Daniel Hruska An acquisition took place recently, when the German company Metaio became part of Apple. The company was involved in augmented reality and among its customers was, for example, the Ferrari car company. In 2013 Apple bought the Israeli company PrimeSense for $360 million, which was engaged in the production of 3D sensors. Both acquisitions may outline the future that Apple wants to create for us.
PrimeSense was involved in the development of Microsoft Kinect, so after its acquisition, it was expected that we would wave our hands in front of the Apple TV and thereby control it. After all, that may of course be true in future generations, but it still hasn't happened, and apparently wasn't even the primary reason for the acquisition.
Even before PrimeSense became part of Apple, it used its Qualcomm technologies to create game environments directly from real objects. The video below shows a demonstration of how objects on the table become terrain or a character. If this functionality were to make it to the developer API, iOS games would take on a whole new dimension – literally.
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Metaio is behind the app that runs on iPads in Ferrari showrooms. In real time, you can change the color, equipment or look at the "inside" of the car in front of you. Other clients of the company include IKEA with a virtual catalog or Audi with a car manual (in the video below).
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So, on the one hand, we have technology that replaces objects with other objects or adds new objects in the image captured by the camera (i.e. 2D). On the other hand, technology capable of mapping the surroundings and creating a three-dimensional model of it. It doesn't even take a lot of imagination and you can immediately deduce how the two technologies could be combined together.
Anyone with augmented reality can think of maps. It's hard to speculate how exactly Apple might decide to implement augmented reality into iOS, but what about cars? HUD on the windshield showing route information in 3D, that doesn't sound bad at all. After all, Apple's chief operating officer Jeff Williams called the car the ultimate mobile device at the Code conference.
3D mapping can affect mobile photography, when it will be easier to get rid of unwanted objects or, on the contrary, add them. New options may also appear in video editing, when it will be possible to get rid of color keying (typically green background behind the scene) and only draw moving objects. Or we will be able to add a filter layer by layer and only on certain objects, not on the whole scene.
There are really many of those potential options, and you will surely mention a few more in the discussion below the article. Apple certainly didn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars just so we could skip a song on the Apple TV with a wave of the hand. It will certainly be interesting to see how augmented reality will permeate Apple devices.
