Recently, at WWDC 2017, Apple announced the all new Apple ARKit and made it available for the developers on the same day so that they can test it and get the feel of the latest platform. Now that iOS 11 is finally here, ARKit is included in it for iPhone 6S and newer devices including the iPad Pro and the latest 9.7-inch iPad. In this short while after the announcement and before the official release of iOS 11, the developers have used the ARKit to create apps for some of the big brands like The Walking Dead and also some smaller ones.
Several of the existing apps have also added the AR functionality in them via updates or fresh new apps that are specifically for the platform. If you’ve already got your hands on the latest update from Apple and wish to checkout some of the AR ready apps then here is a compilation of some of the best AR ready iOS apps.
Carrot Weather
Carrot weather is a beautifully designed weather application that now integrates AR via ARKit to make things even better. It makes perfect sense for the snappy AI weatherbot to make the leap to add support for ARKit using which it can show off its features in a smoother way. You can update the app to version 4.1.2 to get the new AR mode and this app is available to buy on the AppStore for just $3.99.
IKEA Place
We almost saw this coming, IKEA had a similar app for the Google Tango phones that let you ideate their products in your living space in real time with accurate dimensions. This app lets you visualize their furniture in your home and more than 2000 IKEA products are available on the app so you can use this app to place them around your house to get a feel of how they’re going to look and how much place they will occupy.
Housecraft
If you like the Ikea app then the chances are high that you will like this app as well. This app has been developed by Sirvo, the studio behind the amazing puzzle game called Threes. They go a step further and instead of limiting the product catalogue to just the Ikea products, the app lets you visualize several other furniture objects. There’s a huge catalogue of items that can be resized to fit the dimensions of your room which makes it more of a home planning app that you can use if you wish to setup new furniture across your house before making the purchase. There’s also a destroy option that reverts all the arrangements and lets you start afresh.
Euclidean Lands
If you’ve played the game Monument Valley and Hitman GO before, this game won’t look too unfamiliar to you as this is a very fair mix of both the games. This app is adding an AR update that lets you play the game in your living room or for that matter any wide-open space that you can find. This architectural puzzle game that is all about changing the perspectives is just the right way to implement the ARKit and costs $3.99 to download from the AppStore.
Giphy World
Giphy is a huge collection of animated GIF’s that comes very handy while messaging. This service is so popular that it has been integrated in to the iMessage with its own keyboard app and has partnerships with Facebook and twitter that greatly helped increase the spread of GIF’s all over the internet. The Giphy World app goes a step further and brings GIF’s to real life, into your surroundings by letting you record video with GIF’s in them. You can also share the entire screen with friends using the app and they can also interact with the GIF’s in the explorable virtual space that is created.
Fitness AR
Strava is perhaps one of the most used fitness apps which became famous for the excellent social integration that it had. It has sort of become a social network for athletes. When they made their API’s available for the public, about 20,000 apps came up that use their API support. Fitness AR is one of the most recent apps that makes use of the Strava API that lets you visualize their routes on a 3D terrain map that is powered by Mapbox. There is also a screen recording feature that lets you pan and zoom through the routes while creating a video. This apps also lets you save the videos to the camera roll so that you can later share it, this app can be of great use for athletes who wish to analyse their routes before planning a training session and it is available on the AppStore for $2.99.
MeasureKit
This is one of the most impressive implementations of the latest ARKit from Apple, this is a very useful tool that lets you measure just about anything using the camera on your iPhone or iPad. This app also lets you measure angles and check if things are leveled perfectly. The most interesting feature in this app is to measure your room dimensions by crawling on the ground with your iPhone or iPad in your hand. The ruler tool in this app is free which you can use to test out the app but you can buy rest of the tools for a one-time purchase amount of $2.99.
TapMeasure
If you like the MeasureKit, then you should surely try out the TapMeasure app by Occipital. This company has spent several years working on the Augmented reality platform and has learnt a lot over time. In the coming few days you can be sure about several measurement apps to flood the AppStore, what sets TapMeasure apart from all these measurement apps is the fact that you can also create floor plans using this app and make use of 3D room models that can be exported to CAD format and later opening in SketchUp. This app is right now available on the market for free and Occipital will only charge for some of the features like the CAD file export option which you can easily buy using the In-app purchases.
