
Ask HN: Any cool ARKit or ARCore apps out there right now gaining popularity? - forkLding
Its been quite a while since ARKit and&#x2F;or ARCore came out, was wondering if there were any apps built on this technology that became popular.
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hwoolery
I created an app that uses ARKit + Machine Learning (CoreML) called InstaSaber
that projects a virtual lightsaber out of a piece of rolled up paper:
[http://instasaber.com/](http://instasaber.com/)

It was more a proof-of-concept of the technology I'm working on, but I think
it's worth checking out (it's free to download). I think you will start to see
a lot more cool implementations of ARKit/ARCore that integrate with CNN's and
do new and unique things.

Edit: 20k downloads in first week, I haven't bothered to market it though.

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billconan
how ARKit is used in this case? Isn't ARKit for detecting plane objects?

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billconan
oh, for rendering I guess

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hwoolery
yes, that as well

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nathangitter
My app was featured on the App Store as "Game of the Day" and "Great on iPhone
X" and has gotten pretty popular:
[https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1312458558](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1312458558)

It's called Rainbrow and it uses the iPhone X's face-tracking capabilities to
allow you to play the game with your eyebrows. Not exactly an ARKit app in the
traditional sense, but it makes use of ARKit API's. It's also free!

~~~
saagarjha
What kind of retention are you seeing? Are users downloading it because it's a
cool thing to try out, or are they coming back to it?

~~~
pascoej
It's my goto when people want to play games on my phone.

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sthielen
I think the sentiment implicit in your question—that the initial hype wave of
AR has cooled off—is valid. I believe one of the biggest reasons we’ve yet to
see AR truly succeed on mobile is that it’s prohibitively difficult it is to
create AR content right now. You need professional developers and real budgets
to create a single AR experience. It’s too costly for
businesses/brands/individuals to experiment or try new things, which is why
there are only something like 2,000 ARKit apps on the Apple App Store [0].
Given that, it’s not surprising that we haven’t seen any big, behavior-
changing hits aside from Pokemon Go and messenger frames.

You might be interested in what we've been working on at Metaverse [1]. The
platform we're building allows non-programmers to create interactive content
that leverages AR (our beta testers have already created over 30K
experiences).

We’ve been at it for about a year and a half now and are still in beta, but
it's being used by marketers, teachers, record labels, etc. [2] These people
don’t know how to code (most of them don’t even know what ARKit is). They’re
ordinary people [3] who now have access to a powerful tool that lets them try
new things, play with new patterns, and leverage otherwise-inaccessible
technologies to solve their own problems.

The long tail of Youtube brought us unboxing videos, Twitch, and Justin
Bieber; we want to see what AR (and software, generally) begins to look like
when ordinary people have the power to create. I think that's where the really
cool stuff is going to be. Check out our Twitter account to see some of the
awesome things people are making:
[https://twitter.com/metaverseapp](https://twitter.com/metaverseapp)

\--

[0] [https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/02/this-is-tim-transcript-
of...](https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/02/this-is-tim-transcript-of-
apples-q1-2018-earnings-call/)

[1] [https://gometa.io/](https://gometa.io/)

[2] [https://medium.com/metaverseapp](https://medium.com/metaverseapp)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VTbkDX694](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VTbkDX694)

