On a scale of 1-10 for exciting Layar announcements, this one goes to 11; we proudly present… Layar Vision! 

With Layar Vision, digital experiences are launched from visual triggers like magazines, posters and newspapers. Layar Vision uses computer vision techniques to augment objects in the physical world. 

The Layar browser can tell which objects in the real world are augmented because the visual fingerprints of the objects are preloaded into the application based upon the user’s layer selection. When a user aims their device at an object that matches the fingerprint, the app instantaneously returns the associated AR experience. 

This new functionality lets layers become truly immersive as seemingly ordinary objects come alive with interactivity. 

“We are really excited about this release. Mobile devices can finally ‘see’,” said Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, Layar co-founder and General Manager. “By adding Layar Vision we are taking an important step towards making augmented reality more effective. With Layar Vision we enable developers to create easy and fast user experiences. It quickly detects multiple enriched objects around a user at any given time.” 

Layar Vision can easily be added to existing location-based layers, so developers can essentially “upgrade” the layers they already have to include Layar Vision. We’ll be including this feature in our next major Layar Player update as well, allowing simple integration with standalone apps for both iPhone and Android! 

To kickstart the launch of Layar Vision, we’re hosting a Layar Creation Challenge, worth $55,000 in total cash prizes! The 10 developers who create the most useful, creative or otherwise impressive layers with Layar Vision will receive anywhere from $2,500 to $15,000! 

The winners will be chosen by our international jury of AR wizards. We are releasing the Android client and publishing platform with Layar Vision enabled in beta in the coming weeks so you can start building! 

Registration is now open, so enter today! To get started, take a look at the documentation and watch our Layar Vision video for inspiration!

A 1963 photo of 4625 Springfield Ave. in Philadelphia overlaid onto the present location.

With each cool new history layer, we are reminded that Augmented Reality is a great way to display historical photos and information previously hidden away in government archives.

Currently on the Layar platform, you can see San Francisco’s historic Market Street before and after the massive earthquake in 1906 that forever changed the landscape, view the Berlin Wall as it stood between 1961 and 1989, uncover Civil War history and more.

The newest historical addition to the Layar platform, PhillyHistory, uses Augmented Reality to merge Philadelphia’s past with present.

Using content from the Philadelphia Department of Records’ online database (PhillyHistory.org), you can access nearly 90,000 historic images of the city, 500 of which are pinned to the current landscape in virtually their exact location in AR. Of those 500 images, 20 also contain additional information about the places in the photos created by the editors of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia as well as local scholars.

This massive project was made possible by a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The organization rewarded this grant to the City of Philadelphia Department of Records (DOR) in order to fund a research project that would investigate the use of Augmented Reality in displaying historic photographs as overlays on a view of the current landscape.

The DOR partnered with Philadelphia-based company Azavea to conduct the research on Augmented Reality and build the mobile phone applications. The two organizations published the results of this research in a free white paper available for download here. The paper also serves as a valuable resource for anyone interested in building on the Layar platform.

The PhillyHistory app is available in the iTunes Store as well as the Android Market, but you can also access it from inside Layar via the PhillyHistory AR layer.

Three phases in the evolution of the PhillyHistory layer

Groupon offers daily deals in your area.

While coupon-clipping is a practice generally reserved for those who still pay for a print newspaper subscription, collective-buying companies like Groupon and Living Social are growing rapidly. Both companies also now have mobile apps that allow you to view and purchase daily deals on-the-go and redeem them digitally (saving time and trees, yay!).

Layar developer and Anca 3D co-founder Juan de la Torre (a recent Canadian transplant from Colombia) used Groupon’s open API to create a layer that displays nearby Groupon deals. You can search by keyword (like “restaurant,” for example) and even purchase deals from inside the layer by signing in with your Groupon account information.

Currently, the Groupon API is only available in the US and Canada, so the layer is only available in those countries as well.

The Groupon by Anca 3D layer shows you daily Groupon deals in your area.

The ability to not only see how close Groupon’s daily deals are to your current location, but to also tap through and purchase the deal directly from the AR view would be a great added feature for Groupon’s official mobile app, especially because the already functional, well-branded layer is an ideal candidate for Layar Player integration.

Hopefully Groupon will get on board and add de la Torre’s AR content to its existing app!

Anca 3D is a Columbia and Canada-based Augmented Reality development company co-founded by Juan de la Torre and Andres Cardoso. The company provides AR solutions for offline, online and mobile platforms.

You can contact Anca 3D via @anca3d_AR on Twitter or email Juan de la Torre at juan.delatorre@anca3d.com.

Click here to launch this layer on your mobile device.

Layar has an extremely diverse community of developers creating augmented reality experiences of all shapes and sizes. To give you an idea of the different things that can be done on the Layar platform, we’ve put together a set of case studies featuring some truly unique examples.

Below are five case studies that show the flexibility and capabilities of the Layar platform and our outstanding community of developers. For each, click the “Case Study PDF” link to view the case study in full.

Layar Augmented Office - Case Study PDF
The Layar Augmented Office is an interactive 3D model that you can literally walk into and access information about the company, layer content, job openings and more.

streetARt - Case Study PDF
streetARt is an iPhone application that displays the public art, graffiti, tags and other forms of street art in your neighborhood. The third-party app uses the Layar Player to embed an Augmented Reality view, but it can also be viewed within the Layar app.

Exile on Your Street - Case Study PDF
Exile on Your Street is the official layer for The Rolling Stones, in promotion of the 2010 Exile on Main Street (Rarities Edition) album. Create and add posters in AR, listen to audio tracks, watch videos, purchase music on iTunes, and more.

The Invisible Artist - Case Study PDF
The Invisible Artist is a 3D Augmented Reality guide to 10 of London’s top contemporary art museums.

UAR - Case Study PDF
UAR (Urban Augmented Reality) displays images and 3D models of the past, future and “what might have been” for architecture in the Netherlands.

You can also find these case studies at any time on our Examples page.

Art is everywhere. Whether as simple as a crude marker sketch in a bathroom stall, or as intricate as a mixed-media mural covering the side of a building, there are dozens of inspired artistic creations free to view right outside your door. 

These pieces are often hidden in back alleys and tunnels, or painted over by the city or a rival artist, however, with MOB‘s new mobile streetARt application (available for free in the iTunes store), you can see the many different types of public art around you, past and present.

MOB developer Rob Manson has talked about street art with colleagues for years, as there are hundreds of great public art pieces on the streets and at skate parks near his house in Bondi Beach, Australia as well as in Sydney and Melbourne. Once the Layar Player became available for iPhone, Manson wanted to create an app to show it off that used widely distributed content in the AR view, so an ever-growing international collection of street art was the perfect fit.

Manson started the content-gathering process by running scripts across Flickr, which resulted in about 30,000 street art images in over 500 locations. The streetARt app then adds to that content, allowing users to snap photos and upload them directly to streetARtAPP.com.

In the iPhone app, users join the streetARt community by connecting their Twitter accounts where they can “like” and comment on photos as well as upload their own from inside the app. Currently the “likes” and comments are only visible to other app users, but Facebook/Twitter sharing is coming soon, along with other features like permalinks and advanced filtering options.

While Layar Player (and therefore the streetARt app) is currently only available for iPhone, streetARt’s content is fully viewable from within the Layar application, so both iPhone and Android users can view the images.

MOB is an Australia-based business innovation lab focused on mobile and online platforms. A member of the Layar Partner Network, MOB is responsible for the BuildAR layer creation tool as well as numerous other layers.