Obvious Engine | AR

A lot of people (understandably) struggle with AR and see it as a novelty/pointless item. Currently if you want to use it you have to pull out a device, open the browser, select the appropriate layer, point your camera at stuff and read info from a fairly tiny screen (while still pointing). Admittedly, that’s quite a lot of effort compared to a lot of other stuff that does the same job. While I see their point, I think a lot of that thinking is based on the current value of mobile phone based marketing using AR. Not the value of a technology that enables you to add data to your view of the world. It’s hard to argue that being able to access contextual data that is visualized around you would not be of value – it’s just that the current tech means AR can’t always cut the mustard. But if you think about the technology applied to contact lenses or glasses with voice activation, all of that bad UX goes away making Augmented Reality very valuable indeed – for both utility and entertainment.

Obvious Engine is a vision-based augmented reality engine for indie games companies, digital artists, developers and brands. The engine can track the natural features of an image, which means you no longer have to use traditional markers and glyphs. The engine now works with 3D objects and curved surfaces and there’s no need to modify existing forms.

Impressive.