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Axsuul
FYI
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t1g5_eGkJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t1g5_eGkJI)
at the end points to gometa.io/gifts which is dead

~~~
sthielen
Thanks for the heads up :) We leaned into a lot of location-based stuff in the
early days (around the time of the Pokemon Go craze)--check these out:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd6DjJ0GdBQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd6DjJ0GdBQ)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCrWYFTDqfU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCrWYFTDqfU)

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gecko39
For me the AR furniture / product placements apps are one of the better use
cases ( ikea, amazon. ) They're really the best way to see what that new couch
will look like in your house. Also the floor plan creation apps have seen a
fair amount of downloads ( PLNR, etc ) Then there's the fart app of AR: the
tape measure apps. ( AirMeasure, etc )

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ctruelson
Houzz also has a decent amount of furniture available for an AR preview.

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kenning
I am extremely bullish on ar headsets -- I'm convinced it will flip several
markets on their heads.

Adding AR to phones doesn't seem particularly interesting to me, though. Some
technology is just a fad -- remember when people cared about ringtones? That's
pretty much how I feel about snapchat filters, which seems to be the best use
case people have found for anything close to AR. Pokemon go doesn't count
(it's a GPS game).

I think ARKit is mostly a long play from apple to get people used to their API
and prepared for when headsets come out.

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m1sta_
Once it becomes social things may change.

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lesmond
Check out our app Plane Finder 3D
[https://planefinder.net/3D/](https://planefinder.net/3D/)

~~~
hylianwarrior
I would if you had an Android version.

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jachee
Is there ARKit for android? I thought that was a set of Apple APIs.

Or are you just trolling?

~~~
Nullabillity
ARCore is Google's equivalent.

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YogeeKnows
Dance Dance AR. I wont call it popular but we do see in-app purchases for full
content unlocks.

[https://everyplay.com/videos/50667268](https://everyplay.com/videos/50667268)
[https://everyplay.com/videos/50459819](https://everyplay.com/videos/50459819)

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dance-dance-
ar/id1294676909?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dance-dance-
ar/id1294676909?mt=8)

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cnorthwood
We've launched an AR app working with museums that seems to be doing fairly
well with audiences at this stage:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/civilisations-
ar](https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/civilisations-ar). As a not for profit
it's hard to say how that would translate into financial success, but it's
doing okay with audience numbers

~~~
nischalsamji
I tried Civilizations AR a couple of days ago. Great app.

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octalmage
These are pretty cool:

[https://lensstudio.snapchat.com](https://lensstudio.snapchat.com)

I’ve seen them show up a bunch online and on Snapchat.

~~~
fortythirteen
As someone who spent a lot of time in the early AR space, it's disappointing
to see that, a decade later, marketing teams haven't come up with anything
better to sell the tech than dancing characters placed on tables.

But, hey, you don't need a black and white marker to do it anymore, so I guess
that's progress.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I don't think AR is really going to take off until we have something closer to
true AR glasses. The real power of AR is in contextual computing, that the
system surfaces information as you need it / as you change your view.

Contextual: you look at a flower with your AR glasses and it tells you the
species.

No Context: you look at a flower and a dancing hotdog appears on it.

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johnptr
My cofounder and I are making Arrow (YC W18), an ARKit app where users can add
animated texts & emojis to the real-world, and share videos of it. Most
popular feature is Automoji = emojis automatically appear as the camera
detects real-world objects. Using ARKit + CoreML + Vision
[http://arrowapp.io/](http://arrowapp.io/)

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mmjaa
I think Artivive has some kind of traction at the moment, at least among the
hipster artist demographic:

[https://artivive.com](https://artivive.com)

Kind of fun to see people having productive reasons to point their phones at
paintings, though I'm sure it's giving some gallery operators conniptions ..

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icefox
The app which is really little more than a demo, but has had the most use in
my house has been the lego ar studio

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lego-ar-
studio/id1296734986?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lego-ar-
studio/id1296734986?mt=8)

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codeisforeva
I’ve been working on a sports data AR camera app. Coming to Android soon. Am
just now starting to promote it.
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rmxsports/id1329303993?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rmxsports/id1329303993?mt=8)

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murkle
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geogebra-augmented-
reality/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geogebra-augmented-
reality/id1276964610?mt=8)

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socceroos
JigSpace - it is early stages, but a cool idea.

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sahin-boydas
[https://www.leoapp.com](https://www.leoapp.com)

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aphextron
Somewhat related, has anyone seen anything being done with Watch 3?

