Android Tips - Best Augmented Reality Games and Apps for Android - DIY in 5 Ep 83

Опубликовано 31 августа 2018, 18:00

Here are some augmented reality you can experience all from your Android phone!

Recap of VR vs AR
AR is digital information overlaid on top of actual reality. So virtual reality is an entirely digital world and augmented reality is your world just better. If you think Pokémon Go, that’s a really well-known example of Augmented Reality. Another really cool thing about AR is that you don’t need a one thousand dollar headset to experience it. Modern android phones will do just fine!

ARCore
In February of 2018, Google announced ARCore - their platform for building augmented reality experiences. ARCore uses three main capabilities to allows Android developers to place virtual content into real world: motion tracking, understanding the environment and estimating light levels. This is great because the simpler it becomes to develop AR, the more AR we get as the consumer. However, you need a compatible Android phone to make all the magic happen, like the Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy S7 or newer, LG V30, ASUS’ Zenfone AR or OnePlus 5. These are a few that are currently compatible, and Google is teaming up with other smartphone manufacturers- Sony, Huawei, Vivo, etc.

AR apps
Three are a ton of fantastic AR apps available right now on Android, other than Pokémon Go. Ingress, the game that was around long before Pokémon Go, from the same developer team, Niantic, that really laid the groundwork for the game we all now know so well. Ingress turns our world into a complex, sci-fi world where you fight for either the Resistance or the Enlightened, capturing virtual portals by traveling to them in the real world for your side. They do a lot of immersive, real world events to pull players even deeper into the game.

More AR apps
Another fun AR app currently available for Android is Quiver, the augmented reality coloring book. You can download real coloring pages from the internet, color them in, then the app brings your creations to life. Some of them will even play games with you. This is great for getting your kids into AR. Or what about coloring digital art into your world? Just a Line lets you draw things in AR space and they stay where you draw them. Have you been shopping for a tattoo but not sure how it will look? Inkhunter has a huge library of tattoos you can try out on whatever part of your body you’d like and inspect it from all angles.

And MORE AR apps
Some other, more useful AR apps I really like include Star Walk 2. You hold your phone up to the sky and the display shows the names of the stars, planets, constellations and even moving satellites. If you like to hike, ViewRanger lets you discover trails nearby. Google Translate will translate written language in real time to your phone so you can read street signs, menus, etc. in another language. Another AR beast from Google is Google Lens, which will intelligently analyze any photo and provides any information google can find about it, including analyzing any text it can find in the photo.

There’s new augmented reality being developed all the time. We hope the new AR game Ghostbusters World, which Trisha played with at San Diego Comic-Con this year, will be more than Pokémon Go with proton packs. It looks promising. What other cool AR apps are you using or looking forward to right now? Let us know in the comments.

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