Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve surely heard of the new Pokemon Go app or have seen pedestrians aimlessly walking around as they stare deeply into their phones – even more so than we’re used to seeing.
If you’ve yet to see the app in action, it makes use of the Google Maps API and turns the entire world around you into a game of Pokemon. When a user stumbles upon a Pokemon in the wild, the app switches from a standard video game interface to an Augmented Reality state. By making use of the phone’s camera, the app superimposes a digital Pokemon character over top of wherever your camera is aimed. Even if you’ve never cared about Pokemon, seeing the gameplay in action is pretty neat.
Pokemon, the game changer
To say the Pokemon Go app is a game changer is a huge understatement. The technology for Augmented Reality has been around for a while, but this is the first case of a use that has gone viral and taken the world by storm. There will surely be other games to adopt the technology and make use of it in a similar fashion – but the uses could be endless and will only be limited by our imaginations.
At Duckpin, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with a few clients who have had some Augmented Reality needs. Nothing on the scale of Pokemon Go – yet – but we’re excited at the prospect of taking on new AR work thanks to the popularity of Pokemon Go. Below is a video showing an AR piece we created for a local printing company, PCA.
Let your imagination wander…
Do you have any Augmented Reality ideas? If so we’d love to hear from you to find out if we can make those augmented dreams a reality. Give us a shout at whatscrackin[at]rollwithduckpin.com.