Interview with Wikitude
0We had the honor of exchanging a few words with Wikitude’s Chief ARchitect Mr. Wolfgang Damm and, as it couldn’t be otherwise, it’ll be a pleasure to share it with you all.
For those of you who have just arrived from another planet or just in case you have lived in a bunker for a while, Wikitude was, and is, one of the pioneers in augmented reality (AR) apps. We’ve talked a little about the origins of Wikitude and, more important, about the imminent release of ARquitect and what all of this will mean for AR apps in the future.
- Tell us about Wikitude. How does it start?
Our founder Philipp Breuss Schneeweis started experimenting with Augmented Reality (AR) in 2008 when Google came out with the very first AR capable smartphone, the Android G1 which had GPS, accelerometer and most importantly a digital compass. Since then we have built an AR platform where more than 2,500 content providers with about 150 million points of interest (POIs) meet more than 10 million users worldwide across Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian devices.
- Where is it going to? What can we expect of Wikitude and AR apps in the near future?
We will continue to build on the platform approach. We provide state of the art AR technology, particularly now with ARchitect, and a huge user base which is perfect for content owners to expose their content through exciting AR experiences to a very wide audience.
- Let’s dream a little further: what will users be able to do in five years time? Or ten? Where are we going?
Nobody knows where this will go exactly, but there is no doubt in our minds that the camera is a key sensor inside of the smartphone to experience and understand your surroundings better. In 3-5 years from now you will be seeing mainstream people using their smartphones to point at objects, locations and people to know more about them. As typing and even audio input can be quite tedious on a mobile, visual search is a natural, easy and intuitive way of absorbing information around you.
- Any advice to a starting Android developer?
AR is no longer complicated, we enable developers to build great AR experiences with simple web technologies like html, javascript and css. If you have these programming skills, you really don’t need any advice, all you need is a bit of imagination to build your first AR World and make it available on Wikitude World Browser.
- Wolfgang, what is ARquitect?
