With First Tango Phone, Google Launches 35 Augmented Reality Apps

[Guest]

Google announced that the first phone compatible with Tango, its augmented reality (AR) platform, is now available. Here's what people will be able to do with the 35-plus AR tools available at launch.

With First Tango Phone, Google Launches 35 Augmented Reality Apps : Read more

 

[hdmark]

are these apps using a HMD of some sort? or more of a pokemon go style aim your phone at the table?

this would be pretty cool though. i could see board games selling with apps to go with them. could play monolopy and aim your phone at the table to see cool animations.

although just being able to aim my phone at something and get a decently accurate measurement would be amazing.... between that and maybe a level app?? id be set

 

[bit_user]

are these apps using a HMD of some sort? or more of a pokemon go style aim your phone at the table?

It's a phone with one or more depth sensors and uses visible + depth + some combination of accelerometer, gyro, and compass to determine its position and orientation (termed its "pose"). The depth sensor(s) allow it to see the geometry of the environment.

This means it can render CG objects that appear to be in the same space as real objects, and be used for crude 3D scanning. Furthermore, it can learn its environment, as you walk around. Based on this knowledge, it can determine its location without any GPS (and much more precisely than if you used GPS). This would allow you to put a virtual object in a real spot, and then come back to find it there, sometime later.

These are the same sorts of things that Hololens does. The biggest difference is that one projects the CG imagery through a visor, while the other is a phablet. The article had an inline link to it, but here's the announcement (with pics):

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lenovo-phab2-pro-tango-smartphone,32023.html

although just being able to aim my phone at something and get a decently accurate measurement would be amazing.... between that and maybe a level app?? id be set

It's only good for rough measurements, just to get a basic idea of how big something is. If you care about accuracy down to an inch or cm, then you'll still need a tape measure.