Two weeks ago at WWDC, Apple unveiled their new iOS ARKit for developing augmented reality content. This is widely considered a major step for mainstream adoption as the program simplifies the coding process to make it easier than ever to test and deploy AR experiences.

As part of the announcement, Apple showed off a demo called Wingnut AR which was a tabletop display of a fictional desert town defending its outpost from flying enemy gunships.

In the past two weeks, developers all over the world have already tried building with the ARKit and have subsequently posted their experiments on Youtube and social media. Here are some of our favorites: 

 

Naval Battle

 

Virtual Van Gogh Bedroom Tour

 

The Armada

 

The Titanic

 

Jumping Anime Character

 

Skeleton Monster (that just won’t leave you alone!)

 

Door To Another World…

Hope you like La Croix!

Blooming Flower

 

These fun projects are just the beginning of the development of more fully fleshed out experiences (and when published, will be available to everyone with an iPhone 6S or iPad 2017 or later). As the resource barriers for creating AR content goes down, experimentation and implementation will lead us to the creation of more and more apps, ushering in another explosive age for mobile app development. The highly anticipated launch of the iPhone 8 is also rumored to come out with more advanced depth sensors that’ll enable even more immersive AR experiences. These very same sensors should technically support running deeper VR experiences as well by enabling greater than 3 Degrees of Freedom (DOF). However, we will have to wait till the new phone’s announcement to truly find out whether that is the case.

 

 

Photo Credit: BGR.com