AR Strategist King Yiu Chu explains how AR is more than just a gimmick.
Layar AR strategist King Yiu Chu took the stage at the London AR Summit this morning, and promised that augmented reality has the potential to "connect the mobile internet to physical reality", working alongside other technologies like NFC.
"Augmented reality is not a technology, it's part of everyday life," he said. "It's just a little technology, but it will be embedded in televisions, cars... everything that has to do with vision. You don't want to be aware of that, you just want to experience."
Layar has been going since June 2009, and its mobile AR platform takes the form of a browser app for which developers create layers (more than 2,000 so far) and the Layar Player, which is an SDK for use inside other apps.
As with previous speakers at today's event, Chu ran through examples of AR in action, from layers overlaying Wikipedia on real-world locations, through to art galleries and museums, games like ARcade and Conquar, and social networking layers using the APIs from Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook.
He also showed a layer based on the Prince of Persia console game, which directed people to the nearest stores to buy the game, and another based on Splinter Cell, which took the form of an urban treasure hunt, saying the latter was more successful than the former because it was promoted elsewhere - on Facebook for example.
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"Augmented reality has nothing to do with technology itself. It's a cross-media approach," said Chu, before moving on to another example: US basketball team Orlando Magic, which had a layer showing fans where the toilets and other arena features were, based on their seating position.
He also showed historical layers, such as Historic Market St. in SF, which overlays images of San Francisco's Market Street onto the modern location, with audio explaining what the user is seeing. There's also a Berlin Wall layer that allows Layar users to see how the wall looked, next to (or in front of) various landmarks.
"AR can be user generated - sometimes a lot of people forget that," added Chu. "It's a really valuable thing." And in Layar's view, the best AR concepts are 3D, animation, interaction, social media links and a cross media approach. "I always say that to brands: approach it from cross-media otherwise forget about it - otherwise it's just a piece of technology you're using to tell everyone how awesome and cool this is."
Is AR marketing expensive? Chu said the problem is less one of costs, and more one of concepts - brands and agencies "back off" because while they have budgets, they struggle to come up with good concepts.
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Please let us remember before we get too ahead of the trends - that Layar is one Layer - out of many. We @goAugmented use others such as Junaio with some stunning effects and results.
Danny Sodergren Jun 16th 2011 at 4:31PM
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