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

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

Related posts:

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