For today’s ultimate guide we’ll focus on augmented reality browsers. The holder of the best augmented reality browser for 2009 is of course Wikitude which was voted no.1 in the Augmented Planet Readers Choice Awards, so who should we be looking out for in 2010?

WhereMark
WhereMark is a relatively new arrival but has already caught the eye.
Plus points, great UI, innovative pinch and stretch zoom, search across multiple categories. Negative points, difficult to see what category is selected, switches between portrait and landscape.

Verdict well worth installing

WhereMark iPhone Augmented Reality Browser

Yell Labs

Another new entry, visually looks fantastic. I really love the lock-on effect where the targeting targeting reticle locks on to a POI. The search criteria is also presented nicely and it’s easy to perform a one click search.

Yell AR (UK ONLY)

While it looks great it is not without problems. The initial search range is set ridiculously low and it took an accident before I figured out that there is a hidden menu on the right hand side of the screen that controls range.

Data accuracy, I know I moan about a lot about this, but pressing the Indian restaurants button reveals 10 matches. 6 of which are Chinese restaurants, 1 is a grill, 2 are Indian restaurants, and one KFC. If you are going to go to the effort of having dedicated search buttons the least you could do is ensure that the data is going to be correct.

While Yell looks good, as you use it you’ll see that the application feels empty. There is no map for example so navigation is difficult and once you have your POI selected very little information is given, in my tests nothing more than the ability to place a phone call was shown.

Verdict, disappointing from Yell you would expect better accuracy, but worth installing and showing your friends the cool lock-on feature.

Zagat To Go
This is another visually stunning app, the ability to scroll A La Street View through the results is pretty cool. Zagat also has a review system so you’ll know if the restaurant you are visiting is any good.  It’s difficult to find a downside to this app other than the price ($9.99), but 89 reviews out of 107 give the application 4 stars or above so they must be doing something right.

Verdict, cool app if you are looking for a high quality application to find places to eat and you are not on a budget then well worth getting.

Zagat To Go

ARgo
Another new browser launched in early February. Search is performed by dedicated buttons which orientate themselves to either portrait or landscape depending on how you hold your device. Searching for Indian restaurants returns a good set of results, all of which actually look like they are Indian restaurants (no KFCs).  As you can search POIs from different categories the compass has a nice touch where each POI is identified by a different colour.

The downside, the POIs in the camera window were pretty difficult to select. POIs were often place on top of each other making it impossible to select those that were further way. There is also no map so no navigation.

Verdict, not really tested in anger. Needs work on selecting POIs

Acrossair multifunctional browser

Acrossair
The Acrossair browser feels like it’s a collection of different AR applications rather than a single app. You can find the nearest tweets, wiki’s, search for restaurants or if you’re in a social the mood you can share your location with your buddies via facebook, twitter, or email. There is even an option to find where you left your car.

There is a good collection of functionality here but it feels like a bit of a jumble. With applications, presentation is often everything. If a user doesn’t like the look and feel they wont come back no matter how good the app is. Here the developers have gone for just putting everything into a list and it feels like it has just be thrown together, it really doesn’t do it any justice.

Verdict, worth installing just for the car locator application

Other world browsers.

• Robotvision
• Bionic Eye
• Nearest Places
• Worksnug

Augmented Reality Browsers

And The Rest

In Rouli’s (ARTimes.net) predictions for 2010 I predicted that everyone would have augmented reality browser functionality by the end of the year, so expect this list to grow. In the meantime if you are looking for even more browsers, try these.

• iNeedCoffee
• A Cafe View
• BUL
• Spot Crime – see where crimes are taking place around you. (US only I believe)
• Stella Artois
• Urban spoon
• Nearest Wiki
• Cyclopedia
• buUuk
• Nearby Navigator
• Ristoranti d’Italia del Gambero Rosso
• Wiki(Ar)
• Taiwan Food AR
• Compass Camera
• A Nearby View
• Huckleberry
• Beijing Discovery AR

Random browsers, find bars, find crime. It's all good

Related posts:

1. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality Part I
2. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality Part II
3. Augmented Reality Browsers Head To Head Part 1

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.

Related posts:

1. Augmented Reality Browsers Head To Head Part 1
2. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality – Part III Browsers
3. Wikitude For The iPhone – First Look

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

Related posts:

1. AR Browsers Head To Head – Test 2
2. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality – Part III Browsers
3. UrbanSpoon Goes AR

robotvision

Robotvision is an application for the iPhone that uses the Bing search engine to augment your searches on the world around you. You get the usual mix of POI such as restaurants and bars so you’ll always know where they are, robotvision will also show you the nearest tweets so you’ll be able to see who is tweeting around you as well as Flickr integration to see pictures in your local vicinity that have been geotagged. Other than Flickr there is nothing we haven’t seen here before.

But robotvision does have some nice features, for example you have the augmented reality view where information is placed in the camera view which updates as you move around, but when you lay the iPhone flat it switches into an overhead map view so you can see the POIs in a traditional map format. For your chosen POIs robotvision is also able to present you with user reviews so you’ll know if it’s worth visiting, and if you decided that it is then it’s only one click to get driving instructions to the destination.

Robotvision is not available until sometime later this month but will have the following features:

• Type in anything with Open-ended Search
• Get a birds-eye view from Google Maps by looking down
• Quickly select from popular location categories like Coffee Shops and Tourist Attractions
• Discover rich, social content like Flickr and Twitter, with more on the way!
• Easily jump to more info on Bing like restaurant reviews, call a location or get driving directions
• Touch to select and navigate through items around you
• Set your range with an Adjustable Radius

Robotvision in action

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWC9gax7SCA

With the number of augmented reality software applications providing local information increasing, it’s rapidly becoming a packed market space. So the question is which are the good ones? It would be interesting to hear what you favourite local search application is.

Related posts:

1. Ultimate Guide To iPhone Augmented Reality – Part III Browsers
2. AR Browsers Head To Head – Test 2
3. Tiger Beer for the iPhone