Augmented reality is a technology which provides a means to blend virtual imaging into the video stream of a mobile device camera in real time. Augmented reality is a promising idea that enhances the player’s gaming experience in new ways so that he can control his actions through 3D moves. Modern day video games are augmented reality enabled. It blurs the gap between the physical and virtual world.

AR’s most universal application may be through the use of mobile computing devices. A lot of expectation is being built around the iPhone and Android apps. They combine virtual data into the real world by utilizing the iPhone 3GS, camera and GPS system.  With this mobile augmented reality you can see the location of the mobile users, the location of the restaurants and even your family and friends in the physical world, although they are miles away. Mobile augmented reality is already available on some Android phones and there is news that even iPhone will swing into implementing mobile augmented reality.

Let us look at the 6 major mobile augmented reality applications. The first is TwittAround. This takes the iPhone’s camera and overlays live video of the world around you with tweets.  Just move around and you will see who is tweeting and also from where. Layar is another mobile augmented reality application for Google Android phones. Developers can create their own augmented reality by adding layers on top of the live video on their phone.  Nearest Tube is another mobile augmented reality application. This will help you find the nearest subway station and you do not have to look for directions. TAT Augmented ID is another application.  This uses Flicker facial recognition technology to identify a person’s face.  The other mobile augmented reality application is SREngine for iPhone.  You can use this to locate and identify rocks, houses and monuments. WikiTude AR Travel guide is a fantastic guide when you hold up your phone it will bring you Wikipedia information on the site you are looking at.  ARWiz is a mobile augmented reality library that was created after evaluating the performance of open source solutions.  Some of its interesting features are that it is ultra fast, has sub pixel precision during marker detection, has optimized calculations to reduce error propagation, has great pose stability and non-stop streaming.

 Mobile augmented reality apps have revolutionized the way the people use mobile phones and encompassed the functions of many gadgets in one place to deliver a high quality high value experience to users, who would have otherwise spent a lot of money on buying a number of gadgets for the same purpose.