3 Augmented reality paths

Augmented reality isn't new technology. It is with us from a long time now and still we're not even close to use full potential of it. On one side this is great, because it still fascinates a lot of people, it allows us to search for new possibilities. On the other hand....we want more ! and we want it now !

In this article I want to describe 3 main paths of augmented reality, paths that will close this technology to common people in their daily behavior. The best thing is that this paths are already known, but as for me, not used in 100% yet.

1. Moving in city

What can be more common than moving in city? In the city that you're living, or in the city in witch you're on a business trip or on holidays. There is always something to search, something to find.

Now imagine that in front f your eye you see something similar to the picture above. It is much easier to find the thing that your looking for. Isn't it ? It is much easier to navigate. You don't even need your glasses, smartphone with function like this is more than enough.

This also opens new way to advertise your business. Virtual signs, virtual signboards, visible from couple of kilometers. Visible when needed. Interactive advert that allow to promote best things for people that are near is a bigger chance for getting them. If you combine that with collecting interesting data you can set advert according to person interests. Everything described above will help to navigate and move in the city, and cities nowadays are getting bigger and bigger. Amount of services, shops, interesting places, interesting things is getting harder to embrace by regular person.

This kind of application should also support help related to public transport. In days when traffic jam is a regular day in city, public transport is getting more and more important. There is a lot of applications that help you plan your trip by displaying info about which bus and when you should use, where and when you should change it etc. But all this are only static information. It should adapt, it should inform you when there is possibility to change the route on better or faster one. You don't need to do it, but you can, and that is why you should be inform. Marking stops, showing time of arrival, all this is a must have in future city, all this will make life a bit easier.

2. Interactive magazine

Who read Harry Potter? Who watched the movie about the little wizard? Do you remember how newspapers looked? They were animated by magik, pictures there were like live scene. Awsome thing is that you don't need magic for that.

Look at this:

or this

Why adverts can't look like this in a regular newspaper or magazine ? Why we're not using so commonly already? Isn't this much better? Everybody complains that they hate ads, but to be honest, everybody is looking on them and even are checking the content. For this people this should be made, if you want to sell a good product and you want to promote it in a good way, do it in a right way! This is much more interesting, it allow to deliver much more information to potential customer, and ads are all about that.

Ok lets talk less about money. Everybody is talking that traditional newspapers are dying. Everybody is looking for information in the internet, they can read there, they can see more pictures, they can watch movie with more information. Augmented reality allows to put all of this in a simple, daily newspaper. The most interesting facts can be upgraded by adding movies, or virtual gallery for it on the screen of your smartphone. Think about that!

3. Museums and not only

Did you every think how some streets looked 10, 20, 50 years ago ? Standard museum is to boring for you ? Augmented reality already have solutions for that and I really hope it will evolve  more and more in this direction.

There is a lot of projects sponsored by museums that allow you to look and today places in different way and it is a great news. People nowadays often forget about the past, about lessons provided by history. Technology is moving forward very fast but that does not allow us to forget about the things that passed, about places, people, moments, events. We can learn a lot from our history. We need to remember. Augmented reality open new doors for that. It helps to interest kids with things that couple years ago were to boring for them. Look at examples below:

Isn't it awesome ? Look at people faces. Everybody are thrilled, everybody is interested. Passing knowledge, learning don't need to be boring, it by fascinating, interesting, it really can be cool. Augmented reality should be developed in this branch, we need to find more and more usages of it in name of history, knowledge and education