Taking a journey down virtual rabbit holes may not be far away.
With the Pokemon Go craze now a thing of the past, developers are looking for other uses for augmented reality. Peder Norrby has created an app that shows off some of the possibilities of Apple’s ARKit and the iPhone X: a portable hole.
His creation is TheParallaxView, which uses ARKit’s face tracking capability to determine the exact location the user’s eye in three dimensions. The screen then displays the interior of the “hole” at exactly the right angle so that it looks infinite. Mr. Norrby is exploring other possibilities as well, including objects that virtually project outward from the screen.
TheParallaxView has been submitted to the Apple App Store for approval. It will be free when it’s available. He’s also making the source code available at no cost.
AR Fun Now
An option for those who can’t wait to play around with augmented reality is LEGO AR Studio. This free application lets the user place virtual LEGO toys in their environment, and then interact with them. We used the app to place a Chinese ship on our coffee table, then attacked it with a fire-breathing dragon.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
LEGO AR Studio is free and available now on the App Store.
More about ARKit
Apple introduced ARKit at last year’s WWDC. This toolkit allows developers to virtually embed 2D or 3D digital objects into the environment around the user. Game companies are working with it, and the latest version of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine has support built in. Plus, some people just want to scare us. Beyond entertainment, bookstores and other public spaces are investigating the possibilities of augmented reality.
ARKit version 1.5 will debut along with iOS 11.3, which is scheduled for release sometime this spring, if not earlier. Its capabilities can be tested with the iOS 11.3 Beta.
Naturally, Apple is facing competing standards. Among the more notable is Google’s ARCore software development kit.
