DISCUSSION: AR elephants in the room

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Horray The AR revolution is here .... kind of.

Small number of apps at launch so if you had a cool idea theyre still chance to wow.

Can we discuss the augmented reality elephants in the room so we can improve the UX and make AR a must use in peoples day to day 🙂

This is a not a dis off peoples apps. We only have limited AR app out there. Just listing problems so we can decide on common solutions.

If we as AR devs dont discuss/solve them users are gonna give up well before we do.

Remember this is the 2nd time we tried "AR" 🙂

Things I noticed from todays launch apps and other demos - not dissing just discussing:

Plane tracking close to the camera doesnt work well

- I'm sitting on my couch testing these app. My lap is too close or too nobbly to track a plane. So I point at the couch beside me. It finds a plane... great but now I'm playing a game while I'm twisted side ways.

- get up and turn you lazy fool!

What about on a plane/train? how close is too close. Can it find the tray in front of you.

Hard to find AR mode in the launch apps today

- easily solved with icon

- does someone want to design the universal icon for AR MODE?

Human Anatomy - spent ages trying to find the AR mode. Seems to be only on some models.

Thomas and Friends/King of pool - not found the AR yet have been sitting in a demo rounds / tutorials.

Warhammer - great game - wheres the AR

- Plane Tracking is jumpy

Stack AR - love this game but purpose of the game is to have a steady hand.

But the plane tracking keeps jumping so the model keeps moving making it near impossible to play.

I presume iPhone X's camera will improve on this. If not I want the kidney I paid for it back.

- People are lazy, ok I'm lazy!

I noticed the same issues with Gear VR. People need to get up and move around the object. Why cant I just rotate it?

What would compel me as a user to walk around to the other side that cant be achieve by just rotating the object.

Often if Im sitting on a plane/train I cant get up and walk around an object.

ITS BEHIND YOU

iOS11 / Maps has cool new flyover 3d mode. Only problem half the map is behind me.

I think the option to turn off LOOK AROUND or combine it with spin around, with your finger not your whole body distorted on the couch.

People in work think Im mad im spinning around on my swivel chair pointing an ipad at the floor.

Then bending over to peer closer.

Or moving way back from my desk to get the tracking to work.

Over scaling

- Carrot Weather AR - when model is too close the sides are cut off in portrait mode.

If you move the model back the text on the data shrinks and is hard to read.

Holy Scaling Cadaver!

- in Human Anatomy, you drop the cadaver on the table, you move to the head, the pinch to zoom but it scale exponentially in x,y,z equally and can often disappear.

idea: Maybe when you scale out, also move the model away?

- Carrot Weather AR -

Cool looking app with nice 3d and cool to show people.

Would I use the AR version every day... nope it only has a few pieces of data temp etc. but I see these on my watch complication

This would be cool if I could prop my ipad on my desk and have that 3d carrot thing as a desk AR but tracking at close distances not always easy.

2D in AR mode makes no sense

Critter Splitters is a great 2d game. Its not a 3d game its definately not a AR game. In AR just seems to be a box in space with a 2d game stuck to one side. I even got up to walk around the back and nothing.

ideas for Future improvements needed

Sharing - Two people in same app on n devices. I cant see what you see. Maybe a teacher with Human anatomy linked by Game kit to her pupils all looking at the same body. Maybe with 3d icons on all devices showing what the teacher is currently looking at.

Unity/unreal sdks - great except I have to rewrite all my Swift code in CSharp and learn CSharp/C++.

Maps/3d/AR and not in Unity/Unreal

- wrld/ mapbox / apple we need native Maps/3d sdk soon. With 3d buildings and not one that involves unity.

and not till wwdc 2018

Citymapper - so disappointed they have huge access to transport data and all we get it Android mascots in top hats.

AR + Real World is far off.

I was hoping for more of this

https://github.com/ProjectDent/ARKit-CoreLocation

BUT this also suffers from the other main this that killed off the First iPhone AR.... remember this.

The compass on the iphone isnt very accurate.

Run any of these ios3 ar sample and point at a fanmous building and watch it wobble around.

Caused by this issue:

https://github.com/ProjectDent/ARKit-CoreLocation#true-north-calibration

GPS on the iPhone isnt very accurate.

i wrote a program to log gps lst, lng on my walk home. It bounces wildly around.

