| Apple has ARKit on iPhones, and it's usable right now. Apple has the built-in "measure" app, though that can only measure things on a tabletop, and the Mac Pro table-top demo (https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ in Safari on iOS). The iOS game Egg, Inc. has a mode where you can see your farm projected on top of a nearby surface. It's kind of neat to see the little chickens run around on my kitchen table. What's holding AR back (on the iPhone) then, is a killer app. Vuforia Chalk is one for remote support. See what the supportee sees, and point out things, visually, to them. Circle which lever to pull, and using Apple's ARKit[] means the circle stays on the right lever, even when the phone is jostled. It's a cool use case, though their UX is horrible. IMO the problem is a hand-held smartphone is an awkward AR platform. [0] Note that there's some vendor lock-in by Apple. The Vuforia Chalk feature I mentioned above is image stabilization and an overlay. Image stabilization (and face detection) is an old problem in computer vision, it's commonly used to add silly hats to faces in video calls. |
...doooh! ARKit might be good, but it needs to be coupled with a google-glass-successor. Imo GG was the "nokia 900" of its era, proof that it can be done and there's sort of a market, but worthless without something to make it worth the inconveniences for regular users.
To be honest I'd bet on a social-media experienced company like Facebook or on whoever does a good job at partnering with a social media giant because the only AR applications I'd imagine compelling enough for "average people" will involve social things, like walking around a bar and seeing fb and twitter and maybe tinder profiles of people around you near their heads like game stats, sourced based on facial recognitions from people who set themselves to "open"... will be creepy beyond belief, but I'd bet on a mix of social, mildly sexual, with a dash of gaming thing, like a mix of tinder and pokemon go. Now, god knows who has the chops to pull that one right without getting it too creepy...