10 Apps to Augment Your Reality

When you think of Augmented Reality (AR), you will think of the heads up display of a fighter pilot, or think of Google Glass wearing people who can't see the real world, but actually, our phones already have everything you need to implement AR, and here are some great apps which do just that.

There are a lot of AR apps available on the App Store and Google Play, but for now, many of them are still more like an early proof-of-concept than a polished experience. Still, there are a few things that really stand out, and we have a few favourites, and where possible, even a couple of alternatives. In no particular order, here are our ten favourites.

1. WikiTude
This free app (pictured above) is available on the App Store, Google Play, for Windows Phone, and also on BlackBerry World.

It's an incredibly powerful app, even if it is a bit of a data and battery guzzler. Essentially, Wikitude takes location data from a number of services, including Panoramio, Twitter, Instagram, Wikipedia etc, and uses that to populate a view of points of interest which you can see through your phone's camera. Just hold up the phone and look around, and small buttons appear over points of interest, which you can tap on to learn more about. It's a great app for when you're travelling, sight-seeing, or just looking for a nearby coffee shop.

Also check out: Layar. The app works a lot like Wikitude, so you can just hold up your camera and see the AR tags people created in the world. It can also be used for things like advertising - making print ads AR tags, for example - and isn't as focused as Wikitude, but it is faster and looks better.

2. Ingress

Google's AR game is only available on Google Play and it can be quite engrossing. It's a science fiction game where players can hold "portals" in the game by visiting places in the real world. There are multiple factions, and you have to use the camera to scan for the portals once you get to the locations... which all sounds pretty dull, but once you get caught up in the fiction of the game, you're completely hooked.

3. GoSkyWatch Planetarium for iPad

GoSkyWatch is one of our favourite stargazing apps, with excellent design, fast loading times, and incredible ease of use. Just start the app, point it at the sky, and you're good to go. You can search for celestial bodies, and you can look up a huge amount of information from within the app.

Also check out: Our list of six favourite apps for stargazing.

4. Google Goggles

This app is available on Google Play and also on the App Store via the Google Search app and the first time you use it, you realise that we're in the future now.

The app uses your camera to scan objects, and can pick up barcodes, do an image search to tell you about a piece of art or a monument or a board game or audio CD you see lying around. Over time, updates have come to let you translate text you scan. In short, if you can see it, Google Goggles can tell you about it.

Also check out: Tin Eye. The app is a reverse search engine - take a picture and it runs it through Google Image search to give you relevant results. The app is a lot faster than Google Goggles, and often as useful, though Goggles can be more accurate.

5. Bubble level

We loved this free app, which is available on both the App Store and also Google Play because it is really useful. Over a weekend home improvement project, we ended up downloading this app because a spirit level wasn't handy, and the results were just perfect. And the app is free!

6. AR Camera 3D

This Android app is one of the more polished examples of the "insert a 3D character" into a photograph genre of apps but it's a paid app, that costs Rs. 90. There is a "lite" version so you can try out the app, but it has far fewer characters available. The idea is pretty basic - you can take a picture as you always do, but when you do, you can also insert a 3D object into the frame, and move around to rearrange objects in the image. It can be fun, if a little childish.

Also check out: If you have certain Sony Xperia handsets, check the SmartAR feature on the built in camera app. It's the best implemented example we've found, but it doesn't work with many devices.

7. Flipkart

India's best known e-commerce site is available on Google Play, the App Store, and Windows Phone and while it's mostly just for shopping and browsing, an interesting feature in the app is the barcode reader. You can scan the barcode of items you find while shopping to quickly look up that product on Flipkart, so you can make a quick price comparison!

8. colAR

This iOS app is a fun toy for kids to play with, and it lets your kids play with not just the iPad but also the real world, which is always a plus. When you download the app, you also get links to download PDF images. Print them out, and you get colouring book pages, which kids can fill in with crayons. When they're done, just point the camera in the app at the images, and it recognises them and displays interactive 3D models of the characters your kids just finished colouring! It's very silly, but still feels amazing.

9. Shazam

When we talk about AR, we mostly focus on camera apps, but there are multiple ways in which your phone can connect the real and the virtual. This music recognition app is available on the App Store and Google Play, and it's a great way to learn about music you don't recognise. When you hear a song playing and want to know what it's called, just start the app, let it "listen" for a couple of seconds, and it gives you the name of the song playing, which you can then preview or buy, get real time lyrics, or see the music videos of the songs, and much more.

Also check out: Soundhound does what Shazam does and is also really fast and accurate. It's hard to pick between the two apps, but we though Shazam was a little better in noisy environments, which sounds like the scenario where it will be most useful anyway.

10. AR Defender 2

This free iOS game is a fun little use of AR to make games feel real. Want to turn your office desk into a battleground? Just print out an AR mark, let the game see it, and suddenly your desk is populated by enemy weaponry, and you have to put down defences to keep your stapler safe!

Tower Defence is a well established genre and AR defender doesn't break any new ground there, but by letting you turn the real world into the battleground you're fighting for, it manages to feel fresh and fun anyway.