CAJ Best Augmented Reality Apps SUK4 Part1 Part2 Hendrik Henry

Best Augmented Reality Apps

So, let's proceed with the discovering of the Augmented Reality and find out its forms of living in our smartphones.

Augmented reality provides an astonishing means of superimposing computer-generated images atop a user’s view of reality, thus creating a composite view rooted in both real and virtual worlds. The available selection of augmented reality apps is diverse, encompassing both premium and freemium offerings from a variety of big and no-name developers, but sometimes choosing which apps are worth your smartphone or tablet’s precious memory is tougher than using the apps themselves.

Here are top picks for the best augmented reality apps available, whether you’re searching for quality iOS or Android offerings. Additionally, check out picks for the best iPhone apps and our selection of the best Android apps if you’re looking for some of the best apps on either platform.

Wikitude World Browser (Android/iOS/Blackberry/Windows Phone)

Wikitude World Browser is widely regarded as the king of all augmented reality browsers, and in a way, serves as a third eye of sorts. While using your smartphone’s camera in a given area, the the virtual browser — along with more than 3,500 associated content providers — offers you just about any geographically-relevant information you may find valuable in your travels. Useful information is often presented in the form of Wikipedia articles detailing the hallmarks of a specific landmark, or directions to the nearest ATM location or five-star Italian restaurant. Moreover, the app allows users to find hotels and similar accommodations through Yelp, TripAdvisor, and the like, while offering mobile deals and coupons for local stores in the vicinity. The built-in AR games, including the rollicking Alien Attack and bug-beating Swat the Fly, and the app’s ability to mark and share your favorite spots via Facebook are merely an added bonus.

Yelp Monocle (Android/iOS/Kindle)

The convenient app uses your smartphone’s GPS and compass to display AR markers for nearby restaurants, bars, and other businesses in real time, each bundled with the service’s user-generated ratings and reviews. If signed up with a Yelp account, the app additionally provides directions to nearby friends and the businesses they’ve recently checked into, placing the same AR markers as previously mentioned for friends, family, colleagues, and anyone else utilizing the robust service. Monocle, although somewhat a hidden feature within Yelp, is hands down the best utility for finding and following directions to the most well-regarded, or atrocious, businesses in your local vicinity.

SnapShot Showroom (iOS)

With SnapShop showroom, users can see what potential furniture may look like in the comfort of their living room, kitchen, bedroom, or any other desired area of their home. Once you capture an image of the desired room you wish to furnish, you can quickly browse and place assorted items (chairs, lamps, beds, tables, etc.) from the likes of big-name retailers like IKEA, Pier 1 Imports, Crate & Barrel, and Horchow, among others. Users can then resize the furniture, reposition it in the virtual environments, and try various patterns and color combinations until they find the right fit for their home. The furniture can even be purchased directly within the app afterward, conveniently saving you a trip to the store or the accompanying headache that goes hand-in-hand with the discovering you had the wrong dimensions all along.

Theodolite (iOS) 

Theodolite is essentially an electronic viewfinder primarily designed for hikers, golfers, hunters, boaters, and other active people, one which turns your tablet or smartphone into an informative lens of topographic information and data overlays. Once downloaded, the app serves a GPS tool, rangefinder, tracker, geo-tag camera, compass, two-axis inclinometer, and a zoom camera, and even has an A-B calculator for measuring distance, height, heading positions, relative angles, and triangulation.

Augmented Car Finder (iOS)

We’ve all done it before — you finish up your grocery shopping and head out into the parking lot to make your way home, but unfortunately have no idea where you parked. Fortunately, Augmented Car Finder is an app specifically designed to help guide you to your hiding vehicle. Once the car’s location is set, the app creates a visible marker showing the car, the distance you are from it, and the direction you should walk to find it. We’ve found that it’s most useful for places like stadiums, convention centers, outdoor concert venues, and other crowded areas or those lined with massive parking lots. Users can also utilize the app to find their seats in large theaters and concert halls.

Acrossair Augmented Reality Browser (iOS) 

It provides a robust means of viewing the quickest route to the nearby cinema, hotel, restaurant, bar, or other similar establishment. Users can also check out geotagged Wikipedia entrees on historical landmarks, view local tweets in real-time, or even pin their respective car location for later. Whereas holding your camera upright akin to similarly-equipped browsers will bring hovering balloons to which you can follow, holding the device horizontally will showcase your location on a map and present you with a list of available layers from which you can chose to navigate. 

Google SkyMap (Android)

Google Sky Map will magically instill you with Carl Sagan-like powers and give you the ability to identify everything in the night sky. Once installed, just point your phone upward when it’s reasonably dark and clear outside, and Google will point out all the different stars, constellations, and planets that are visible to your phone’s camera. As you’d expect from Google, the app is super smooth and does all its identifications in real time, and even allows users to search for specific stars and planets not presently visible on your screen. Once found, the on-screen interface and directional compass will then directly guide you to said star or planet — even if hidden behind a veil of cloud cover or obscured by the horizon.

iOnRoad (Android/iOS) 

Using your smartphone’s camera, the simple apps strives to help prevent collisions while providing robust navigation once situated on your car windshield or dash. The app automatically starts when your vehicle begins moving and saves your parking location once stopped, while additionally alerting you when you’re speeding, warning you when you’re crossing a solid marking line, and taking snapshots of drives that dangerously cut you off while switching lanes. Moreover, the app offers statistics covering gas consumption, routes, safety, velocity, and acceleration, providing users with a general overview of their driving habits. 

Google Goggles (Android, iOS)

Amazing Google app uses image recognition technology to deliver information about various logos, landmarks, barcodes or QR codes. Add contacts with business cards, read novel summaries by scanning the title, all by taking its picture.
Power of Google search engine with your camera.
Recognize DVDs, CDs, paintings, books.
Solves Sudoku puzzles.

SpecTrek (Android)

Tired of using apps sitting indoors for long, this app SpecTrek would make you do some physical exercise with gaming.
Go out in an open area and launch SpecTrek. Virtual ghosts will appear in your real world surroundings by just moving your smartphone in different directions to spot one and capture them with a net while running towards them.
SpekTrek also provides you bonuses, titles and records to keep you going with this augmented reality app.

These were the top Augmented Reality Apps which would change or have already changed your perception to your surroundings and the real world by its applications. This technology augments your smartphone ability to greater heights and is ever reaching more and more with new interventions in it to make your device do such things which you haven’t imagined earlier.

Sources:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-augmented-reality-apps/#!E2lfS

http://deepknowhow.com/2013/04/04/top-20-augmented-reality-apps-for-android-and-iphoneipad-users/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.unveil