then, in this head to head challenge each browser was asked to find 7 well know London landmarks so we’ll award 1 point for each landmark found.

1st place Wikitude with 5 points
2nd place Layar with 4 points
3rd place Robotvision 3 points

Can you use an augmented reality browser to find out information about your surroundings? The answer is yes.

A couple of tips:
Generally it’s a lot easier to have some distance between you and the subject to combat the GPS accuracy. If you are too close you may have to pan around to find the object. Secondly it’s sometimes easier to find the object on the map view first, that way when you switch the camera view it’s selected and saves you searching around.

Augmented Planet Event Wrap Up

lester — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:37:09 +0000

Good morning, firstly thanks to everyone who attended the Augmented Planet meet-up yesterday. I hope you had a good time and it was worth while. There was around 75 people who made the event so lots of interest in the technology. Feedback from everyone I spoke with was extremely positive, it’s something that you’d like us to do again. A few people offered to donate a venue for next time which will be fantastic, we’ll try to get a beer sponsor as well. The good news is we are looking at planning another event for April so we hope to see you again.

Thanks of course to Nitin Samani, John Wyer for helping out and of course our guest speakers Myles Peyton, James Alliban and Chris O’Shea. You’ll never know the stress me and Nitin went through until John turned up with his laptop.

If you didn’t manage to write down all the demos that I showed this is the list with links to a YouTube demo.

Hyperlinking demos
RedLaser (barcode scanner)
Bableshot (language translator)
SnapTell (product recognition)
CubeCheater (solve the Rubix Cube)
GetFugal (logo recognition)

Marker demos (links to try the demos)
Lost Valentinos (the band demo)
Twitter business cards
GE SmartGrid

Mobile demos
Layar
Wikitude
Junaio

Markerless demos
I couldn’t install the codex for this one, but this is the mobile face recognition demo I was planning on showing.
TAT
Links to speakers websites
James Alliban
Myles Peyton
Chris O’Shea

Both Nitin and John where taking photos, once they send them over I’ll put them in to Flickr and send out the link.

Next up for me, I am attending the Vodafone AppStar event tomorrow. If you are a developer and building Widgets then they have a few places left at this free event. You can find out more and register here appstaruk.eventbrite.com.

Augmented Reality Browsers Head To Head Part 1

lester — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:16:57 +0000

I thought it was time to do an augmented reality browser head to head and put a few of the current applications through their paces to see which one comes out on top.

Today’s test is – Finding places to eat
It should be a simple task, you’re out and about and in the mood for a nice Indian curry, but where to eat? My benchmark is two Indian resturants that are close to my house. Sharod and Birashwamys. I use these becuase I know their physical locations so any errors will be easy to spot.

Layar
Using Layar local search I found 8 local Indian restaurants and I was pleased to see that the two reference restaurants were among the results and placed in the correct location. Layar gives the option to get directions from my current location, the phone number, the image of the restaurant and a few other useful bits. Since Layar allows you to limit the results to a search range I limited my results to a range of 2km. Sadly neither me or the other 60+ million people in the UK use kilometres and there is no option to change the unit of measurement to miles which is really annoying. Out of all the applications tested Layar local search performed the best with the least amount of data errors, of the 8 restaurants shown I only spotted 2 that were misplaced in residential areas.

The point of Layar however is the ability for 3rd parties to publish their own layers, so how did they compare? The Qype meets Layar layer produced different results and generally wasn’t a good experience. Apart from the map deciding it’s own scale and resetting itself every time I made a change it suffered from missing data. Our reference restaurant Birashwamys doesn’t show in the Qype layer and there are other data errors with my local pub showing up 3 streets away from it’s correct location. The Yelp layer is just as bad missing lots of data including both our reference restaurants.

Wikitude
Although Wikitude uses the Qype database it doesn’t have an option to find restaurants so was not useful in finding food.

RobotVision
RobotVision for the iPhone has search that uses Bing and searching for the keyword ‘Indian’ finds both our reference restaurants. The app however lists JPF Drum Tuition and Olga Piano Tuition as local Indian restaurants as well as plotting restaurants in residential streets.

The augmented reality view has a number of problems, for starters there is no compass to tell you where things are making it really hard to find anything. The other problem is if places are close together then its impossible to select all but the front option, then you’ll need to hit the next icon to move behind and select each one in turn. I’m sure they could have arranged a better layout.

