Arilyn Blog – All things augmented

AR Weekly | April 16 | 2021

Written by Liisa Mathlin | 16.4.2021

Augmented reality helps in preserving history and enables you to create your own trip down the memory-lane.

Also, a new player enters the AR glasses game, and Audi adds AR to its windshields.

Read on!

Augmented reality helps preserve Hollywood's most beloved movie theater

As we all know, the pandemic has forced many businesses to either temporarily close or permanently cease operations. The historic ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres announced that it would be shuttering.

One company, ReplayAR, stepped up to give movie fans an immersive memory of what they may be about to lose. It collected a series of historic photos of ArcLight's most iconic theater, the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, and build an AR experience from them.

The app aims to preserve memories immersively, allowing the user to anchor AR photos to geographic locations. 

In addition to allowing the user to photograph and pin photographic memories to a location, the app also allows for pinning "any" photo, graphic, or Gif. The users can also assign specific dates to the AR graphic to create a kind of AR history tour when they visit these locations.

Deutsche Telekom opens early access to Tooz Smartglasses via dev kit

Deutsche Telekom launched an opportunity to obtain its Tooz smart glasses before the official consumer launch. The early access comes via the Tooz Dev Kit, which requires registration to Deutsche Telekom's INITIATE program. 

"It wears like my normal prescription glasses, just a bit heavier. If you look straight ahead normally, you initially only vaguely perceive the overlay at the edge of your field of vision. Thus, the overlays do not interfere with normal-looking. However, if you concentrate on the field, you almost have the smartphone screen in front of your eyes 1 to 1 and can read the news or see the navigation, for example," said Deutsche Telekom's Lisa Neunkirchen in a statement.

Calls can be accepted or ended via taps on the temple, and Google voice control can be used to set reminders or write shopping lists.

This launch just missed our AR glasses roundup! We'll add it to the next one.

Audi brings augmented reality to the Head-Up Display

Head-Up Displays provide basic information such as vehicle speed projected onto the inside of the car's windshield so that it is directly in the driver's view while driving. It's a capability that is finally coming to life in the Audi Q4 e-tron EV.

The system displays turning arrows from the navigation system and starting points and destinations as augmented reality content. Images appear to float about ten meters ahead of the driver, keeping the focus for the information close to the real-world scenes.

The AR image appears the size of a 70-inch at the focal distance. Below the augmented reality imagery is what Audi calls the "status" section of the display. The status display shows info such as vehicle speed and traffic sign information.

 

That's all for now, see you next time!