Augmented Reality brings new ideas and experiences to familiar surroundings with the help of your phone’s camera and clever tech. Here are a few of the apps that do it best…
We love apps that use augmented reality (AR) here at iD. What started with us scouring the great outdoors searching for Pokémon, has become a super-practical tool with an astounding range of useful applications. From strategy games that make your living room the arena, to design programs that help visualise projects, developers are creating apps that use our phone cameras in ways we couldn’t imagine only a few years ago.
Here’s our pick of some of the best apps that feature AR:
IKEA Place
Have you got a plethora of cushions lining your sofa hiding years’ worth of food and pet stains? Is your dining room table looking a little tired? Or maybe you’re looking to convert that spare room into a new home office. The IKEA Place app lets you browse their massive selection of furniture, choose the area of the room you’d like to place it (you can even place it over existing furniture) and then look at it, in your actual house, in real time using your phones camera.
Currys Point & Place
The Currys Point & Place app lets you refurnish any room in your home with new appliances and tech goodness! It works in a similar way to other interior design apps with AR. Simply choose the type of tech your looking for, then move your camera to the place you’d like it to live! See how your lounge wall looks with a big flatscreen TV on it or find the most practical space for your new washing machine before you buy it. Each product even comes with a link to the site to pop it into your basket for now or later.
BBC Civilisations AR
Want to learn about some of the most important artefacts and treasures throughout human history? Short of going on a museum crawl, the BBC Civilisations app is perhaps the best way to do it.
The app uses AR to place art and cultural objects from Ancient Egypt, all the way up to the modern era, right there in your home. You can see each object from every angle, just like a real museum exhibit. Whether it’s a mummy’s tomb or a priceless sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, there’s a wide range of artefacts to look at across several categories. And when you tap on the little spotlight icon, you can hear a snippet about its history and find where to discover more.
Google Translate
Okay, Google Translate isn’t really an AR app as such. But it does have one brilliant augmented reality function that we find really useful. When you hover your camera over any text, the app detects the language of the text and translates it for you in real time. It then displays the translated text over the original so you can understand it instantly.
It really does have its uses, too. If you’re travelling abroad or going on holiday, this app can do everything from helping you understand restaurant menus, to preventing you from getting lost when you read street signs. And as Translate gets better at recognising verb tenses and word order, we can only see the app becoming even more of a travel essential.
Knightfall AR
Nothing beats a good strategy game to pass the time. Building up your society, upgrading your defences and protecting your base from waves of incoming enemies – it’s a tried, tested and much-loved format. But Knightfall AR re-imagines it a little differently.
In Knightfall AR, your coffee table becomes the theatre of conflict. Just hover the camera over a flat surface to place the board down, and you’re ready to go. The game places you in the world of the Knights Templar, charged with the defence of the city of Acre and the protection of its inhabitants and Christianity’s most prized relic, the holy grail.
You’ll need to plan carefully to beat every wave of Mamluk warriors and repair your defences in between. And because of the clever AR here, you can move around the battlefield and zoom in on the action from any angle to synchronise your attack. It’s serious fun.
Bear in mind that not all mobile devices have the AR function; however, most smart phones released from 2018 onwards are more likely to be AR compatible
So, there you have it. Those are a few of our favourite apps with AR. What AR apps do you use, or have you seen that interest you? Let us know below!