AR Applications Experience
This is a blog for SIT183 Practical Week 2
On this week’s practical session I tried a few augmented reality applications that are interesting to me:
- Iron HUD
This AR application mimics a heads-up display (HUD) of the popular Marvel superhero known as Iron Man. This one caught my eye because I am quite a Marvel fan myself and intrigued by the idea of an AR application that makes you inside the eyes of Iron Man. The app puts a futuristic HUD on top of your real-life environment and provides a selection of features including a ‘blaster’ that you can target at any point on the HUD. While marketed as an AR application, Iron HUD is nowhere near an augmented reality experience, as it just acts as a filter to put on top of your camera and doesn’t leverage any physical surroundings to an advantage. A way to improve it to at least let the user feel a more definitive AR experience is to insert objects that blend to the environments, for example insert an enemy for you (as Iron Man) to fight using your blasters and repulsors. While lacking actual AR features, it is always a pleasure to be in the shoes of one of your favorite superheroes.
- Angry Birds AR
Angry Birds is known as one of the most popular mobile games out there, so knowing there’s an augmented reality version of the game makes me interested to try it. The app lets the user interact with the environment by inserting the obstacles (pigs) in your nearest surroundings and let the user launch the objects (birds) to get rid of the obstacles. The AR elements, that is the obstacles can be moved or scaled to fit in more better to the users’ surroundings, and also able to be rotated as the pigs are not only in front of the view but can also be in the back. The user can also move around the environment to get a better view of the obstacles. Besides offering a fun challenge for the user to play, Angry Birds AR also brings a definitive augmented reality experience and can be a great starting point for those who want to know a lot more about AR.
- Balanced Tower AR
This AR application is a game of Jenga that lets the user play the block-moving game virtually, yet in their environment. This AR game is quite unique because it involves in-game physics each time a block is removed and can be played against an AI or even your own friend. The user is able to move around the object to determine which block is best to be removed. But the blocks cannot be manipulated to be rotated as the game insists the user must move around physically. The app also doesn’t let the user scale or move the blocks according to their wishes as the block is already there as soon as the user enables the augmented reality mode, maybe those can be improved in the future. I still had a great time playing this virtual game of Jenga because it tested my creativity a lot whilst taking advantage of the latest technology known as augmented reality.
