Washington Post App now includes an Augmented Reality section where readers can read stories and interact with a story-related content in augmented reality. As of the time of writing, there aren’t many three stories available but I’m sure this will grow tremendously in the near future.
I’ve tried all three of them.The first article was published 6 months ago with a story about the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. I was able to see how this iconic building was constructed and view it from different angles on the table in the living room.
One of my favorites was actually a useful app that helps you make precise cutouts of different shapes on a pumpkin, All you need to do is to choose a design and use the AR app to place and position it on the pumpkin. Then all you need to do is to choose the size of the stencil, mark it with a permanent market and carve along the template with a knife.
You can see me placing the stencils on a persimmon, sorry, I didn’t have a pumpkin to try it out on 🙂
I think it’s a really cool idea to make an Augmented Reality section. I can already see future news app using only augmented reality to deliver news in a more immersive and engaging way. Because it’s part of the app, it doesn’t feel like a regular AR app. You read the article and inside there is an image with a “Start” button. Clicking on it will launch the AR application for that specific article.
I’ve checked the iTunes page of the app and I’ve read that The Washington Post Company added iPhone X support for their news app version 3.12.1. The older article used a non-ARKit implementation (I can see this because I saw the focus and defocus happening on screen) but the latest one is using ARKit if I am not mistaken.
If you have the app, just take a look at the top category list on the right side and you can see the Augmented Reality category right there.
If you don’t have the app, you can download it here from iTunes.