London-based iPhone application developer, acrossair, recently launched Nearest Tube, an augmented reality application for the iPhone 3GS that allows users to look through their phone's camera screen to determine where the nearest London Underground ("Tube") station is; the company has since then also rolled out versions of the application for New York's and the San Francisco Bay Area's underground/rapid transit systems. "When you load the app, holding it flat, all 13 lines of the London Underground are displayed in colored arrows," the company explains on its Web site. "By tilting the phone upwards, you will see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to your location, how many kilometers and miles away they are and what Tube lines they are on. If you continue to tilt the phone upwards, you will see stations further away, as stacked icons." A demo video of Nearest Tube is above.
In this recorded episode of [itvt]'s talk radio show, "The TV of Tomorrow Show with Tracy Swedlow," acrossair co-founder and managing director, Chetan Damani, provides an overview of the company's activities in the augmented reality space and discusses the current state of the emerging AR industry in general. Topics discussed include Nearest Tube and other augmented reality apps acrossair is currently developing; the technological underpinnings of smartphone-based augmented reality; the capabilities--and the significance to the emerging AR industry--of version 3.1 of the iPhone OS, which will support a public API for manipulating live video; the relationship between AR and 3D; and much, much more.
Our [itvt] free industry database called The [i]Database contains many listings of operators, broadcasters, software developers, design firms, manufacturers, Web sites, consultancies and many more organizations and people working in the interactive multiplatform TV industry. Upload your company or yourself!
