Fun with Augmented Reality

As you may or may not know from my constant boasting and bragging over Twitter, I have just got the Xperia Z2. 

I'd like to thank Sony for letting me have one for the purpose of testing - I am incredibly grateful. 

After playing around with the Xperia Z2 the other week, one of the things which stood out to me wasn't the stunning camera, or the incredibly fast processor, or even its beauty... but Augmented Reality (AR). 

Yes, like an immature child, the first thing I rush to out of all the features was AR, I love playing around with the silly effects which you can use to spice up photos and fool around with. Its just so much fun!

While testing it pre release the other week I noticed that the AR was quite unresponsive and slow, I put this down to the software of a brand new Z2. I am please to see that now I have an official updated Z2 that the AR is much smarter, faster and more responsive than it was before. 

The AR has several settings. You start off with Disco, Dinosaur, Dive and Masquerade. As you can see from the picture above you can also download extras straight from the camera options by pressing on the "+" button. This is really worth doing in my opinion as you can get some really fun ones, and they are completely free with no need to sign up or register to anything.  

The other downloadable options are Comic, Horror and Spiderman.

AR is really good at putting images on appropriate objects in the frame. It isn't a very lazy cut and paste job, it seems to know roughly where things are and how things should go. Don't get me wrong mind, it will make mistakes, the technology is new, but I think generally you will be quite pleased. 

 Fairy Tale setting

As seen above with the Fairytale setting, there is a beanstalk growing out of my laptop/table, the pixie is on my lap and the mushroom is even tucked behind my feet. This shows how good the artificial intelligence is, especially compared to how it was before when I was testing it.  

My son being approached by a T-rex!

One of my favourite settings is the Dinosaur setting. 

This is ideally used for large landscapes, you probably wont get many decent results indoors, but its brilliant when you are out in a large field. 

The fairy tale setting.

Like I was saying above, the AI is quite smart, it seems to be quite good at putting the objects around my son rather than on top of him.

And again, it places a wig, lips and bow tie on perfectly - Disco setting.

Shameless selfies

The thing which stands out for me is not just taking novel photos once or twice and never using them again, but also the ability to jazz up selfies.
I know that we are all supposed to hate selfies, but admit it, we all secretly do them here and there for friends, so lets stop pretending, shall we? 

 Here is me clowning around with the Celebration setting. 

 The butterfly setting.

Masquerade setting.

My three year old son also thinks AR is the greatest invention since Angry Birds, and why not? When he puts the front facing camera on it can turn him in to a super hero!
He simply cannot get enough of this. If you want to keep your child occupied, then this is for you.

It also goes to show off the simplicity of AR, as my three year old son took only several minutes of messing around with the camera to figure out how to use it. He managed to get some decent results with it too. So you have no excuse!

Here are some examples of the downloadable content mentioned earlier. Superhero mode, Spiderman mode and Halloween.

Comic selfie!

Comic selfie with dress up.

Spiderman!

It works like a dream. This mask was perfectly put on even though he was bouncing around the room like...well, Spiderman!

Utterly ghoulish with the Halloween setting.

More from the Halloween setting.


A few little issues.

Though the technology in AR is good, it still cannot be completely manipulated. The "boom" and "wow" come and go as they please and you have absolutely zero say in where they pop up.

And again, the AR has placed a rock on top of my friend.

This, in my opinion, can be forgiven though, its a new technology and this is the biggest issue I could come up with. I really am clutching at straws here and it has been a lot more impressive than I thought it would!


Third party AR apps.

 Angry birds through a third party app.

Minion

Browsing through the Play Store, I knew I would find some great stuff, and I wasn't disappointed. We found one app called Augment, which is completely free and it has dozens of different objects to add in to photographs (Minions and Angry birds shown above).

Sadly though, these were a little different from the stock Sony AR. The objects looked very 90's 3D and didn't have anywhere near the production value. They have no artificial intelligence either, so they will not try and fit around the people in your photo. They have to be placed exactly in a certain part of the picture, then you change the size of the object and the direction it faces, but this takes quite a bit of time. Its still very good though, because the selection of objects to chose from dwarfs the stock selections you get with the phone, so its certainly worth a look.

Conclusion.

Over all I am very impressed with what AR has to offer. It is certainly an improvement from what it was a month ago while testing the Xperia Z2, which I can only assume was a pre release version. Its Artificial intelligence was impressive and it was incredibly smooth. It was good to see some add ones and free add ones at that!

I really look forward to what AR has for the future, especially with Android being open source. I have seen a few games floating around the store which I havent had the chance to check yet, I feel like this could be a really important feature in the future!

Thanks for reading.