The tweet that inspired this.

https://twitter.com/amittm/status/880932174072958977

"1/ ARKit apps still have the same problem as every other mobile app: convincing users to install your app and make using it a daily habit."

Roll on iPhone X.

We now live in a world where "3d face tracking animated ***" is a thing 🙂

Sketch for ARKit.. there I said it. 🙂

ARKit

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Posted by

cityoflondonconsulting

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Answer 1

Very fair and useful points overall. Thank you.

Posted by

krishkumar

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Answer 2

Robert Scoble on FB has made a list of "issues" with 70 AR apps hes tested since launch.

comments from other devs worth a read

https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble

https://twitter.com/Scobleizer

----- from "https://www.facebook.com/RobertScoble"

It is depressing just how bad most augmented reality apps on iOS11 are.

I am in the middle of testing more than 70 apps that shipped this week and the crop is amazingly weak.

Common problems?

Game play not well defined. Developers are not doing user testing. Many games lost me in first minute because I can’t figure them out.

Interaction models not good. On many apps interacting with augmented elements is difficult, at best. Things are hard to hit, hard to read, hard to figure out. Some apps like darts or basketball far less fun than they should be.

Too much reliance on “cute.” Cute is fine for a minute or two but those apps that rely on cute will see massive churn. How long do you need to view a caterpillar or shark swimming around your room?

Battery life and heat issues will dissuade many users. My phone gets hot after just a few minutes.

Holding phone in air for more than a few minutes is too hard so I bet most users will lose interest quickly.

Some apps won’t work without other players.

Yes there are a few good ones, I am making a list but it is small indeed. Tomorrow I will be on TWiT and will show some off.

What are you finding?

I now get why Tim Cook didn’t feature augmented reality more on the launch of iPhone X. The industry needs a year to come up with really great apps, at minimum.

I was expecting more, truth be told. Clearly building a good AR app is harder than creating a good 2D app.

This is why Shel Israel and I are doing education about AR for businesspeople starting on Oct. 2. More on that at http://www.transformationgroup.io/learning It is clear they industry needs a lot of work.

Today we have a birthday party for our kids and will be testing the good ones on the kids who come over.

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cityoflondonconsulting

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Answer 3

If we're just spitballing ideas and thoughts, I'll get in on this. My AR app, Tooniverse ( bit.ly/tooniverse ) is a SpriteKit based one. So unlike many of the others mentioned, the art is 2D, not 3D. I actually found there was plenty of neat ways to play with the "billboarding" that occurs with 2D art. For example, moving around to line up rings in a tunnel that at first would only appear to be arranged horizontally.

I also loved hiding things behind the user. That's fantastic for kid's apps (for lazy adults, maybe not so much). But this next generation of kid's apps can really be about exploration.

I didn't do much plane detection in the app, there's a little, but only to make a ball ricochet off a flat surface, which is just eye-candy, not really a part of the gameplay. Though I do think that's a fun aspect to be explored. Some of the best games are the simplest, and that's a very simple thing to try.

You mentioned having to get up to play some of these apps. The title card for my app, calls itself a "Get Off the Couch Game". Many levels you can pass by sitting still, but some you just can't. And I expect A LOT of game devs will embrace that aspect of AR. Parents too. What parent doesn't want to see their kid walk around some while playing their iPads.

With that said, I agree that forcing the user to awkwardly find a flat surface to do something simple like play chess or checkers is a misuse of AR. Especially when an AR playing board could simply float in space too, there's no reason why it NEEDS to be anchored to a table.

I'd be interested to hear from some of the developers that actually got their apps featured for the launch how downloads have been. When I was looking at the compatibilty of our AR-infused apps, I didn't see any iPad Mini's. Is that true, not a single Mini supports what we're doing? Because there goes the kid-market (for now). How many kids aged tween and under have suitable iPhones or iPad Pro's. Mine sure don't (their greasy hands better not ever touch my Pro 😉). So what's left for them to play on? The iPad 5th gen? Guess my kids all need an upgrade. Point is, maybe I shouldn't have made an AR kid's game.... YET!

I'll finish off with this. Apple's engineers did it right. And obviously they've left room to grow (vertical plane detection, obscurring things behind a wall, etc), but still, I think they've given us devs some amazing tools to play with.

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CartoonSmart.com

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DISCUSSION: AR elephants in the room

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