Yelp
Repeating the same test we find that Birashwamys has relocated up the street and Sharod has vanished from the map completely. Engaging the AR function aka Monocle ignores your search results and limits your options to Restaurants, Bars and Everything. Oddly in the AR view Birashwamys also vanishes and despite being listed and tagged as Indian restaurant it’s not shown. The app has the usual mix of features to get hold of the reviews, phone numbers etc. One last comment about the AR view is it’s so unresponsive, items in the view sit around regardless of where you point the camera then gradually slide away. Yelp is not without it’s mapping errors, further afield from my home location I noticed missplaced pubs, Chinese resturants and even a few resturants placed on the motoway.

UrbanSpoon
UrbanSpoon surprisingly for an application that is dedicated to eating and finding restaurants performed the worst with the most mapping errors. Brashwamy’s is completely missing despite having submitted it via the applications add a restaurant function several weeks back. Sharod is shown but also located in completely the wrong location. There are also errors between the views, for example looking at the search results it shows just Indian restaurants, switching to the map mode we see the the inclusion of ‘The Chubby Panda’ and ‘Old China’ which are very odd names for Indian restaurants. Switching to the AR mode or Scope as its called also ignores my search and shows it’s own set of restaurants. UrbanSpoon gives me the feeling that it’s three independent applicants all reading different data.

I don’t have a lot of good things to say about the accuracy of UrbanSpoon, aside from the problems above five new restaurants have appeared in residential areas so I can only imagine UrbanSpoon are using the registered business addresses rather than the location of the actual restaurant.

Putting the application in to AR mode has a useful feature where the restaurants are represented by a bubble with the bubble colour reflecting the customer feedback. Clicking the bubble you can get the phone number, vote or add a menu with your camera. It’s just a shame that the data is so inaccurate that you’ll never be able to find the restaurant to see if it lives up to its hype.

Map results

Summary test 1

This test focused on data accuracy and its surprising how all the applications either misplaced or invented restaurants. You can live with the GPS not being accurate but having the POIs in the right location to begin with is essential.

Layar local search provided the best results but using the other layers the results were not so good. Layar coming out on top was a surprise, I thought a company who’s core business is restaurant reviews would have been top dog, instead the data for UrbanSpoon was the least accurate and a big disappointment.

Scores

Layar 7/10
RobotVision 4/10
UrbanSpoon 0/10
Yelp 2/10

Layar and Junaio News Catch-up

lester — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:19:23 +0000

Sorry for the silence, I have been ill for the last few days with a touch of flu.

Augmented Planet turned 6 months old this week. Initially when I started the blog the first few days we had a readership of around 5 people. I remember the day traffic went through the roof and reached 10, I thought wow 10 readers. We have come a long way since then and are only just a tad short of 10,000 readers a month which just goes to show how much the excitement around augmented reality has grown. Speaking of growing, all the tickets for the Augmented Planet event on the 11th November (London) have almost gone. I need to speak to the venue to see if they are happy for us to have more people in the space but best register now if you are interested.

During the week I managed to get to the Symbian Exchange and Exposition event, or SEE09 as it’s now called. At the show the augmented reality browser heavy weight Layar announced that they plan to release their browser on the Symbian platform next year, March if I remember correctly.

VentureBeat have an interesting write up about Layar for Symbian which you can read here.

Layar’s van der Klein said that moving to Nokia-Symbian was one of the toughest decisions his company has yet to make. There are still questions about whether Nokia users are accessing applications to the extent they are on other smart phones. Android and the iPhone are like two full-speed trains, he said, while Symbian’s train is still stalled “in a gutter.” (source VentureBeat)

I’d say that’s a bit harsh since Symbian are not responsible for the appstores or lack thereof on Symbian OS. The OEMs and Operator need to take a slice of that blame.

Metaio are launching their new augmented reality browser for the iPhone imminently. It was due Tuesday next week but the website now says coming soon so one wonders if it’s caught in that famous iTunes publishing queue.

