If you haven’t heard (and you probably have), Layar has added 3D capabilities to their Augmented Reality Browser. You may wonder what that means and rather then try to explain in some technical terms, check out these videos that the company put together to illustrate:
The pacman characters, airplane and 3D text were all rendered within the Layar browser. The company is giving development access to these 3D capabilities to 500 developers who can create new types of experiences for users of Layar. If you’re an interested developer visit http://dev.layar.com. A new version of the app will be available on Android Market in November, coming with a Layar 3.0 version – perhaps it should be Layar 3D.0?
Some interesting points are made in the Layar 3D FAQ:
How does it work?
Layar 3D makes use of OpenGL, the accelerometer, the GPS and the compass of the phone. Developers can place 3D objects in their content layers based on coordinates. Objects can be optimized in size and orientation to create an immersive and realistic experience. The 3D capabilities supports live downloading and rendering of 3D objects. Also its possible to interact with 3D objects by assigning actions such as “open link” or “play music”.
No dummy, I’m a developer. How does it work?
Layar3D builds upon the current Layar Developers API by allowing layer developers to enrich POI information with 3D objects: In addition to the lat/lon information, developers will be able to specify altitude and pitch/angle for each object as well as simple animations. Each object will be fetched by the client from a URL specified by the developer in the POI information. Layar will provide all the tools needed to create the required 3D format based on the universally accepted OBJ format (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obj).
So let’s hear from you, our awesome reader… what types of layers and experiences would YOU like to see created with this new Layar 3D technology?