Augmented Reality (AR), the class of technologies that places sets of data on top of other views of the world around a user, is fast becoming a very crowded market. Austrian AR browser maker Wikitude has taken a very competitive step this afternoon with the release of its Application Programming Interface (API) to power AR browsers on any other application.
The company says its API “represents the emergence of an open AR development platform which could further drive the adoption of Wikitude as a potential standard for developers who want to create their own mobile AR experience.” Get ready to see Augmented Reality come to far more mobile applications and for Wikitude’s competitors to respond.
Wikitude displays Wikipedia and user-contributed Points of Interest over the camera view of Android phones, over a Google map or in list form.
provides an easy way for anyone to add Points of Interest that are immediately available to Wikitude mobile users. The company has said in the past that it intends to put all of that data under a Creative Commons license. The new API will allow an Augmented Reality camera view to be added to any other Android application that contains geographic data. Hopefully an API will be available from iPhone apps when the next version of the iPhone operating system is released. (We’ve asked Wikitude about that.)
Wikitude says it worked with more than 100 developers from 25 countries in building its API. Both commercial and non-commercial API keys are available to remove the watermark placed over non-keyed implementations. The API allows developers to customize the actions that occur when info-balloon overlays are clicked on and change the menu options for the AR browser.
Will competitors like Layar, AcrossAir, Tochnidot, RobotVision and others release APIs soon as well? They have to be working on it, but Wikitude appears to have the most open disposition, one of the broadest developer communities and thus may be the best suited to become the AR platform of choice.
There are enough players in the AR field already that the competition will likely come down to two things: usability of interfaces and developer-friendliness. May the games begin!