Random Junaio screen shots

I have to admit I’m looking forward to Junaio. I didn’t like the first Junaio video that Metaio released, it was too arty for my liking, but they have since released a real teaser video that gives us a good look at the product. I must say it looks intriguing. What’s caught my attention is the ability to put animation into the picture. Take a look at the dinosaur at the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s definitely different. It has similar features to their iLiving product currently in the iPhone store and is an augmented reality browser to boot.

The new Junaio teaser

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_fYcdH2nMY

Finally I sent my brother-in-law who is a London Taxi driver, out on a field trip to test Wikitude and Layar around London to see what gets the best verdict from average Joe. Let’s say his results are interesting but we’ll leave that till next week when we’ll also launch the first Augmented Planet competition to win a Chumby. More on that very soon.

Win me!

Layar For The iPhone Is Here

lester — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:01:16 +0000

Yesterday saw one of the augmented reality browsers heavy weights finally come to the iPhone. I first got to play with Layar a few months back on a friends HTC Hero, he came to the pub to tell me about his fantastic new phone, I was just waiting for him to hand it over so I could install Layar and give it a go.

Layar if you don’t know is billed as the worlds first augmented reality browser (I’m sure the Wikitude guys would contest that). With Layar you can search for interesting things around you, eg restaurants and see their relative position in the camera view. As you move the camera around the list of restaurants will change to reflect what is in front of you. With Layar you can search for just about anything and once you find what you are looking for, clicking it will either give you more info eg address, telephone number, or directions on how to get there.

One of the big reasons for getting Layar is the ability to add specialist points of interest or layers as they are called, and anyone can create a layer and publish it for other Layar users to use. As of today there are 155 layers listed on the Layarwebsite with around 30 available for use in the UK. Layar will filter irrelevant country content so it wont be available. Unless you are in Japan you probably won’t want to know about real estate for sale in Kobe, so the filtering works really well. Once you have found layers that you like you can add them to your favorites so they are always there and in easy reach. New layers will appear in the application automatically in either the popular or featured section so be sure to look in their often.

The initial list of 3rd party layers available in the UK is pretty varied covering tube stations, hotels, theaters, twitters, wikipedia and more. And of course don’t forget with the Layar local search you can find anything so the posibilities are endless. There are some layers that I would still like to see, Pubs and ATMs would be a great addition, but the one that intrigues me the most is the Schiphol flights layer for flights around Amsterdam. I maybe reading to much into that one but being able to point my iPhone at a plane and know that is an A320 from New York at 20,000 ft landing in London would be the coolest thing ever. The developer is Dutch but I did manage to dig around and find another of their projects which shows live flight information around Amsterdam, their Layar plugin is based on this project: http://casper.frontier.nl

Layar has been a longtime coming to the iPhone and now it’s here it was definitely worth the wait. Layar has certainly been one of the most eagerly anticipated augmented reality applications for sometime and so far the feedback in the appstore has been positive, but I hear one or two grumblings about accuracy. My usage has been pretty good, it’s not spot on but it’s not miles out either. The application shows you the accuracy to expect at all times so either some people are missing the accuracy indicator or have too high expectations. Layar is well worth installing and could be the only augmented reality app you’ll ever need.

Quiet Thursday augmented reality update

lester — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:05:41 +0000

Layar is global

Sorry no blog for the last 2 days. There hasn’t been that much news around and I have been trying to get some DIY done but suffering from motivational issues.

There was an interesting article posted up on venturebeat yesterday discussing which of the augmented reality start-ups are most ready for market and will survive. It’s worth a read (full article).

Layar released a new video to annouce they are now global. As next week is the picnic in the park in Amsterdam expect more news to come out of the Layar guys as I’m sure we’ll see some annoucements come out of the event.

Layar is global video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkPHDMVxKn0

Nokia released an augmented reality vision video last week and it hasn’t gone down too well. You can read the general slating they received here. It’s an interesting video but really only focus on how augmented reality will enable you to interact with your phone, eg read/send SMS messages. It’s a scary concept to think that people will be driving down the road sending SMS with their eyes.

Nokia’s augmented reality vision

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGwvZWyLiBU

A quick update on the augmented reality event for London, it’s still in process, we are just looking for a suitable venue. It would be nice to hold it at a companies office who are involved with augmented reality so we are hunting down sponsors in the London area. My team of crack event people are out there chasing people. We’ll go for plan B if we have no luck in the next few days. Either way we are aiming to announce the date/venue next week.