OK, I admit it, I’m totally captivated by Augmented Reality (AR) and in my mind, you should be as well… AR is the future, deny it and you’ll be left behind – and you’ll be missing out on opportunities abound as well!
If I had to think of several key technologies that will affect geospatial technologies, LBS, and mobile tech I’d say Augmented Reality, Indoor GPS, WiFi, and open source (data and OS) are THE areas to watch unfold!
For now it seems that the hype and excitement surrounding AR is largely driven by mobile application, however, I suspect that will soon change. That doesn’t mean the mobile AR applications will fade away into oblivion, far from it actually, mobile AR apps will largely drive the development and future of AR, however, I think AR is poised to jump to the desktop, particularly in the enterprise space. When I think of AR and the possibilities I get taken back to Michael Douglas and Disclosure… recall the demonstrations where Douglas and team wore the #D style glasses, enabling them to walk around a virtual world and send commands that were carried out by Angel?? Well, thanks to AR I see these sorts or apps and even more exciting things.
Imagine your computer screen centered on a specific geographic location, feature-rich spatial data base layers presented thanks to high resolution satellite imagery, aerial photography (obliques) and street-view level video imagery… all stacked on top of each other providing amazing detail… but that’s just the start, I imagine POIs similar to what we’ve seen in existing AR applications popping up on the screen as we pan around, then imagine layers of the infrastructure being displayed on top of the imagery or even below it (why not display the water and sewer lines below the roads and city sidewalks, basemap layers being controlled and faded in and out using transparencies… vector data features popping in and out depending on which spatial data layers we wish to have access to.. Perhaps historical imagery being made available.. Why not be able to see the city street as it appeared last week or even last century?
I also imagine webcams being accessible via the click of a button.. Really, the sky is the limit… and all this will be driven via AR… not far off I’m sure we’ll be able to not only walk down the street and view the impressive oblique imagery (think Bing) and street view imagery constantly updated by vehicles driving the streets… and then, one day we’ll be able to take it much further. Why not be able to walk into a shop, then browse the shelves, select a pair of pants from the shelves and purchase the. The pants in the size and color selected will be delivered to your door the next day. As improvements in indoor GPS technologies are rolled out the sky is the limit!
I have no doubt this is where we’re going, the consumer apps will no doubt come to us in this manner by players like Google and Microsoft. I can’t wait to see who the enterprise players will be though, delivering the city’s infrastructure to us using this cool technology. I can think of many players in the traditional GIS industry that possess technologies and innovations that are very complementary to this vision… I just hope they see it too!