iPhone App: Layar

As promised, this week’s iPhone app review will be about an augmented reality app. Red, in his previous post, explained the concept and euphorically explained the power behind it and the various possibilities it would create. Well I spent the week testing out a few apps, and I now know where his enthusiasm came from. Augmented reality is a brilliant idea, so simple and yet so potentially useful that you really need to see the big picture before you can start comprehending the magnitude of its awesomeness.

Remember when GPS technology started to make its way through the affordable electronics market? Remember the buzz it created in the auto and cellphone industry? I was lucky enough to possess one of the early Garmin models (GPS 76) and even though it was ridiculously obsolete for nowadays’ standards, I was totally in love with it. I took it with me during my trips, and the low-res monochrome display would display waypoints (no lines!) and data like heading, speed altitude etc… I distinctly remember being in a Taxi in Kathmandu, Nepal, trying to find our guesthouse in the really complex maze of streets and markets. I pulled out the device, and to the driver’s astonishment, was able to point him in the right direction. I lost the device later on in Kirghistan, but that’s another story.

Anyway what I’m trying to say is that augmented reality is right now what GPS tech was back then: A not-so-recent concept finally becoming reality thanks to cheaper, more powerful and consumer friendly machines, but of which we are just scratching the surface.

Before I start the review, I would like to give you a brief insight on how an augmented reality app works on an iPhone. Basically, the device uses 4 sensors: The GPS, the magnetic compass, the accelerometer and the camera. The GPS provides the app with information about your location: The most basic form of which can be seen as coordinates. The magnetic compass senses your orientation relative to the magnetic north; it is therefore able to provide information related to the direction in which you are pointing the device. Thanks to the GPS, it is location aware, hence its ability to detect true north thanks to built in magnetic declination data. The accelerometer senses how you hold your device, in which direction you tilt it or move it. It’s more or less like gyroscopes in avionics systems. Finally, the camera allows all this data to be given visual reference.

There are many augmented reality apps in the iTunes store. The most common kind is linked to navigation. Here in France, there’s an app that will show you the way to the nearest metro station in Paris. Switch the app on, and the phone will calculate where you are, in which direction you are looking and use the camera’s visuals to give a context to to the little widgets that will appear on the screen, just above the stations themselves. Pretty awesomem huh?

But that’s the most basic use for augmented reality. The app we’ll be looking at today does much more than that.

Layar

This app takes the concept of augmented reality and combines it with social media and layering. Let me explain: Layar itself is basically your augmented reality client. It’s very basic: You see what your camera sees, and a grid is placed over that, in line with the horizon thanks to the accelerometer. The power of the app lies in the way it manages the content of what is “added” to you real surroundings. The menu features a wide range of different layers, each of which shows different content. This means that you can find a layer showing points of interests in your field of view, or another one that will show you halal only restaurants. Each layer has a name and can be activated/deactivated in the menu, which sorts them by name or by popularity.

As I said before, the layers are what make this apps so powerful. Let’s have a closer look at the most popular ones.

Tweeps Around allows you to visualize tweets near you. As you may know, Twitter supports geotagging, and Tweeps takes advantage of it. Look around, find a tweet, tap on it, choose to view details about the user or reply.

Wikipedia is basically a wikipedia feed displayed on your camera’s viewing range. Again, geographical features like monuments, landmarks and other important places are geotagged, which allows layar to place them on your screen. As you can imagine, traveling with this is amazing: Just point at an object and you’ll get the wikipedia article about it

FlickAR Photos / Panoramio: you may know Flickr and Panoramio from Google Earth, which displays little pins where the pictures were taken. Layar does the same, but again, in an augmented reality kind of way.

i-MetrO is the first AR concept i described in this article. The only difference is that it works in the major cities: Amsterdam to Wahington DC via Moscow and Hong Kong. I tried it in Paris and it works flawlessly.

Yelp has a dedicated iPhone app, but it doesn’t take advantage of AR. Layar, however, thanks to the Yelp layer is able to display user recommendations in categories such as restaurants, shopping, arts and entertainment.

Finally, i would say that Foursquare is the least conventional application of AR: It’s a game. The layer will display coordinates where you have to check-in, which will earn you points and so on.

All these apps are just a few examples of what AR, and by extension Layar can do. The possibilities created are nearly infinite, the fine line between the virtual world and ours is has definitely been crossed. There are many more specialized layers (looking for a house to rent? for the nearest museum? for 3D creations of fellow users?), so make sure to check them out. Also, I can totally imagine AR games becoming increasingly popular in the future, because let’s face it: The graphics are photo-realistic! Geocaching, hide and seek and other recreational concepts could easily be transposed onto a AR environment.

Criticism, value and verdict

I may sound enthusiastic, but I have a few comments regarding the app. The first one is purely software related: I do not understand why landscape view isn’t supported. I mean, it’s called “landscape view” for a reason. The visual range would be so much wider if this was possible. Also, the perspective of the grid shoud be improved, and by that I mean rounded towards the bottom to simulate the circular motion of a rotating phone (or person). My second comment is hardware related: As much as I love the iPhone, it’s undeniable that the camera sucks. It really does. I had a Nokia N95 before I switched, and its camera was way better. Embarrassing for Apple, giving the fact that the N95 came out almost 3 years ago. The sucking of the camera somewhat spoils the pleasure when using Layar; don’t expect to see much at night for instance. The GPS accuracy isn’t grace, just like the compas’ precision range (about 15 degrees). Otherwise, performance is top notch, much better than in the upcoming video actually, but that may be linked to the fact that I use the more powerful iPhone 3GS.

The app is free, and so are the layers. This makes it an innovative, fun, technically interesting and highly affordable app. Go play with it, you won’t regret it.