Apple’s latest software upgrade for iPhone and iPad comes with a bit of kit that developers have been having a lot of fun with.
ARKit has been made available so software developers can start creating apps ready for the public release of iOS11 later this year.
The Augmented Reality (AR) apps – which superimpose digital data onto real world surroundings – were a big selling point at Apple’s WWDC event, and iOS developers have been showing exactly what the toolkit is capable of.
Someone made a mashup of Space Invaders and Doom.
By using ARKit and developing platform Unity, Daniel Rodriguez replicated Space Invaders in the office environment – complete with powerups dotted around the area to help you crush those pesky Invaders.
Someone else made Minecraft.
“I love that you are able to place life size objects because the tracking with ARkit is so good,” Matthew Hallberg, the demo’s creator, wrote under the video.
ARKit combines Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) with CoreMotion data, which Apple says allows “the device to sense how it moves within a room with a high degree of accuracy, and without any additional calibration”.
It definitely looks like people have been putting that to the test, and with positive reviews.
Game developer Glen Rhodes wanted to see how large items would feel using ARKit.
“The world needs to get excited about ARKit. It’s a paradigm shifter,” he said.
There have been practical applications too – like this tape measure.
Laan Labs say their app can turn your phone into a ruler at any time, using AR to measure the distance between points in 3D space.
The same company created a 3D drawing app.
A very trippy one at that.
This demo shows just how realistic things can be made to look with ARKit.
It’s not just planes either – someone created a simulation of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket landing.
But the piece de resistance? Surely it’s this. Surely.
iOS11 is expected to be released this autumn and also includes updates to camera features, messages and the App Store.
