I bought my iPad 2017 only to experience augmented reality. I first saw AR when my brother showed me an ARKit app on his iPhone 7 Plus smartphone and since then I was hooked on this technology.
The First Time I’ve Experienced AR
Usually, I play regular games on the PS4 and a bit on the PC, although my PC cannot run the latest games because it’s not powerful enough. The PS4 game me an entrance to a world of gaming. I met many friends online and play many amazing multiplayer games.
I was fascinated when I saw the ARKit demos on the web and I couldn’t wait to try them up myself. I wanted to buy the iPhone 6 or 7, but budget restrictions made me go with the cheapest entry product and it’s the iPad 2017 model.
Among the first apps that I played and reviewed were AR-Basketball, AR Dragon, and Stack AR. Those little ARKit games really fascinated me. It was amazing to see virtual objects inside the real physical world. The light estimation technology made those 3D models blend so well with the environment it just blew my mind.
I’ve decided to open a blog and share my enthusiasm with other people online. It was just too exciting to hold all that excitement inside myself and what’s a better way to release that enthusiasm out than writing about it.
I love technology. I had a few blogs about photography before and I enjoyed writing about it and sharing my knowledge with others. I still spend time reading technical articles and trying to understand how this technology works, learn about its pros and cons and looking forward to hearing about the new advancements in this field.
I Love Playing AR Games
Some of my PS4 friends laughed at me when I said them that I enjoy playing AR games on my iPad. some of them look at it like a joke. I stopped playing the PS4 and start downloading and playing more ARKit games. The more I played, the more excited I was and I just found myself spending more and more time using AR apps and games and almost completely forgot about the PS4. I do log in from time to time to talk to my friends, but I have a new hobby now and that is ARKit.
Meddling Martians AR, one of my personal favorite ARKit games.
At the first two weeks, I’ve already played many games. Many of them indeed felt like demos. I understood that some developers were rushing to release their ARKit apps to get more exposure on the media and I knew that it will take some time until the bigger companies enter the market with their apps that will be more extensive and feel like a fully featured app, not like a tech demo.
Having said that, I’ve seen some really great ARKit games that were developed by companies that I never heard of. Some of them were even the first apps those companies have developed.
Still, I knew that there are quite a few companies and developers who start developing their apps way ahead of the release of iOS 11 which started the AR revolution when Apple released the ARKit framework for public access.
I was more into games than applications, but of course, I was willing to try anything out, because it’s a new technology. In those two weeks, I’ve come across some amazing AR apps with unique features that are only possible to experience using this technology. For example, all those virtual ruler apps like Measure and GRuler, AR decoration apps like Room Remix, Housecraft, and Sayduck. I really enjoyed toying around with camera effect apps like AR Toy Camera. I loved using educational apps like FishingGO, JigSpace and I was blown away by the AR movie maker app Vixeo.
As you can see, ARKit isn’t just great for games for many different kinds of apps. Developers keep surprising me every day with their amazing ideas.
Here is another game called powARdup that I really enjoyed playing.
That being said, as a gamer, I was eager to try out ARKit games and see how fun those ARKit apps are and what unique innovative gameplay mechanics I’ll experience when playing those new games.
Among my favorite games are GhosthuntAR, Toy Clash AR, Dragon Power Fighter AR, Meddling Martians, powARdup, and others. You can check out my Top 10 ARKit apps and games for November 2017 to see what games and apps I like best.
Not Everything Went That Smooth though
I came to learn a lot about the advantages of this technology, as well as its limitations. I’ve read about AR way before I bought my iPad. I was fascinated with Google Tango technology and was kind of sad that it didn’t take off. However, seeing Google quickly adapting to the market needs with ARCore was a great relief. I didn’t Google to stay out of this market and we always need good competition to help push this technology forward.
The first game that I’ve tried was a basketball game. Even in the first game, I found out the limitations of this technology and encounter different types of issues.
- Balls were passing through the wall
- The surface detection has issues detecting plane untextured or reflective surfaces
- For some apps it took even a minute to detect a surface, Later on, I found out that I need a high contrast object to help it detect the surface faster (I just put my cat’s toy in the middle and it detects the surface almost immediately)
- Many apps require re-scanning of the surface, which was really annoying
- When I switch between apps, the app loses its detection and I sometimes need to recalibrate the surface location all over again
- Some games and apps were very jittery
- Some ARKit apps are optimized for iPhone but not for the iPad (I guess some developers just don’t debug it on the iPad, just the device they have at their disposal, which is the iPhone.
- Many ARKit games aren’t optimized for small areas and don’t offer any option to resize or rotate the level once you deploy it
- Hight contrast scene can cause flickering on surfaces. It happened to me when I played Terrorhedron in the morning where part of the room had shadows and the other part was very bright
- ARKit doesn’t detect vertical planes (confirmed via this answer on Stackoverflow.com), this why I saw 3D objects passing through walls
- Not every AR game that is physical is really fun, some games were very annoying to play, especially those that force you to look down while standing up
- Some ARKit games that I’ve played were more fun to play in Normal mode than their AR mode
- The selection of high-quality apps is, as of the time of writing, very limited (don’t worry more apps are being released every day)
With all those things that I mentioned above, and I can come up with more if I spend more time thinking about it, it didn’t impair my enthusiasm. I remember the same thing happened in VR and it took quite some time until we get to see some high-quality titles. I still think that there are many companies who still try to test the market with small apps. There are not many companies who dare to go full in. Of course, this will come in time. Even some of the most hyped ARKit titles turned out to be quite mediocre.
In fact, some of the games that I enjoyed playing the most were the least mentioned ones. I didn’t even hear about the game Meddling Martians AR and powARdup, only by doing some in-search on the app store. Now those games are on the front page in the AR category.
Having said all that, I know that it just takes a bit more time until we get to see more amazing ARKit titles, and by their hundreds and even more.I’ve already seen on the web some great upcoming ARKit games that I am really excited about.
I personally more thrilled with AR games that require constant movement because it let me see and feel the 3D space better like that way. Suddenly the virtual becomes more real and not just a static floating 3D scene in the real world. Games like AMON, Dragon Power Fighter AR, Zombie Gunship Revenant AR and Meddling Martians AR, all require movement and are so satisfying to play in AR. That being said, I also find myself enjoying just sitting on the couch and try to aim ping pong balls into beer cups or play a good old tower defense game like Toy Clash AR that doesn’t require any movement.
I enjoy logging in every day and checking what new ARKit games and apps are out there and almost every day I found a really impressive app that I can write a review about and share my excitement with you guys.
This month was very intensive for me but was full of excitement as well. I love this technology because it helped bring new types of experiences that I never had a chance to experience before. Some apps are really useful and practical like the decoration eCommerce apps and some games are really revolutionizing the gaming industry as we speak. No doubt that the best is yet to come, but even as I write these lines, you have lots of great apps and games that you can enjoy right now.
I opened up this blog to share with you my excitement about this technology, but also help you find out about the best ARKit content out there.
This sums up my first month with ARKit. I want to also share my appreciation and your support, for everyone who subscribed to my YouTube channel, follow me on Twitter and share their opinions and thoughts with me.Although my time is quite limited, I’ll do my best to make sure you get the best content possible. Thanks again and see you again soon.