Here are 8 iPhone AR Apps Available Today
Today is the day: iOS11 is now available to hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads, and includes a new Augmented Reality platform known in the development and tech circles as ARKit. This is a massive opportunity especially with the release of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X to introduce the world at large to Augmented Reality (AR).
Few could be more excited than the members of the ARKit Creators Slack group. It was formed only two months ago to bring together enthusiasts, developers, and even investors that were excited about the next wave of AR computing from Apple. This community ended up assisting, cultivating and boosting at least 8 launch titles available today, at the dawn of ARKit.
8 iPhone ARKit Launch Day Apps by ARKitCreators
In no particular order, here are 8 ARKit Launch Apps available right now for your iPhone (including one of our own). Click each title for more information about each app.
Paint Space (Tools)
Austin McCasland, a UX Designer, gained early attention with his prototype of Paint Space. He describes it as a “magical, easy to use — downright fun — drawing experience for both casual doodlers and dedicated artists”.
Mammoth Mini Golf AR (Games / Entertainment)
Jamie and Simon Edis, based in Perth, Australia, are introducing an ARKit pass-and-play multiplayer putt putt golf game to the store: Mammoth Mini Golf AR.
GardenKit AR (Lifestyle)
With GardenKit AR, Charles Poole is leveraging the plane detection capabilities of ARKit to planting flowers and trees which eventually attract virtual owls, foxes, puppies, and kiwis.
AR Balloons (Games / Entertainment)
Adopting a simple pick-up-and-play approach, our company Across Realities released AR Balloons (pronounced “Air Balloons”), a casual game with the childlike magic of popping balloons with achievement-based challenges.
Orb (Tools)
Another 3d creation app from Hammad Bashir & Sonia Sharma comes in the form of Orb. While Paint Space can be thought of as AR Tilt Brush, Orb’s 3d modeling tools echo another great Google VR product, Blocks.
Fit In (Games / Entertainment)
Fit In by Kirsty Keatch and Zipeng Zhu is based on Japanese game shows where you have to fit through moving walls or get pushed into a pool of water.
Pigeon Panic (Games / Entertainment)
Last but not least, Combo’s Pigeon Panic! allows you to chase away virtual pigeons in the park, and was recently featured on BBC.
Fable AR (Lifestyle)
Fable AR by Wolf3D allows people to 3D scan themselves, create an avatar and make custom videos using different animations and scenes in AR.
Update: Fable AR’s release is currently pending
The Power of the Community
Individually, it can be a challenge for scrappy indie development houses to work with state-of-the-art beta technology, addressing bugs never before seen or solved, with the beta software itself often incomplete.
Coming together, devs in the Slack group were able to compare notes on beta cadence, how-tos, and were even able to solicit feedback to the Unity team thanks to the presence of Tony Parisi, Jimmy Jam Jam, and Chris Goy.
“Because Unity guys are in here — specifically Jimmy Jam — I was able to really have some in depth conversations about the line renderer in Unity, which Paint Space relies heavily upon. By having those discussions, I was able to brainstorm a solution to allow a line renderer to have variable width — resulting in the pressure sensitive strokes that make Paint Space feel so expressive.”
— Austin McCasland
It wasn’t just tech help though: many devs found inspiration as well just by being connected to all of the enthusiasts, including Matt Miesnieks from Super Ventures who shared his deep insights.
“Having everyone on that Slack from hobbyists, freelancers, and indie developers to the guys at Unity building plugins, to the big guys in the AR/MR/VR investors groups sharing their vision on how AR is going to change how we connect the real and virtual worlds.”
— Charles Poole
It’s exciting to be on the forefront of this new frontier of technology. I’m getting those same feelings I did when first playing Wheel of Fortune on a flip phone and later when first using an iPhone, that this here is another major inflection point in how we compute. It begins today with iOS11 and ARKit, and expands further with the coming of Google’s ARCore.
We are very much looking forward to seeing this future play out, as we’re confident that the new types of experiences ARKit brings forth in the coming months will fundamentally change how we think about and use our devices.
To learn more and join the conversation, check out our ARKit Creators Slack to discuss all things mobile AR or to get in touch with any of the above developers. Our community always welcomes new members and we look forward to building this future together.
