Augmented Reality Applications - Head To Head Part 1

Description

I thought it was time to do an augmented reality browser head to head and put a few of the current applications through their paces to see which one comes out on top.

Today’s test is – Finding places to eat

It should be a simple task, you’re out and about and in the mood for a nice Indian curry, but where to eat? My benchmark is two Indian resturants that are close to my house. Sharod and Birashwamys. I use these becuase I know their physical locations so any errors will be easy to spot.

Layar

Using Layar local search I found 8 local Indian restaurants and I was pleased to see that the two reference restaurants were among the results and placed in the correct location. Layar gives the option to get directions from my current location, the phone number, the image of the restaurant and a few other useful bits. Since Layar allows you to limit the results to a search range I limited my results to a range of 2km. Sadly neither me or the other 60+ million people in the UK use kilometres and there is no option to change the unit of measurement to miles which is really annoying. Out of all the applications tested Layar local search performed the best with the least amount of data errors, of the 8 restaurants shown I only spotted 2 that were misplaced in residential areas.

The point of Layar however is the ability for 3rd parties to publish their own layers, so how did they compare? The Qype meets Layar layer produced different results and generally wasn’t a good experience. Apart from the map deciding it’s own scale and resetting itself every time I made a change it suffered from missing data. Our reference restaurant Birashwamys ...

Original URL

http://www.augmentedplanet.com/2009/11/augmented-reality-browsers-head-to-head-part-1/

http://www.augmentedplanet.com/2009/11/augmented-reality-browsers-head-to-head-part-1/