[cageface]

I've seen several very creative demos but I'm still struggling to see practical applications. It seems like massive, every day adoption of this kind of AR is going to have to wait for dedicated glasses.

Maybe I just lack imagination.

[forgottenacc57]

Maybe point it at a sports game for stats and game data?

Point it down the street to have great restaurants highlighted?

Point it at the sky to get astronomical facts?

Point it at tourist landmarks to find out about them?

Point it anywhere to see where athletes/runners/cyclists have run and in what time?

Visualise all historical car accidents at a given location?

Visualise all hidden infrastructure, underground gas lines etc?

See history overlaid on the present?

Visualise public transport routes?

Show "upcoming events at this venue" as you pass theatres, cinemas, stadiums?

[gcb0]

> Point it down the street to have great restaurants highlighted?

on android early on (before 2.3!) yelp called it lens, and had a monocle icon. google maps and nokia apps also had it at some point I think. and no better implementation will ever make it less useless.

it was a uter useles gimmick. everyone tried it exactly once.

[drusepth]

It's actually coming back in Android O as "Google Lens". [1] Highlights include identifying trees/flowers in view, automatically connecting to Wifi by pointing at the sticker on a router, and pulling up a business listing and ratings by pointing at a building.

Apparently it'll be a part of Google Camera, but also baked into the Assistant so you can take pictures within the context of your conversation to "show" the assistant things, clarify what you're talking about, or ask for more information about something unknown.

Can also apparently integrate with your other Google services, with one example given as pointing your phone at a theater marquee, it pulling up ticket prices for you, and you saying "add this to my calendar".

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/17/google-lens-will-let-smart...

[calvin_c]

It was on one of the early versions of the Yelp iOS app as well. Don't really remember if it was there on day one, but I remember playing around with it in iOS 2 or 3.

[falsedan]

It was called Monocle, and it's still there, under More (on the version of the app I have installed).

[mavhc]

The ones I tried in olden times just used GPS and orientation to overlay geodata, camera input wasn't used

[amelius]

Mask advertisements, and replace them by beautiful paintings.

[davnicwil]

An ad-blocker for the physical world? Hmm..

Will employees of the city 'pop up' in your path as you walk down the street: "Hey! I see you're using an ad blocker! The city relies on advertisements to fund the street you're walking on right now, please consider turning it off!"

[vbezhenar]

Your AR device will replace those employees with beautiful dancing girls, of course.

[timpark]

Obligatory link to Black Mirror-inspired hackathon project "Brand Killer": http://jonathandub.in/cognizance/

[vilmosi]

Can't you do all that without the pointless waving, faster?

[forgottenacc57]

Having said all that I'm sure it will go the way of the Apple Watch.

[matwood]

> Having said all that I'm sure it will go the way of the Apple Watch.

A popular and growing technology that gets more useful with each release?

[forgottenacc57]

In bizzaro world, sure.

[lucasverra]

I'm actually expecting this tech to be the "bring contextual information V2" of things.

Example : Visiting a museum. I want context around the displayed works to better grasp the key concept.

How it works today :

- Guided tour : needs time management (when does it starts ?) + plus paying a human being (what language?) + keep with group speed

- Audio guide : Better, but lacks of visual explanation. Input (which track should i play concerning this work ?) requires some visual encoding (title, #, qr)

- Reading explanation next to the actual work : Lots of reading, not suited for different types of visitors

- AR : Could use the actual work as form of encoding to deliver the contextual information. Can adapt to the amount of data, depth that visitor want's to have.

Does that make sense ?

[zimpenfish]

> AR : Could use the actual work as form of encoding to deliver the contextual information.

Scott Naismith has been doing this with ActivCanvas - https://www.instagram.com/p/BMFLhHThCy8/

Although I don't know if ARKit has "replace picture X with picture/video Y" functionality?

[mysterydip]

I could see it for some gaming niches, like LARPers (live-action roleplay). See those fireballs tossed out. Show off your new +1 chainmail you looted, etc. Probably free to play with microtransactions for new loot and effects.

One game idea we kicked around was first person AR bomberman. All you need is a sufficiently-sized field for the map (and your AR device of course).

[Theodores]

All of this has happened before with 'AR' for television. The eventual niche was just a few election/budget politics shows rather than day-to-day broadcasting. A few things that were hard to do with 'AR' for television - getting feet to stay consistently on the ground in the one place and not float or drift with camera moves. The reality of solving this was to use a close up shot where the feet were not shown or to pan very carefully with a camera on a tripod.

It is these finer technical points that stop the technology getting too far and prevent you doing really cool stuff with 'AR'. This of course does not matter if it is some effect on Snapchat, however, if you really are trying to get someone to appear as if they really are 'walking on the moon' then sliding feet makes the result look like bad chromakeying and not the 'AR' desired.

[honestoHeminway]

Vanity- this will allow if for lots of vanity assecoirs only AR can provide. Virtual Pets, Decorations, virtual Cloths- all that is missing is good people tracking.

The emperors cloths might just become a story on a boys defunct glasses.

[cjrp]

Look around a car before booking a test drive? https://twitter.com/JelmerVerhoog/status/881237798623293440/...

[peterept]

And here's one I made to actually have a test drive as well: https://youtu.be/LKgJk7DdyuY

[tomelders]

I sense this is more of a roadtest for technologies that are bound for a new product line.

[proyb2]

I have been coding on laptop, it's kind of bad of our back body, AR can help to bring 360 degree display so we won't have to switch/toggle our workflow all the time for hundred times a day.

[melling]

Yes, the world just changed and you don’t realize it. AR is going to be huge, even with a phone.

[LouisSayers]

X-ray vision anyone?